The Reader of Gentlemen's Mail: Herbert O. Yardley and the Birth of American Codebreaking

by David Kahn

Book Overview

One of the most colorful and controversial figures in American intelligence, Herbert O. Yardley (1889-1958) gave America its best form of information, but his fame rests more on his indiscretions than... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300098464
• ISBN13: 9780300098464
• Release Date: February 2004
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 318 Pages
• Weight: 1.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.5" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Required reading for IC historians and professionals

Few people understand the roots of US intelligence and crytology as well as Dr. David Kahn. His biography of Herbert O. Yardley is a tribute to an energetic pioneer of modern intelligence, an intelligence hero of the Great War and a struggling Depression-era author and reluctant contractor. It's time that the Intelligence Community extend its corporate memory beyond Wild Bill Donovan and embrace Herbert O. Yardley, whose energy and foresight paved the way for NSA in particular, and for The Community in general. His personal and professional stories should be heard and digested by his successors, who, it is presumed, would weed out a workaholic Average Joe of Yardley's earthly vices with a quick Life Style Poly. No one knows Yardley like Kahn, and every American should get to know Herbert Yardley...

A Forgotten Intelligence Innovator

Despite its current reputation, there were times when American intelligence (meaning spying) was an unalloyed success. For many, the most interesting part of the spy business is signals intelligence, tuning into or breaking into foreign messages and decoding them. There has been signals intelligence of some sort ever since there has been international conflict, but the field took off when messages could be transmitted wirelessly. Anyone could pick up the signal, so the trick was to encode it; the counter-trick was to crack the code. Cryptographers and other spies already know and respect the name of Herbert O. Yardley. He isn't well known by others, but almost fifty years after his death, he has gotten a full, instructive biography, _The Reader of Gentleman's Mail: Herbert O. Yardley and the Birth of American Codebreaking_ (Yale University Press) by David Kahn. Kahn is the perfect teller of this tale, having written both articles for scholarly journals as well as popular books about intelligence matters. There is not a great deal of detail about the procedures of decryption, which are described only generally, but there is a unique American life here. According to Kahn, Yardley better than anyone foresaw how important cracking signals could be to American intelligence. He created the first permanent agency to intercept messages and break them. He was "the most colorful and controversial figure in American intelligence," and his controversial actions are fully included here.Yardley came to Washington DC in 1914, working as a telegrapher in the State Department. He was fascinated by the messages that came in and out, and determined that he would give his life to cryptography. His efforts within the Army Signal Corp were effective, but more important even than the wartime accomplishments was that Yardley convinced the Army and State Department to continue signal intelligence after Armistice Day. He believed that the stream of international communications could indicate the attitudes and plans of nations who were our friends as well as our foes. He was right; his work ensured that America knew what the aims of the Japanese were at the arms limitation talks in 1921, saving the government millions of dollars and buying some years of peace. Those who thought that "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail" eventually closed his bureau down. Yardley was, at different times in his life, to make up cryptogram puzzles for magazines, to go into the invisible ink business, to write novels, to write screenplays for Hollywood, to run a restaurant, and to attempt commercial orange-juice distillation, as well as to become decoder-for-hire for Canada and China. He made a hit with his first book in 1931, The American Black Chamber, which caused immediate furor, about his government decryptions. He showed what his bureau had done, and the reading public was very much interested. He was accused of treason, but Kahn shows that Yardley was merely tryin