The Black Chamber

The American Black Chamber. Forerunner of the National Security Agency. - 141 east 37th street, midtown Manhattan.

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The Black Chamber, also known as The Cipher Bureau, was the United States' first peacetime cryptanalytic organization, and a forerunner of the National Security Agency.

Headed by Herbert O. Yardley (1889–1958), the Black Chamber was founded in May 1919 following World War I. Yardley had commanded the Army cryptographic section of Military Intelligence (MI-8) during World War I.

Jointly funded by the Army and the State Department, the Cipher Bureau was disguised as a New York City commercial code company; it actually produced and sold such codes for business use. Its true mission, however, was to break the communications (chiefly diplomatic) of other nations.

Its most notable known success was during the Washington Naval Conference during which it aided American negotiators considerably by providing them with the decrypted traffic of many of the Conference delegations, most notably the Japanese.

The Black Chamber