Herbert Yardley: king of whistleblowers

Herbert O. Yardley is America's archetypical spook whistleblower. He had successfully modernized America's code-breaking power as an Army Signal Corps lieutenant during and shortly after World War I. But the powers that be decided to force him out of his well-paid post as a high-caliber code-cracker.

As an NSA history says, Yardley, "with no civil service status or retirement

benefits, found himself unemployed just as the stock

market was collapsing and the Great Depression beginning. He left Queens and returned to his hometown

of Worthington, Indiana, where he began writing what

was to become the most famous book in the history of

cryptology. There had never been anything like it. In

today's terms, it was as if an NSA employee had

publicly revealed the complete communications intelligence operations of the Agency for the past twelve

years-all its techniques and major successes, its

organizational structure and budget-and had, for

good measure, included actual intercepts, decrypts,

and translations of the communications not only of our

adversaries but of our allies as well.

"The American Black Chamber created a sensation

when it appeared on 1 June 1931, preceded by excerpts

in the Saturday Evening Post, the leading magazine

of its time. The State Department, in the best

tradition of 'Mission: Impossible,' promptly disavowed any knowledge of Yardley's activities."

Government officials, though angry, decided to do nothing. According to some accounts, Yardley then went to work for the Japanese. The Canadians hired him briefly at the onset of World War I but British intelligence insisted on his ouster.

Yardley went on to write a successful book on poker strategies.

http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/cryptologic_spectrum/many_lives.pdf

Join us on Facebook for a mixture of fun and politics.

https://www.facebook.com/paul.conant.39

What if Snowden were granted immunity?

This tactic has been used in the past when national security was deemed to be at stake. It was more important to find out what a spy knew than to imprison him. Immunity is a normal tool of the security system when confronted with dangerous breaches.

But Snowden has not been offered immunity. That implies that the political situation for the security gurus is of far more importance to them than the condition of our national security.

The wise move, if America's best interests override the need to punish a man, is to grant Snowden full immunity from prosecution on condition that he make himself available for extensive debriefing by NSA experts.

On a personal level: compassion for Snowden
I don't have a smart phone. Even with a laptop I notice that the human-cybernetic interface is turning me into a Cyborg.

And, with no offense intended against IT people, I can easily imagine others who get a similar addictive/allergic reaction to too much code and too many algorithms.

I can imagine that Snowden saw that his expertise as a computer geek had taken him to a dry, barren place. He had a cool job, a good income, trophy girlfriend... And yet he was a mere tool of the Czars of Cyberia, where the rat race of existence goes on at a frantic pace. He was a cypher in the Cyberian Underworld where Data sits on the throne. "I'm losing my soul as an American," he doubtless said.

"There is nothing here but more algorithms, more code, more encryption/decryption arms racing!" his soul must have cried out.

So when he examined his life, looked at the existential trap he found himself in, he decided to BREAK OUT. And the only way he could think to do this was to blow the whistle and run for it.

Hell's bells rang out, as the global security network centered in Washington, or London, or Jerusalem, or somewhere nakedly displayed the vast sway of its conspiracy when a group of European nations coordinated the "legal" hijacking of the Bolivian president's plane based on the bad intelligence that Snowden was aboard.

May the true God lend a hand and a heart to Snowden, who has done America and all those who love democracy a great service.