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Yardley obtained a job in Washington in 1912, working for the State Department as a telegraph operator. He found the work fascinating. After some four years Yardley had proved to his own satisfaction and his superiors annoyance, that US codes were hopelessly vulnerable and the US finally entered World War One in 1917, he was sent to the War Department and then on to the U.S. Signal Corps. Here he was given the rank of lieutenant and named the head of a special bureau dealing with cryptology called MI8 (Military Intelligence, Section 8.)
Within months, Yardley's small bureau had broken almost all of the German diplomatic and Abwehr codes. By August 1918, while battles still raged along the Western Front, Yardley went to Europe to learn more about cryptology from the British and French intelligence agencies. In England, he met Vernon Kell, director of MI5, and Admiral William Reginald Hall, head of British naval intelligence, whose celebrated Room 40 operation had broken the coded contents of the notorious Zimmermann Telegram, a deciding factor for the America's entry into the war against Germany. He also went to France, where he studied the operations of French cryptology. After attending the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 as chief cryptologist of the American delegation, Yardley was told that his job was at an end. He disagreed, pointing out the America had enemies around the world and the codes of these nations would have to be deciphered so that the U.S. could realise any future threat to its security. He prepared a comprehensive plan to establish a peacetime cryptological bureau and submitted this to the State Department and the Chief of Staff, a report titled Code and Cipher Investigation and Attack .
General Marlborough Churchill, head of Army Intelligence persuaded officials in the State Department to fund an "unofficial" code-breaking operation. Because of legalities, the State Department insisted that this operation not be located in Washington. Instead, in 1919, Yardley opened up his cryptology bureau in a four-story New York City brownstone at 141 East 37th Street, just east of Lexington Avenue. Yardley quickly organized a staff of twenty top cryptologists, mostly those who had worked under him at MI8, including Dr. Charles Mendelsohn and Victor Weiskopf. One of his most brilliant codebreakers was F. Livesey, who became his assistant. Yardley dubbed the operation the American Black Chamber (after the French Black Chamber, the cryptology division of French intelligence in World War I that he so admired,) a name that soon become world famous. Yardley's group proved to be successful in breaking the difficult codes of the newly formed Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police in Russia, which had supplanted the czarist secret police, the Okhrana.
The Black Chamber broke the Japanese diplomatic codes in time to allow the US negotiators to operate from a position of strength during the 1921 Washington Naval Conference. In 1924, Yardley's funds were considerably reduced by the State Department, which was then undergoing budget cuts under direct orders from President Calvin Coolidge. In 1928., Henry L. Stimson became Secretary of State. In reviewing the American Black Chamber operation, Stimson dismissed the organization as non-essential. Stimson, an old-school diplomat, was repelled by espionage and covert operations of any kind. He reportedly told Yardley in a reproachful, stuffy manner; "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail." He then ordered the State Department to cease funding Yardley's operation. Yardley was to suffer greatly, finding his reputation made him unemployable. However, after using up his savings, he succeeded in writing an enormously successful book titled 'The American Black Chamber'. The book earned both a great deal of money and the enmity of Congress, where he was denounced as having given away America's secrets. His career as one of the great cryptologists was finally over. |
