Before World War I, the United States did not have an effective cryptology service. During the conflict Herbert Osborn Yardley’s self-educated cryptological talent emerged, around which a team known as the Black Cabinet was formed in the State Department. When Stimson ordered its dissolution in 1929, the United States returned for some time to a state of almost complete innocence in cryptology. The low status of the discipline was only partly due to the honorable attitude of American politicians of the time. The man with whom American cryptology was identified during and immediately after the First World War, Herbert Yardley, contributed to it in equal measure. When Stimson abolished his unit, Yardley couldn’t get along with life, and with his back to the wall during the Great Depression, he described the history of his service in a book The American Black Chamber, which became as great a publishing success as the indiscretion and trouble for the author’s former employers. Having been ostracized in the only environment that could provide him with a job as a cryptologist, he later took advantage of Chang Kai-Shek’s proposal and went to China, where he was involved in breaking Japanese ciphers. His lifestyle at the time proved that Yardley was indeed no gentleman. However, after the end of his section, it turned out that Stimson allows for the breaking of someone else’s messages on condition that the morally dubious procedure would not involve the State Department. The Black Cabinet’s has been transferred to the Defense Department’s Signal Corps.