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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • After the disbandment of the U.S. Armycryptographic section of military intelligence known as MI-8, the U.S. government created the Cipher Bureau, also known as Black Chamber, in 1919. The Black Chamber was the United States’ first peacetime cryptanalyticorganization.[25] Jointly funded by the Army and the State Department, the Cipher Bureau was disguised as a New York City commercial codecompany; it produced and sold such codes for business use. Its true mission, however, was to break the communications (chiefly diplomatic) of other nations. At the Washington Naval Conference, it aided American negotiators by providing them with the decrypted traffic of many of the conference delegations, including the Japanese. The Black Chamber successfully persuaded Western Union, the largest U.S. telegram company at the time, as well as several other communications companies, to illegally give the Black Chamber access to cable traffic of foreign embassies and consulates.[26] Soon, these companies publicly discontinued their collaboration. Despite the Chamber’s initial successes, it was shut down in 1929 by U.S. Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson, who defended his decision by stating, “Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail.”[27]