Mission Impossible: The Code Even the CIA Can't Crack

The most celebrated inscription at the Central Intelligence Agency's headquarters in Langley, Virginia, used to be the biblical phrase chiseled into marble in the main lobby: "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." But in recent years, another text has been the subject of intense scrutiny inside the Company and out: 865 characters of seeming gibberish, punched out of half-inch-thick copper in a courtyard.

It's part of a sculpture called Kryptos, created by DC artist James Sanborn. He got the commission in 1988, when the CIA was constructing a new building behind its original headquarters. The agency wanted an outdoor installation for the area between the two buildings, so a solicitation went out for a piece of public art that the general public would never see. Sanborn named his proposal after the Greek word for hidden. The work is a meditation on the nature of secrecy and the elusiveness of truth, its message written entirely in code.

Almost 20 years after its dedication, the text has yet to be fully deciphered. A bleary-eyed global community of self-styled cryptanalysts—along with some of the agency's own staffers—has seen three of its four sections solved, revealing evocative prose that only makes the puzzle more confusing. Still uncracked are the 97 characters of the fourth part (known as K4 in Kryptos-speak). And the longer the deadlock continues, the crazier people get.

Whether or not our top spooks intended it, the persistent opaqueness of Kryptos subversively embodies the nature of the CIA itself—and serves as a reminder of why secrecy and subterfuge so fascinate us. "The whole thing is about the power of secrecy," Sanborn tells me when I visit his studio, a barnlike structure on Jimmy Island in Chesapeake Bay (population: 2). He is 6'7", bearded, and looks a bit younger than his 63 years. Looming behind him is his latest work in progress, a 28-foot-high re-creation of the world's first particle accelerator, surrounded by some of the original hardware from the Manhattan Project. The atomic gear fits nicely with the thrust of Sanborn's oeuvre, which centers on what he calls invisible forces.

With Kryptos, Sanborn has made his strongest statement about what we don't see and can't know. "He designed a piece that would resonate with this workforce in particular," says Toni Hiley, who curates the employees-only CIA museum. Sanborn's ambitious work includes the 9-foot 11-inch-high main sculpture—an S-shaped wave of copper with cut-out letters, anchored by an 11-foot column of petrified wood—and huge pieces of granite abutting a low fountain. And although most of the installation resides in a space near the CIA cafeteria, where analysts and spies can enjoy it when they eat outside, Kryptos extends beyond the courtyard to the other side of the new building. There, copper plates near the entrance bear snippets of Morse code, and a naturally magnetized lodestone sits by a compass rose etched in granite.

More Here:

ah reunite...
you have brought up a puzzle i played with ...when i read the DA Vinci Code..
i got online to play the game and was fascinated with this part of it..
of course i went to the web site and tried to fighure it out..hahahahah..now i have to see if i kept that notebook or not..
cause i don't remember how far i got...

here's some more stuff if any are interested...by now you guy's have had to figure out i am an info freak and into all kinds of wierd stuff...what fun for the brain..

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/05/angley-va----th.html
CIA's Kryptos- Does it hold the key to the sequel to The Da Vinci Code?

One of the few uncracked codes at the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia is found in Kryptos, a wonder of technology, a sculpture sitting in a sunny corner of the headquarters courtyard.

"EMUFPHZLRFAXYUSDJKZLDKRNSHGNFIVJ" is the first line of the Kryptos sculpture, a 10-foot-tall, S-shaped copper scroll perforated with 3-inch-high letters spelling out words in code resembling a piece of paper emerging from a computer printer. Completed 15 years ago, Kryptos, which is Greek for "hidden," at first attracted interest from government code breakers who deciphered the easier parts without announcing their findings publicly.

The main sculpture is made of red granite, red and green slate, white quartz, petrified wood, lodestone and copper, and is located in the northwest corner of the headquarters courtyard.

The characters consist of the 26 letters of the standard alphabet and question marks cut out of the copper. This "inscription" contains four separate enigmatic messages, each apparently encrypted with a different cipher.

Mystery lovers around the world have joined members of the national-security establishment in trying to crack the rest. So far, neither amateurs nor pros have been able to crack the code.

The latest scramble was set off by "The Da Vinci Code," the worldwide bestseller about a modern-day search for the Holy Grail. On the book's dust jacket, author Dan Brown placed clues that hint at Kryptos's significance. The main one is a set of geographic coordinates that roughly locate the sculpture.


A game at www.thedavincicode.com suggested that Kryptos is a clue to the subject of Mr. Brown's as-yet-unpublished next novel, "The Solomon Key."

Kryptos devotees are intrigued by the three passages that have been deciphered so far. They appear to offer clues to solving the sculpture's fourth passage, and possibly to locating something buried.Some devotees believe Kryptos holds profound significance as a portal into the wisdom of the ancients.

Sculptor James Sanborn, Kryptos's creator, says he wrote or adapted all three. In addition to deliberate misspellings, there are letters slightly higher than others on the same line. The first reads, "Between subtle shading and the absence of light lies the nuance of iqlusion."


The second passage, more provocative and mysterious, reads: "It was totally invisible. How's that possible? They used the Earth's magnetic field. The information was gathered and transmitted underground to an unknown location. Does Langley know about this? They should: it's buried out there somewhere." That passage is followed by geographic coordinates that suggest a location elsewhere on the CIA campus.

The third decoded passage is based on a diary entry by archaeologist Howard Carter, on the day in 1922 when he discovered the tomb of the ancient Egyptian King Tutankhamen.


It reads in part, "With trembling hands I made a tiny breach in the upper left-hand corner. And then, widening the hole a little, I inserted the candle and peered in. The hot air escaping from the chamber caused the flame to flicker, but presently details of the room within emerged from the mist. Can you see anything?"


Other possible clues are contained in smaller parts of the work scattered around the CIA grounds. Made of red granite and sheets of copper, these are tattooed with Morse code that spells out phrases like "virtually invisible." In addition, a compass needle carved onto one of the rocks is pulled off due north by a lodestone that Mr. Sanborn placed nearby.

Experts say the unsolved fourth passage -- known to insiders as "K4" -- is written in a more complex and difficult code than the first three, one designed to mask patterns of recurring letters that code breakers look for.

Sanborn, who lives and works in Washington, has exhibited around the world, including at the Hirshhorn Museum and Corcoran Gallery of Art. His more recent work has focused on the early development of atomic weapons, employing actual equipment from the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Despite the struggles of would-be code breakers, Mr. Sanborn insists the puzzle of the 4th code can be solved, and teases them by saying that one clue overlooked so far is sitting in plain view. "The most obvious key to the sculpture, nobody has picked up on."

The characters consist of the 26 letters of the standard alphabet and question marks cut out of the copper. This "inscription" contains four separate enigmatic messages, each apparently encrypted with a different cipher.

Mystery lovers around the world have joined members of the national-security establishment in trying to crack the rest. So far, neither amateurs nor pros have been able to crack the code.

The latest scramble was set off by "The Da Vinci Code," the thriller about a modern-day search for the Holy Grail. On the book's dust jacket, author Dan Brown placed clues that hint at Kryptos's significance. The main one is a set of geographic coordinates that roughly locate the sculpture.


A game at www.thedavincicode.com suggests that Kryptos is a clue to the subject of Mr. Brown's as-yet-unpublished next novel, "The Solomon Key."

Kryptos devotees are intrigued by the three passages that have been deciphered so far. They appear to offer clues to solving the sculpture's fourth passage, and possibly to locating something buried.Some devotees believe Kryptos holds profound significance as a portal into the wisdom of the ancients.

Sculptor James Sanborn, Kryptos's creator, says he wrote or adapted all three. In addition to deliberate misspellings, there are letters slightly higher than others on the same line. The first reads, "Between subtle shading and the absence of light lies the nuance of iqlusion."


The second passage, more provocative and mysterious, reads: "It was totally invisible. How's that possible? They used the Earth's magnetic field. The information was gathered and transmitted underground to an unknown location. Does Langley know about this? They should: it's buried out there somewhere." That passage is followed by geographic coordinates that suggest a location elsewhere on the CIA campus.

The third decoded passage is based on a diary entry by archaeologist Howard Carter, on the day in 1922 when he discovered the tomb of the ancient Egyptian King Tutankhamen.


It reads in part, "With trembling hands I made a tiny breach in the upper left-hand corner. And then, widening the hole a little, I inserted the candle and peered in. The hot air escaping from the chamber caused the flame to flicker, but presently details of the room within emerged from the mist. Can you see anything?"


Other possible clues are contained in smaller parts of the work scattered around the CIA grounds. Made of red granite and sheets of copper, these are tattooed with Morse code that spells out phrases like "virtually invisible." In addition, a compass needle carved onto one of the rocks is pulled off due north by a lodestone that Mr. Sanborn placed nearby.

Experts say the unsolved fourth passage -- known to insiders as "K4" -- is written in a more complex and difficult code than the first three, one designed to mask patterns of recurring letters that code breakers look for.

Sanborn, who lives and works in Washington, has exhibited around the world, including at the Hirshhorn Museum and Corcoran Gallery of Art. His more recent work has focused on the early development of atomic weapons, employing actual equipment from the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Link to Kryptos Website.... http://elonka.com/kryptos/

The Kryptos Group....http://kryptos.yak.net/

....................................................................................
here's the unsolved part if anyone wants to play...

Part 4 of Kryptos (the last 97 or 98 characters), as of February 2009, remains unsolved:
?OBKR
UOXOGHULBSOLIFBBWFLRVQQPRNGKSSO
TWTQSJQSSEKZZWATJKLUDIAWINFBNYP
VTTMZFPKWGDKZXTJCDIGKUHUAUEKCAR

Thanks for the link sky..didn't know you were a Krypto nerd

weelllllllllllllll reunite..i never have felt the nerd thing
but i am extremely over curious and like to try and solve puzzles

Don't we all love puzzle solvers...LOL, a part of life that makes it interesting. Nice post and links, thanks for the heads up.

I didn't think with all their wiz bang high tech computers there was not anything they could not crack these days. I am quite amazed at this.

Biggles,

You are truly insightful in your recognition of the failure of the new world order. There is things that they do not control, such as you and me for example, and for another example the spirit of man and of God.

According to what i believe, the service to self people/beings, in the end must change there polarity or they will not progress.

So the bottom line seems to be that you must love others as you would love yourself or you will not be able to progress in your rebellion against the "controllers" that will not evolve to service to others as long as there is a profit to be made.

The greatest revolutionary I have ever seen is a man called Y'shua Messiah, who called the government controllers of him "snakes" right to their face, and did not give a shit about what the outcome might be for his rebellion.

In my opinion, fuck the government am I claim to be a Christian.

I am thankful that you are speaking here on this forum, we need more just like you.

And one other thing, there "wiz bang tech" which I love your description of and think it is most accurate, ain't got shit on Triapic Technology that comes from God to each of us that are willing to receive it.

I'm glad you are here.