Reader of Gentlemen's Mail

David Kahn

One of the most colourful 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 on his achievements. In this highly readable biography, a premier historian of military intelligence tells Yardley's story and evaluates his impact on the American intelligence community. Yardley established the nation's first codebreaking agency in 1917, and his solutions helped the United States win a major diplomatic victory at the 1921 disarmament conference. But when his unit was closed in 1929 because "gentlemen do not read each other's mail", Yardley wrote a best-selling memoir that introduced - and disclosed - codemaking and codebreaking to the public. David Kahn describes the vicissitudes of Yardley's career, including his work in China and Canada, offers a capsule history of...