hell chair. It turned out that the War Department had recently launched a codebreaking unit of its own, under the command of a twenty-eight-year-old lieutenant named Herbert O. Yardley, a scrawny Indiana native who had become entranced with cryptology after reading library books that told about the old black chambers of Europe. “Why did America have no bureau for the reading of secret diplomatic code and cipher telegrams of foreign governments?” Yardley asked himself. “Perhaps I too, like the foreign cryptographer, could open the secrets of the capitals of the world.” Fearless
