Herbert Yardley

Herbert Yardley was a pioneering cryptologist born in 1889 in the United States. In 1941, when the Canadian National Research Council was looking for a potential leader for their cryptographic unit, Yardley was recommended to them by a senior US official at the US intelligence office. Yardley was the first leader of the examination unit, but only served for 6 months.

Yardley was a leader in the field, with a specialization in Japanese code breaking. He had worked for the United States cryptographic unit during the first world war and into the 1920s. President Herbert Hoover withdrew all funding form the Cipher Bureau effectively putting an end to US codebreaking after he found out about decryption efforts. His reasoning was "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail”. Without any work, Yardley decided to write his experiences in a tell-all book called The American Black Chamber where he detailed all of the US strategies, code breaking, and who they were spying on.

When the National Research Council brought Yardley in to lead the fledgling Examination Unit they had him work under the alias Osborn to avoid any potential complications due to his notoriety.

The Canadian examination unit was formed officially in June of 1941 and experienced early success under Yardley. Their early work decrypting German messages out of South America directly contributed to the arrest of a German spy in the US by the end of 1941. It also had early troubles. When the British discovered that Yardley was leading the decryption effort they threatened to server all cooperation with the Canadian unit while citing security fears.

Canada responded to the British that a US cryptographic officer had been the one to initially recommended Yardley in the first place. As a compromise, The Canadian government promised not to renew Yardley at the end of his 6 month contract, on the condition that the British Provided a new leader for the Examination Unit.

Canada then forwarded the information about Yardley's termination back to the US only to find out that the US representative that had originally recommended him was now retired and had not told anyone that he had made the recommendation. The US government largely not aware that Yardley was even in Canada and, as the British suspected, were not supportive of him working for the Canadians.

Herbert Yardley and Edna Ramsier (another code breaker working in the examination unit) were both not renewed in the beginning of January 1942 when their contracts ended.

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