THE CODEBREAKERS

by DAVID KAHN

  It was, however, as a story of romance that The American Black Chamber sold 17,931 copies, unprecedented for a book dealing with cryptology, and a highly respectable figure even today. The English edition, entitled Secret Service in America, sold 5,480 more. The book was published in French, in Swedish, and in an unauthorized Chinese version, but it was in Japan, as might be expected, that sales skyrocketed. On a per-capita basis, Japanese sales of 33,119 copies were almost four times better than in the United States.

  It stirred a tremendous furor there. On July 22, 1931, the Tokyo Nichi Nichi, one of the most influential papers in Japan, published a long article giving various views on the book. Everyone tried to save face by throwing the blame on the Foreign Ministry. Typical was the comment of an unnamed member of the House of Peers, who contended that Baron Kujiro Shidehara, then foreign minister and at the time of the conference ambassador to the United States, “must be held responsible.” He added, “The disclosure of this breach of faith committed by the United States Government will doubtless serve as a valuable lesson for the future to Japan in participating in international conferences.” Baron Nagayasu Ikeda, a bitter critic of Shidehara, declared that “The Japanese authorities are really foolish.” The Foreign Ministry had to concede that the American solution “was due to failure of the Japanese Government to effect a change in ciphers occasionally.” Then it tried to make the United States lose face by calling the solution “a dishonor,” and sought to tar Yardley with the statement that at the time of the conference he had “visited the Japanese embassy in Washington and stated that Japan’s cipher telegrams were all deciphered and then proposed to sell the translations. Mr. Yardley is such a man”—unquestionably false. A naval officer expressed amazement that such a book could be published “even in the United States,” regret that the United States permitted the solution, and assurance that the Japanese Navy “has taken great trouble to preserve the secrecy of wireless telegrams.” The Army, after criticizing the Foreign Ministry’s “serious blunder” in not changing ciphers just before the conference, promised to give it advice.

  One English-language paper after another in Japan reported the “considerable interest” or “mild sensation” or “serious sensation” that Yardley’s revelations were causing in official circles. The respected Osaka Mainichi reported that the War and Navy ministries had instructed their attachés in Washington to purchase several copies of the book, and stated that they are “determined to enter the proposed Geneva Conference [on limiting armed forces] with all the precaution in the world.” Two of the English-language papers took diametrically opposed editorial views of the solution. The Japan Chronicle said, very Britishly, “It is so much like steaming open people’s letters—a thing which is distinctly not done,” but the Japan Times coolly remarked that “trying to decipher the other nation’s code is part of the game” and that “about all that one can do is to criticise the Foreign Office rather than rail against the Americans for scoring against our own team.”

  Interest long remained high. On November 5, 1931, Ambassador W. Cameron Forbes reported to the State Department, which had asked “to be kept fully informed” about the Yardley agitation, that “The ‘Black Chamber’ evidently made a great impression in Japan. I often hear reference made to it in conversation with various classes of Japanese. According to the publishers of the Japanese edition, more than 40,000 copies have been sold. It remains a best seller at the present time.” Contrary to some published reports, however, it did not cause the government to fall (Would that books on cryptology were that powerful!), nor Japan to lodge protests with the United States or repudiate the Five-Power Treaty three years later. It did cause Japan to start treating American naval officers there to study the language with suspicion. It did impress itself so indelibly on the Japanese conscience that, when Shigenori Togo became foreign minister ten years later, he recalled the episode and checked to see whether Japanese communications were then secure. And it contributed to anti-American and antiwhite feeling in Japan.

  Consequently, when Stanley K. Hornbeck, a Far Eastern expert in the Department of State, heard that Yardley had written a new book, entitled “Japanese Diplomatic Secrets,” revealing many Japanese telegrams sent during the 1922 naval disarmament conference, he wrote in a memorandum of September 12, 1932: “I cannot too strongly urge that, in view of the state of excitement which apparently prevails in Japanese public opinion now, characterized by fear of or enmity toward the United States, every possible effort should be made to prevent the appearance of this book. Its appearance would contribute substantially to the amount of explosive material which seems to be piling up in Japan.” Apparently as a result of this, United States marshals seized the manuscript on February 20, 1933, at the offices of The Macmillan Company, to whom Yardley had submitted it after Bobbs-Merrill had declined it, on the grounds that it violated a statute prohibiting agents of the United States government from appropriating secret documents. A Macmillan editor and Yardley’s literary agent, George T. Bye, were escorted before the federal grand jury by the Chief Assistant United States Attorney in New York, a man who later achieved fame in other areas, Thomas E. Dewey. No criminal prosecution ensued against either of them or against Yardley.

  Instead, the government sought to pass a law in Congress aimed straight at Yardley. “Whoever, by virtue of his employment by the United States,” the bill read, “obtains from another or has or has had custody or access to any official diplomatic code or any matter prepared in any such code, or which purports to have been prepared in any such code, and without authorization or competent authority, willfully publishes or furnishes to another any such code or matter, or any matter which was obtained while in the process of transmission between any foreign government and its diplomatic mission in the United States, shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both.”

  As originally introduced in the House of Representatives at the request of the State Department by Hatton W. Sumners, a Texas Democrat, the bill—H.R. 4220, “For the Protection of Government Records”—was longer and more elaborate than the final version, presented above, though with essentially the same substance. In debate, some Representatives charged a State Department cover-up. Others questioned whether the bill would penalize persons who might present plaintext versions of American messages that had been transmitted in encoded form. The persons they were particularly concerned with were members of Congress and newspapermen. As a result of these considerations, the Senate, when it got the House bill, substituted its own version. This was hustled through the chamber while its opponents were out and was actually passed; but when the great California Republican, Hiram W. Johnson, twice governor of California and once a vice presidential candidate, returned to the chamber and found out what had been done in his absence, he asked for and received unanimous consent to have the bill reconsidered.

  Two days later, on May 10, 1933, in the midst of the momentous Congressional session that enacted the major reform measures of the New Deal, the Senate held its great debate on the cryptologic bill. Harry F. Byrd of Virginia, in his first term in the Senate, was presiding. Key Pittman of Nevada, a Democrat and the administration’s sponsor for the bill in the Senate, declared that “In my opinion it is unconscionable for trusted employees to publish private correspondence between governments which they obtain by virtue of their office. That is all that is covered in the measure, in my opinion.” But Homer T. Bone of Washington, also a Democrat, had a question. “I am rather curious to know [how] it is that we have managed to go along from the First Congress to the Seventy-Third without this sort of legislation. What is the purpose of it at this time?” Pittman replied, “Mr. President, I will state that in the past our Government apparently has been very fortunate in having trusted employees in these extremely confidential positions. It has, however, recently found, or believe it has found, that there are grounds for suspecting that that confidence has been violated, and may be violated again.” At th
is juncture a letter from Secretary of State Cordell Hull was, in the jargon of the legislators, spread on the record, stating that restrictions on the press were not even remotely considered in State’s proposing the bill. Then Johnson took the floor, and, his indignation tempered by his humor, attacked the bill as a threat to individual liberty:

  On its face the bill is as conventional as a wedding and as respectable as a funeral…. But … it does not accomplish the result that was set forth when the bill was presented….

  It happened that on a certain day young gentlemen from the State Department rushed into the Capitol here, and said that, as a matter of emergency, in order that guns should not rumble at our doors, we should forthwith pass this measure. Indeed, so persuasive were they with the House that the House considered it without ever telling its Members why it was presented and without Members of the House knowing at all the subject matter of the bill or the reason for the emergency…. That emergency was a month and a half ago, and the bill has been pending ever since, but nobody has heard of any of the dreadful and terrible things occurring that it was asserted were going to happen unless this bill should forthwith become the law of the land. So the reason for the passage of the bill, so first vehemently asserted, does not exist now and, calmly scrutinizing the past, never did exist.

  He then referred, for the first time in the Congressional debate, to Yardley and his book, which he had read and found “more or less interesting.” He criticized Yardley for violating “every rule that relates to fiduciary relations,” and pointed out that he had written another book containing disarmament conference messages.

  It was then that the great “emergency” arose. His manuscript, as I understand, was confiscated, and after its confiscation, then into the Halls of Congress came these frightened gentlemen to say that it was such a delicate, perilous and immediate emergency that they had to have a new criminal statute. That was the first of April or thereabouts of this year. So this proposed statute was born. Immediately upon the bill being passed by the House—and it was passed in such fashion that no one knew anything about it until it had been passed—the members of the press set up the usual howl of the press about the freedom of the press and how this sort of statute would interfere with them. The result was that, of course, everybody ran to cover and the bill was amended in the twinkling of an eye in order that the press should not be interfered with and the freedom of the press at all hazards should be preserved….

  Let us look at the bill as presented. I am speaking more or less academically in respect to this matter. I do not believe in creating unnecessary crimes. If it be essential that a crime should be created in order that punishment shall be meted out, I can recognize, of course, that it is proper for the legislature to undertake it; but unless an absolute necessity exists, I do not like the idea of creating additional crimes. Here is a bill designed to fit a particular case. It is a misfit and never will touch that case. It will rest upon the statute books, a criminal law with harsh penalties, until—far in the future, when its original purpose will have been forgotten—it will be used for another purpose for which it was never intended and may do gross wrong. That has ever been the story of this kind of law made to fit some past particular offense.

  Johnson began to read the bill—“Whoever, by virtue of his employment by the United States, obtains from another …”—but was interrupted by Senator George W. Norris of Nebraska:

  MR. NORRIS: Mr. President, should he not be guilty? If he does such a terrible thing as that, should he not be guilty of a crime?

  MR. JOHNSON: Obtaining from another?

  MR. NORRIS: Yes.

  MR. JOHNSON: Yes, I think so. In these days anybody that obtains anything from another ought to be most condignly punished if he gets it, but the difficulty is with most of us that while we strive we do not succeed. (Laughter)

  Then Tom Connally of Texas, another Administration manager of the bill, rebutted Johnson’s arguments:

  What is proposed to be done by this measure? All the bill would do is simply to make it a criminal offense for a scoundrel to betray his confidential relationship with the Government, or for another to conspire with some agent of the Government to get confidential information, and then go out and sell it for money…. My contention is that any citizen … who is in the employ of the Government and, having access to confidential papers and records, disloyally and improperly uses knowledge so obtained for private gain or private profit ought to be punished…. Mr. President, what is there so wrong about this measure? What is there so terrible about it? Where is the Senator who approves pilfering private records? If there be such, let him rise. Senators who become enraged because of a man’s stealing a spotted calf and want to put him in the penitentiary would seem to entertain the idea that a man could sell a public record or a public document and sell it for money to the newspapers and that that would be an act of patriotism and public service. I do not so regard it….

  We are interfering with free thieving and free betrayal of trust; that is what we are interfering with. We are interfering with free treachery to their employer and to the Government, that is all.

  This view, abetted by the political influence of the Administration, prevailed. By a voice vote the Senate passed the bill. A conference committee of Senators and Representatives decided in favor of the Senate’s bill and convinced the House to accept it. On June 10, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it, making it Public Law 37, and it lies today on the statute books as Section 952 of Title 18, United States Code.

  Four days later, the Bobbs-Merrill Company petitioned the State Department for approval to carry out a 1931 contract with Blue Ribbon Books to reprint 15,000 copies of The American Black Chamber. Evidently the firm, not wanting to take any chances under the new law, was seeking a State Department blessing to safeguard it against a Justice Department prosecution. It told the State Department that it would suffer a heavy financial loss if it had to make good its contract with Blue Ribbon without getting any return on sales.

  On July 13, William Phillips, the acting Secretary of State (who, ironically, had personally allowed Yardley to resign from the State Department in 1917 to form MI-8), replied: “The granting by this Department of such a permission would imply that the Department felt no objection to the publication and distribution of the book and would in a measure associate the Department with action on the part of the author and the publisher upon which it has not at any time looked with approval.” The department, he continued, was therefore unable to grant the permission. But the department did not want to contribute to the company’s financial loss, Phillips wrote, and so it would take no action to prevent the sale or distribution of the 4,500 copies already printed by Blue Ribbon. From this refusal of the State Department to grant its “permission” for republication—though some of its officials had wondered privately whether such permissions were part of State’s business—grew a legend that The American Black Chamber had been suppressed, though no action had been taken in regard to the many copies already in circulation.

  Yardley remained unperturbed throughout the whole commotion. Though he had availed himself of the opportunity provided by his senator, Arthur R. Robinson of Indiana, to give his justifications for publishing The American Black Chamber (“It would, I hoped, awaken the conscience of the State Department, so that they would revise their own code systems and render American diplomatic secrets invulnerable to attack by foreign cryptographers”), he implied that he was much too busy in his laboratory developing a commercial secret ink to be interested in this piddling legislative trivia. The ink worked, but it did not inundate the nation as a commercial success, and Yardley lost the third finger of his right hand through an infection caused by it.

  He tried writing again, but his imagination seemed to need fact to work on, and his adventure novels, The Red Sun of Nippon and The Blonde Countess, lacked the excitement of his rather fictionalized nonfiction. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, however, found the beautiful woman spy, the secret c
odes, and the infallible cryptologist of The Blonde Countess eminently suitable for its purposes. A problem was that no redblooded movie hero would settle for a dull desk job like codebreaking, but the film company fixed that up by destroying the fabric of Yardley’s tale and making the hero an unwilling intellectual who wanted only to serve in the trenches overseas. The result was Rendezvous, starring William Powell, Rosalind Russell, Binnie Barnes, Cesar Romero, and Lionel Atwill. Yardley was retained by MGM on a generous contract as technical advisor and became friendly with Powell. The film premiered at New York’s Capitol Theatre on October 25, 1935. The New York Times reviewed it as a “lively and amusing melodrama.”

  In 1938, after a brief and unsuccessful fling at real-estate speculation in Queens, New York, Yardley was hired by Chiang Kai-shek at about $10,000 a year to solve the messages of the Japanese armies then invading China. In Chungking, he at first passed himself off as an exporter of hides, but no one in the small and tight-knit foreign colony there was fooled for very long. He seems to have enjoyed some success in solving the Japanese ciphers, which appear to have been columnar transposition of the kana symbols.

  By then he was changing. He was basically an attractive personality who enjoyed simple masculine pleasures. He would rise at dawn to go duck-hunting, shot a good enough game of golf to have won the Greene County (Indiana) championship in 1932, and played poker with a compulsive intensity wherever and whenever he could. He regaled his companions with a flood of amusing stories, told with the wit and gusto of a natural raconteur. He was the very opposite of stuffy, and did not hesitate to admit that he knew his way around in a Chinese whorehouse. He kept a Chinese and a German mistress* and once organized a virtual Oriental orgy for a young correspondent, later nationally famous, on the ground that it was necessary for him to be blooded as a man. He enjoyed the loyalty and friendship of a great many people, though not everybody liked him. Emily Hahn, in her China to Me, said bluntly that she did not, calling him “an American with a loud manner of talking.” His original enterprise, which had enabled him to create MI-8 and the Black Chamber, had turned to opportunism with the publication of his book, and then had soured to cynicism under the widespread disgust that followed that violation of confidence, and under the realization that he had traded his soul for a few thousand dollars.