what's ironic is that (as far as I remember my history) Yardley went public because he was angry that the USG shut down the Black Chamber, putting Yardley out o

what's ironic is that (as far as I remember my history) Yardley went public because he was angry that the USG shut down the Black Chamber, putting Yardley out of a job. Incidentally, that shutdown was effected by Secretary of State Stimson (the same Stimson that later re-directed the targeting of the a-bomb from Kyoto to Hiroshima and lied about the military nature of Hiroshima, entirely because he had honeymooned in Kyoto) who received some of the Black Chambers reporting and replied with "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail." The past of the Black Chamber and the present have some parallels (down to the same telecom company being complicit - AT&T) but the motivations of Yardley were opposite those of the present - he wanted the government to keep breaking codes! After becoming essentially persona non grata in the US, he traveled to China to break Japanese codes and then later traveled to Canada to break Nazi codes (until the US discovered his involvement, and threatened to cut the Canadians out of the signals intelligence loop unless they fired him). If you're looking for a friend of transparency in Yardley, you're not going to find one. His disclosure was a political ploy.