Herbert Yardley

Herbert Osborne Yardley ( born April 13, 1889 in Worthington, Indiana; † August 7, 1958 ) was an American cryptologist.

Yardley was the son of a station master and telegraph operators of the railway. He interrupted his studies at the University of Chicago off to work again in his hometown of Worthington as a telegrapher and entered 1912 in the civil service, where he worked as a telegraph operator and encoder in the Foreign Office. In World War I he was a reserve officer cryptographer in the U.S. expeditionary force in France. He succeeded to decipher the private US-based codes, which he wrote a memorandum in May 1916. At the same time, he convinced his superiors to set up a separate department for the cryptanalysis of foreign encryption, the department MI- 8 of the Signal Corps, which he led from June 1917. After the war he continued this work in the Cipher Bureau ( called Black Chamber ) in New York City on behalf of the Foreign Office ( State Department) and the U.S. Army continued. Their main task was to decipher Japanese codes, which Yardley succeeded after a year. The information thus acquired leap paid off especially 1921/22, from during the Washington negotiations on the limitation of mutual warship fleets (Washington Naval Conference).

In October 1929, the Cipher Bureau from U.S. Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson closed ( Gentlemen do not read other people's mail, Gentlemen do not read each other 's mail). Yardley had previously provoked him with the remark that he would be able to read all of the post- Vatican. Yardley wrote then his findings in the 1931 book The American Black Chamber, which was a best seller, not only in the U.S., but also for example in Japan. Since he is also foreign governments drew attention to weaknesses in their encryption mechanisms, he aroused the indignation of the U.S. government, although legally could not follow him, but in future also no longer working with him. 1938 to 1940 he worked for the Chinese, which he helped to decipher Japanese codes ( which he wrote the book The Chinese Black Chamber, which was not published until 1983), and 1941 briefly for the Canadian government, for which he at national cryptographic department Research built. But he had to go under pressure from the U.S. government.

Yardley then wrote three detective and spy novels ( The Blonde Countess, Red Sun of Nippon, Crows Are Black Everywhere), was a screenwriter and a technical advisor for films and wrote a bestseller about the game of poker ( Education of a Poker Player, 1957).

He was in the Hall of Honor ( Hall of Honour ) of the NSA ( National Security Agency ) was added in 1999.