This Month in Intelligence History: A Young American Intelligence Hero

Here is a short story I put together about a young American intelligence hero. Herbert Yardley, a Hoosier, rose from being a telegraph clerk to head of U.S. Army Cryptography (at 28). In the immediate wake of the Great War he led the country's first permanent, peacetime crypto organization, the "American Black Chamber." Despite successes supporting U.S. foreign policy and arms control efforts between the wars, the Black Chamber was shut down -- ironically on Halloween 1929. As we have been told, "Gentlemen don't read other gentlemen's mail." It would take the shock of another world war, and a "police action" in Korea, to convince America it needed a permanent, national crypto organization, today's National Security Agency. Yardley was WAY ahead of his time.