If the CIA and NSA were not secret enough already. Apparently even the Art around the building has to be involved in some sort of mystery.
KRYPTOS- the name of a truly unique art installation, is stationed outside the current CIA Headquarters
Before the New Headquarters Building (NHB) was finished in 1991, thought was given to enhancing the new structure with artwork that was not only pleasing to the eye, but indicative of the Central Intelligence Agency’s work. Under Federal construction guidelines, a small portion of the cost of the new building was set aside to commission original art for the structure.
A panel of CIA members and cultural arts specialists chose a few pieces, their main thoughts toward the project were as follows.
Art at the CIA should reflect life in all its positive aspects.
It should engender feelings of well-being, hope.
It should be forceful in style and manner.
It should be worldly yet have identifiable American roots in concept, materials, representation, and so forth.
What was chosen for this main project was a concept called Kryptos(Greek for Hidden). The two part sculpture was designed by local artist James Sanborn and was commisioned in November 1988. The mystery behind the installation began early on with the concept itself.
In the courtyard, a calm, reflective pool of water lies between two layered slabs of granite and tall grasses. Directly across from this is the centerpiece of "Kryptos," a piece of petrified wood supporting an S-shaped copper screen surrounding a bubbling pool of water.
In addition to its purely aesthetic qualities, Kryptos contains codes that are important to the history of cryptography. When we stand in the CIA courtyard and look at Kryptos from the front, the petrified tree is to the left of the copper screen. From this vantage point the left half of the copper screen is the encoded text and the right half of the copper screen is a series of alphabets.
One above the other and is a "chart" called Vigeneries Tableaux developed by 16th century French cryptographer Blaise de Vigenere. In Kryptos this chart has been intentionally flipped so it can only be read from the back of the sculpture. The artist used this "chart" system, in combination with matrix coding systems, to encipher the first three encoded texts on the left side of the screen. The artist designed the fourth section (now referred to as K4) to be very difficult to crack and as of yet, it has not been broken.
The artist had the help of retiring Cryptographer Ed Scheidt help encode the messages. The first three have been uncovered, but it took nearly ten years and multiple teams to decipher it. The first message read, “Between subtle shading and the absence of light lies the nuance of iqlusion,” (intentionally misspelled for difficulty), the second included the coordinates of the CIA’s headquarters and alludes to something buried beneath its grounds (while noting that only former CIA chief William Webster knows the exact location), and the third solution quoted the account of Egyptologist Howard Carter as he opened King Tut’s tomb.
As far as the fourth message we may never know the true answer. Even if we do, can we be sure that is the last of the mysteries Kryptos has to offer?
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