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Sculptor Gives a Hint For CIA's Kryptos
omega_cubed writes "The New York Times reports that Jim Sanborn, the sculptor who created the wavy metal pane called Kryptos that sits in front of the CIA in Langley, VA, has gotten tired of waiting for code-breakers to decode the last of the four messages. 'I assumed the code would be cracked in a fairly short time,' [Sanborn] said, adding that the intrusions on his life from people who think they have solved his fourth puzzle are more than he expected. So now, after 20 years, Mr. Sanborn is nudging the process along. He has provided The New York Times with the answers to six letters in the sculpture's final passage. The characters that are the 64th through 69th in the final series on the sculpture read NYPVTT. When deciphered, they read BERLIN."
The US government used to work hard to keep the NSA out of the public eye. Though the existence of the organization wasn't a total secret, press coverage wasn't welcome at all until after September 11. I remember when I arrived at Defense Language Institute in late 1999 as a fresh Navy recruit, some among my supervisors, old hands in SIGINT and some of whom had served at Ft. Mead itself, were very upset at the recent Baltimore Sun coverage of DLI and the NSA. "The public doesn't need to know any of what we do."
Also, the CIA's spies had to use encryption. Their lives depended on it, and the organization grew out of earlier military units concerned with cryptography and codebreaking.
So when it came to putting up a monument like this, one that would attract the public to figure out its secrets, better to put it outside the CIA's headquarters, because by this point the existence and general purpose of the CIA was known to everyone.