The American Black Chamber

"During the 1920s Herbert O. Yardley headed the first peacetime cryptanalytic organization in the United States, a predecessor of today's National Security Agency. Funded by the U.S. Army and the Department of State and working out of New York, the small, highly secret unit, called MI-8, broke the diplomatic codes of several nations, including Japan. Its decrypts played a critical role in the conduct of U.S. diplomacy and helped improve the country's position during the Washington Naval Conference of 1920-21. Despite MI-8's extraordinary successes, however, Yardley's "Black Chamber" - as it was known within the intelligence community - was disbanded in 1929. President Hoover's secretary of state, Henry L. Stimson, had refused to continue its funding with the now-famous comment, "Gentlemen do not read other people's mail."" In 1931 a disappointed Yardley caused a sensation when he published The American Black Chamber, revealing to the world the extent of his agency's activities and exposing the secret, illegal cooperation of the American cable industry. The revelations presented in this book and Yardley's right to publish them set into motion a conflict that continues to this day: the right to freedom of expression versus national security.