Chapter 22. The Red Code of the Department of State, 1876
In 1876, the year of America's Centennial, an epoch-making secret codebook, The Cipher of the Department of State, designed by John H. Haswell and printed in the Government Printing Office, became the initial volume in a series of elaborate State Department codebooks. It established the basic blueprint for secret American diplomatic correspondence for more than six decades. Much of Haswell's research for this codebook, soon termed the Red Code of 1876, was completed before Secretary of State Hamilton Fish appointed him chief of the Bureau of Indexes and Archives in August 1873.[356]
Undoubtedly, Haswell's earlier accomplishments as a department clerk for Secretary William Seward, together ...
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