David Kahn

David Kahn 2009

Born February 7, 1930
New York City
Occupation Historian, journalist, writer
Notable
work(s)
The Codebreakers - The Story of
Secret Writing
Spouse(s) Susanne Fiedler (divorced)
Children Oliver and Michael
www.david-kahn.com (http://www.david-
kahn.com/)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
David Kahn (b. February 7, 1930
[1]
) is a US historian,
journalist and writer. He has written extensively on the
history of cryptography and military intelligence.
Kahn's first published book, The Codebreakers - The Story of
Secret Writing (1967), was widely considered to be a
definitive account of the history of cryptography up to the
mid-1960s.
1 Biography
2 The Codebreakers
3 Later career
4 Publications
5 Quotes
6 References
7 Sources
8 External links
David Kahn was born in New York City to Florence
Abraham Kahn, a glass manufacturer, and J esse Kahn, a
lawyer.
Kahn has said he traces his interest in cryptography to
reading Fletcher Pratt's Secret and Urgent as a boy. Kahn is a
founding editor of the Cryptologia journal. In 1969, Kahn married Susanne Fiedler; they are now divorced.
They have two sons, Oliver and Michael.
[1][2]
He attended Bucknell University. After graduation, he worked as a reporter at Newsday for several years. He
also served as an editor at the International Herald Tribune in Paris for two years in the 1960s.
It was during this period that he wrote an article for the New York Times Magazine about two defectors from the
National Security Agency. This article was the origin of his monumental book, The Codebreakers.
David Kahn (writer) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kahn_(writer)
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The Codebreakers comprehensively chronicles the history of cryptography from ancient Egypt to the time of its
writing. It is widely regarded as the best account of the history of cryptography up to its publication. Most of
the editing, German translating, and insider contributions were from the American World War II cryptographer,
Bradford Hardie III. William Crowell, the former deputy director of the National Security Agency, was quoted
in Newsday as saying "Before he (Kahn) came along, the best you could do was buy an explanatory book that
usually was too technical and terribly dull."
[3]
Kahn, then a newspaper journalist, was contracted to write a book on cryptology in 1961. He began writing it
part-time, at one point quitting his regular job to work on it full-time.
[4]
The book was to include information on
the National Security Agency (NSA), and according to the author J ames Bamford writing in 1982, the agency
attempted to stop its publication, and considered various options, including publishing a negative review of
Kahn's work in the press to discredit him.
[5]
A committee of the United States Intelligence Board concluded that
the book was "a possibly valuable support to foreign COMSEC [communications security] authorities" and
recommended "further low-key actions as possible, but short of legal action, to discourage Mr. Kahn or his
prospective publishers".
[5]
Kahn's publisher, the Macmillan company, handed over the manuscript to the federal
government for review without Kahn's permission on March 4, 1966.
[5]
Kahn and Macmillan eventually agreed
to remove some material from the manuscript, particularly concerning the relationship between the NSA and its
British counterpart, the GCHQ.
[6]
The Codebreakers did not cover most of the history concerning the breaking of the German Enigma machine
(which became public knowledge only in the 1970s). Nor did it cover the advent of strong cryptography in the
public domain, beginning with the invention of public key cryptography and the specification of the Data
Encryption Standard in the mid-1970s. The book was republished in 1996, and the new edition included an
additional chapter briefly covering the events since the original publication.
[7]
The Codebreakers was a finalist for the non-fiction Pulitzer Prize in 1968.
Kahn was awarded a doctorate (D.Phil) from Oxford University in 1974, in modern German history under the
supervision of the then Regius professor of modern history, Hugh Trevor-Roper.
Kahn continued his work as a reporter and op-ed editor for Newsday until 1998, and also served as a journalism
professor at New York University.
Despite past differences between Kahn and the National Security Agency over the information in The
Codebreakers, Kahn was selected in 1995 to become NSA's scholar-in-residence. On October 26, 2010, Kahn
attended a ceremony at NSA's National Cryptologic Museum (NCM) to commemorate his donation of his
lifetime collection of cryptologic books, memorabilia, and artifacts to the museum and its library.
[8]
The
collection is housed at the NCM library and is non-circulating (that is, items cannot be checked out or loaned
out), but photocopying and photography of items in the collection are allowed.
Kahn lives (as of 2012) in New York City. He has lived in Washington, D.C.; Paris, France; Freiburg, Germany;
Oxford, England; and Great Neck, New York.
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Dr David Kahn (2010)
Plaintext in the new unabridged: An examination of the definitions
on cryptology in Webster's Third New International Dictionary
(Crypto Press 1963)
The Codebreakers The Story of Secret Writing (ISBN
0-684-83130-5) (1967)
The Codebreakers The Story of Secret Writing Revised edition
(ISBN 0-684-83130-9) (1996)
Cryptology goes Public (Council on Foreign Relations 1979)
Notes & correspondence on the origin of polyalphabetic
substitution (1980)
Codebreaking in World Wars I and II: The major successes and
failures, their causes and their effects (Cambridge University
Press 1980)
Kahn on Codes: Secrets of the New Cryptology (Macmillan 1984)
(ISBN 978-0-02-560640-1)
Cryptology: Machines, History and Methods by Cipher Deavours
and David Kahn (Artech House 1989) (ISBN 978-0-89006-399-6)
Seizing the Enigma: The Race to Break the German U-Boats
Codes, 19391943 (Houghton Mifflin 1991) (ISBN
978-0-395-42739-2)
Hitler's Spies: German Military Intelligence in World War II (Da
Capo Press 2000) (ISBN 978-0-306-80949-1)
The Reader of Gentlemen's Mail: Herbert O. Yardley and the Birth
of American Codebreaking (Yale University Press 2004) (ISBN
978-0-300-09846-4)
How I Discovered World War II's Greatest Spy and Other Stories of Intelligence and Code, Boca Raton :
CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group, 2014. ISBN 978-1466561991
"The multiple human needs and desires that demand privacy among two or more people in the midst of
social life must inevitably lead to cryptology wherever men thrive and wherever they write." (from The
Codebreakers quoted at Liberty-Tree.ca (http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote/david_kahn_quote_a315))
^
a

b
* Metzger, Linda (1984). Contemporary Authors New Revision, Vol. 12. Thomson Gale. p. 243.
ISBN 978-0-8103-1941-7.
1.
David Kahn (writer) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kahn_(writer)
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^ David Kahn Official Website (http://david-kahn.com/david-kahn-biography.htm) 2.
^ "David Kahn: Historian of Secret Codes" (http://hnn.us/roundup/comments/7460.html) by Arnold Abrams, in
Newsday 2004-09-19 (via History News Network)
3.
^ Bamford, 1982, p. 126 4.
^
a

b

c
Bamford, 1982, p. 127 5.
^ Bamford, 1982, pp. 128130 6.
^ The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing (http://www.david-kahn.com/book-david-kahn-code-codebreakers-
cryptography.htm)
7.
^ National Cryptologic Museum Acquisitions (http://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/museum
/index.shtml)
8.
Bamford, J ames (1982). The Puzzle Palace: Inside the National Security Agency, America's Most Secret
Intelligence Organization. Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-006748-4.
Kahn, David (1967). The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from
Ancient Times to the Internet. Scribner (later reprinted by Macmillan, 1996). ISBN 978-0-684-83130-5.
David Kahn's Official Website (http://www.david-kahn.com/).
Kahn's Remarks to the NSA at its 50th Anniversary Celebration (http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/kahn.html)
J ames Madison Project profile (http://www.jamesmadisonproject.org/davidkahn.html)
New York Review of Books profile (http://www.nybooks.com/authors/3636)
David Kahn: Historian of Secret Codes (http://hnn.us/roundup/comments/7460.html) by Arnold Abrams,
in Newsday 2004-09-19 (via History News Network)
The Intelligence Failure of Pearl Harbor (http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19911201faessay6118/david-
kahn/the-intelligence-failure-of-pearl-harbor.html) by David Kahn, from Foreign Affairs (Winter
1991/92)
Codebreaking and the Battle of the Atlantic (http://google.com
/search?q=cache:N3ydHSZAeZMJ :atlas.usafa.af.mil/dfh/harmon_series
/docs/Harmon36.doc+%22David+Kahn%22&hl=en) by David Kahn. USAFA Harmon Memorial Lecture
No. 36 (1994-04-04)
Decoding the NSA (http://baltimorechronicle.com/nsa_may00.html) A 1996 interview with Kahn, while
he was a visiting historian at the NSA
The Hebern Code Machine (http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/geog/gessler/collections/crypto-hebern.htm)
The Enigma Machine (http://www.usna.edu/Users/math/wdj/sm230_cooper_enigma.html)
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Categories: 1930 births American science writers American historians American male writers
American journalists Cryptography books Alumni of the University of Oxford Living people
American espionage historians 20th-century American writers 21st-century American writers
20th-century historians 21st-century historians
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