As some of you know, I spent some time working for the CIA and some of my military time being reassigned back there. It was the fall of 1967 that I first went to work in this colossal new building in Langley, Virginia. I was reassigned there in June of 1969 with an unusual job. My division was given the task of identifying how many POWs as possible who might be being held in North Vietnam, trying to ensure that we got them all back someday. I was not a code-breaker, but the POWs who got to write home weren’t skilled in coding either.

The letters sent to family and friends were to be sent to the service branch that the POW was from, mostly Air Force who were shot down on missions up north. As we got these letters, we used plain reading to see if the POW named a name or something that could lead to a name. Remember, only about 1 in 4 POWs got to write at all.

The first breakthrough came when an Air Force Officer POW wrote his wife that he couldn’t “wait to eat your cherry pie, it makes me feel so alive.” As instructed, she added the information that he hated cherry pie. One of our first names. The pilot’s back seater was Fred Cherry ---ALIVE!

Others were more subtle as they wanted to share conditions or locations of their imprisonment. Some hooked the last letter of various words. Of course, all was in cursive and the curved letters spelled out things. By using these random letters, the POW was curling he could relay useful information of many types, most often names of fellow prisoners.

Then it got more hidden. Still curl the last letter at the end of the word, but don’t use that letter as the information, but use the first letter of the word with the curl. More skilled was one writer who created a “memory” of a trip with his Jewish cousin Sue and how she was getting stopped by a policeman and all she could say was “Oy Vey”. After much consultation we determined that he was saying the name of a Vietnamese city U Hoy but we couldn’t find it. One of my fellow decoders figured out that the name of the area had been changed when the French were forced out and the new name was Son Tay. Reconnaissance was flown and this previously unknown camp was discovered., across from a police station. The camp was raided 6 months later, the only attempt to free our soldiers, but it was empty by then.

So, what brings decoding to mind all these years later? Well, in 1990 a sculptor, Jim Sanborn, was tasked with building a sculpture for the front of the CIA building. How could a steel metal creation reflect what really went on inside this top-secret facility? A bunch of words and letters in an unbreakable hidden code. And that is what he created. One cannot go see it as the grounds are highly sensitive and protected from any “visitors”

The creation is named Kryptos, after the Greek word for “hidden”. The sculpture is a mass of steel and letters. It is 12 feet tall and 20 feet wide with an S shaped construction with copper and stone. The lettering contains four coded messages from Sanborn and a former cryptographer, Edward Scheidt. The messages continue flowing through the sculpture.

Despite where this object sits, for nearly 10 years, none of the four codes were broken. Finally, three were decoded. The fourth code, however, remained unbroken into 2025. The mystery kept Kryptos fascinating for countless people who had access to even view it.

The first code was further instruction on solving the remaining codes. The second was much longer and hinted that WW, probably head of CIA, William Webster, would know a place that would help with further decoding.

The third message quoted archaeologist Howard Carter on how he finally discovered King Tut’s Egyptian tomb. Different to say the least. But now three of the four were decoded. Number four refused to be solved.

In 2025, Sanborn now approaching 80, decided to auction off the code for the final message. This past November that answer was sold for almost a million dollars. Sanborn has promised that most of the money will go to a program for people with disabilities.

Sanborn had released three separate clues regarding the solution to K4 in 2010, 2014, and 2020. No solution came from those disclosures. Reportedly, Sanborn was getting tired of being the keeper of the answer and receiving so many guesses from amateur sleuths that he started charging $50 for replies. This may be the real reason for the sale.

One wonders how some people can so want to possess a unique answer to K4. Think about who might be so interested in paying that kind of money. The truth is that the world is full of people with vast sums of money who will spend it on everything from pieces of art to Babe Ruth’s baseball card. Why not a solution to such a unique puzzle? After spending that much money, will the buyer release the answer. Or even more interesting… what if some code-breaker does solve the mystery? It might be like having a second Mona Lisa.

· Dennis Marek can be reached at llamalaw23@gmail.com.