Kryptos, The Unbreakable Enigma

…The information was gathered and transmitted undergruund (sic) to an unknown location. x Does Langley know about this? They should: it’s buried out there somewhere. x Who knows the exact location? Only WW. ~ Kryptos

Standing in the courtyard of the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) New Headquarters Building (NHB) is a mystifying artwork which has stumped the world since its installation in 1990. Although the sculpture was originally intended to serve as a stimulus to the CIA officers assigned in NHB, it quickly gained widespread publicity among expert and amateur cryptographer alike outside the CIA community. Nevertheless, more than one decade of attempts to fully unravel its mystery have been futile.

Kryptos (Greek word for “hidden”) is the brainchild of a prominent American artist and sculpture, James Sanborn, who is accredited with a number of artworks that “evoke a sense of mystery”, including the Cyrillic Projector standing majestically in the University of North Carolina. Kryptos is mainly a copperplate etched with approximately 2000 alphabetic letters: 865 characters make up four encrypted messages which in turn, hold the ultimate conundrum; the rest form the Vigenere Plateau which aids the cryptographer to encrypt or decrypt a text via letter substitution using the key of his choice.

It was reported in mid-June 1999, that a computer scientist from Southern California, Jim Gillogly, made a public announcement that he had deciphered all but the last of the four messages. Anyway, he soon learned that he was not the first to break the code as a CIA physicist, David Stein, had succeeded at his attempt one year ago. Stein achieved the feat with pencil and paper while Gillogly achieved his courtesy of the wonders of computational powers. In response to the miffed Stein who claimed that “Kryptos was meant to be solved with pencil and paper”, Gillogly defended himself by arguing that “the choice of tool isn’t the important part, but rather the decisions about how to use the tools”.

So far, the first 768 characters deciphered reveal three messages which, to me, sound nothing more than gibberish. Typos are also cut into the plate, perhaps to throw code breakers off the track. The first part goes thus: “Between subtle shading and the absence of light lies the nuance of iqlusion (sic).”

Meanwhile, the second part (an interesting one) tells of a secret location where information is transmitted to. No one knows of it except WW, but who is WW, no one knows for sure. “It was totally invisible. How’s that possible? The used the earth’s magnetic field. x The information was gathered and transmitted undergruund (sic) to an unknown location. x Does langley know about this? They should: it’s buried out there somewhere. x Who knows the exact location? Only WW. This was his last message. x Thirty eight degrees fifty seven minutes six point five seconds north, seventy seven degrees eight minutes forty four seconds west. ID by rows.”

It muss also be mentioned that the coordinates provided pinpoint somewhere in Virginia. ABC News believes it is exactly at where Kryptos stands.

As if the teasing is not enough, the third part is (irrelevantly) quoted from Howard Carter’s account on the opening of King Tut’s tomb. “Slowly, desparatly (sic), the remains of passage debris that encumbered the lower part of the doorway was removed. 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 form the chamber caused the flame to flicker, but presently details of the room within emerged from the mist. x Can you see anything? q.” The reply in the actual narrative goes, “Yes, wonderful things.” A clue to the next massage? Who knows!

The complete answer to the encryption designed by Edward M. Scheidt, a former chairman of CIA’s Cryptographic Center was held in confidence, first, by William H. Webster (WW?), and later, his successors. Kryptos is a multi-layered riddle. In an interview, Sanborn expressed his doubts that the ultimate secret will ever be deciphered. So far, he is right. Kryptos, shrouded in an aura of mystery, still stands proud in the courtyard of the CIA headquarters, as a source of inspiration and awe.