Out of the four encrypted messages only three has been solved.
The first three messages were solved within a couple of years after the sculpture was unveiled.
The first message is a poetic phrase, which Sanborn composed himself.
It reads:
Between subtle shading and the absence of light lies the nuance of iqlusion.
The misspelling in iqlusion was deliberately introduced to make the code as hard as possible to crack.
The second message hints at something buried:
It was totally invisible.
How’s that possible?
They used the earth’s magnetic field.
x The information was gathered and transmitted undergruund to an unknown location.
x Does Langley know about this?
They should: it’s buried out there somewhere.
x Who knows the exact location?
This was his last message.
There is another misspelling in the messagethe word undergruund.
There is also a coordinate mentioned that points to location approximately 150 feet southeast of the sculpture.
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.
x Can you see anything?
This means that the message ends in Berlin clock.
The four red lights on the top row denote five hours each.
The second row of four red lights denote one hour each.
The third row consists of eleven yellow-and-red fields, which denote five full minutes each.
The bottom row has another four yellow fields, each denoting one minute each.
To tell the time, you just have to add everything uphours and minutes separately.
The time reads 10:31 AM.
That was four years ago.
Sanborn reportedly gave the envelop to the Former CIA Director, William Webster.
He actually mentions this in the second encrypted message, where it says “Who knows the exact location?
But Sanborn never gave Webster the entire solution.
I really didn’t tell him the whole story.
I definitely didn’t give him the last section, which has never been deciphered, he said.
That’s part of tradecraft, isn’t it?
Deception is everywhere, he added.
