Post Date: 3/19/2010
Note: This step differs from the previous ones in that the discoveries posted here are supplementary to the rest of APEX Theory. In other words, they can be used to extend the theory but they can also stand on their own merits. So if you don’t particularly like APEX Theory so far, you still might find some information of value here in this step.
Motivation:
At the end of the previous step, I was still in a quandary about the meaning of the “SOS” pro-sign appearing in the Morse Code. Does it reference a Chapter in a book, an author, a publisher, a title? Or is it a clue regarding how we are supposed to use the APEX Sequence to index into a book. I simply wasn’t sure, so I tested a bunch of different premises.
Eventually I considered the concept that SOS is a reference to one of Peter Tompkins‘ other books, Secrets Of the Soil, which was published just before Sanborn and Scheidt were working on the methods for Kryptos. So I searched around on the internet to get more information about the various editions of this book. (Yes, I know that in Morse Code "SOS" is a prosign as opposed to an acronym, but in popular culture the distinction has been blurred, and I can't say with certainty that Sanborn wouldn't have "gone there" with his hint.) Nevertheless, I found some things that made the connection far more compelling. First of all, the UK version of the First Edition has a very interesting dust jacket:
Note that the image contains a cross section of ground, with some plant parts and soil, but it also contains a huge "SOS" turned sideways and heading down into the ground. Not only does this seem to be a curious link to the "SOS" in the Morse, but it also resonates well with the plaintext snippet from K2, "The information was gathered and transmitted underground." I always wondered why anyone would "transmit" anything into the ground. Perhaps now I know. Indeed, if one reads the book, there is a chapter that discusses the use of electromagnetic energy transmitted into the ground for the purpose of eliminating certain pests. Intrigued, I purchased a used copy of Secrets of the Soil from Alibris, and found many more parallels to Kryptos.
Secrets of the Soil Observations:
Peter Tompkins Observations:
The following biography, including the image, was extracted from a post by Loren Coleman on Cryptomundo, January 24, 2007:
“In 1941, Tompkins was recruited by “Wild Bill” Donovan to join the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the CIA. He served as deputy to the chief of psychological warfare during the British-American invasion of north Africa in November 1942, as part of Operation Torch...
“One of the first missions of Donovan’s spy organization was Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa, and Coon worked with Peter Tompkins. Carleton Coon was in charge of Torch and the affair was such a success that it insured the future of the OSS. OSS’s leadership, who were later connected to the Central Intelligence Group, then the Central Intelligence Agency, would never forget Coon for his contributions to the budding American intelligence community. Tompkins too became linked to spy work for several years and was thought of very highly within the OSS...
“With paramilitary, parachute and secret radio training, Tompkins was sent to Salerno in southwestern Italy in 1943 to infiltrate agents into enemy territory. Tompkins spent five months filing intelligence by secret radio and promoting partisan activities before being transferred to Berlin to spearhead OSS activities there. He was OSS Officer in Charge, Rome Area, and after the liberation of Italy moved on to spy in France and Germany...
“Tompkins later wrote mainstream magazine articles and numerous books, including The Secret Life of Plants, (written with another shadowy figure, Christopher Bird, with whom he wrote other works), Secrets of the Great Pyramid, Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids, The Magic of Obelisks, A Spy in Rome and Italy Betrayed.”
Note the list of books at the end of the biography. Peter Tompkins was a man obsessed with secrets, mysteries, and (in later years) hidden forces of nature and other occult and/or new age stuff. (No value judgments here.)
Meanwhile, let’s consider the book that opened this door of study to me: Secrets of the Great Pyramid. Published in 1971, this book was a huge hit. In it, Tompkins does a fantastic job of providing a comprehensive view of research performed across the centuries regarding the Great Pyramid of Cheops. Detailed facts, measurements, and numerous theories (many of them competing) are presented in a way that even a layman can appreciate. While Tompkins does present some of the more unlikely and arcane beliefs held by others he does not strongly endorse them in this book.
If the content of Secrets of the Great Pyramid doesn’t clearly reveal how much research went into it, a brief perusal of its lengthy bibliography will. Peter Tompkins went to great lengths to gather information for this book. In 1971, the internet was called “the library”, and it is no mystery which library Tompkins preferred for the purpose. The first paragraph of the “Acknowledgements” section of Secrets of the Great Pyramid reads as follows:
“My first debt is to the courteous and efficient staff of the Library of Congress, whose institution - along with those of other helpful librarians around the world - made the research for this book a delight instead of an ordeal; they are a better and cheaper investment for our future than more weapons of destruction.”
The “Acknowledgements” section then proceeds to mention numerous individuals that contributed a great deal to Tompkins’ efforts. So apparently, in the years leading up to 1971, Peter Tompkins spent a great deal of time at the Library of Congress. Indeed, it is easy to confirm this by Googling the term “Peter Tompkins” “Library of Congress” with the quotation marks included. Of note, there are these quotes obtained:
“Unlimited access to the stacks of the Library of Congress allowed me to rewrite, from sources more rational and better informed, all manner of history, both recent and ancient, deliberately distorted by establishmental hacks.”
-Peter Tompkins’ own website at http://www.odeion.org/petertompkins/
“Peter Tompkins' search into this secret world was mostly conducted in the bowels of the Library of Congress, where little Ptolemy [Peter’s son] often accompanied him. Together they trod the underground corridors of power, dividing their time between Capitol Hill and the suburb of Maclean, near the Langley HQ of the CIA, then fully engaged in its own subterranean activities. Behind those neat lawns and prim letterboxes, secrets seethed.”
-Ruth Braden book review of “Secret Life of Parents” by Ptolemy Tompkins
So in the late 1960’s to early 1970’s, at least, Peter Tompkins enjoyed unlimited access to the stacks of the Library of Congress and spent a great deal of time there (otherwise, he was near Langley). Given that he had been granted such privileges, used them extensively, and made it his first debt to acknowledge the staff, I find it most probable that Peter Tompkins had at some point made the acquaintance of Herbert J Sanborn Sr, Chief of the Exhibits Office at the Library of Congress, and father of Jim Sanborn. Perhaps the two were even friends at one time, but that is pure speculation.
After about 1972, Tompkins’ work took a significant turn towards the fringe with the publication of The Secret Life of Plants in 1973 (with Christopher Bird). In 1989, Tompkins and Bird teamed up again to produce Secrets of the Soil, a New Age version of organic farming (to put it mildly). We already looked at some of the interesting parallels with that book above, but we can make another high level observation: if you strip away some of the more esoteric layers of Secrets of the Soil, what remains is an indictment of modern biotech and a philosophical treatment of how we can harness nature’s hidden forces to do a better job using our land. (The specific proposals of how to do so are the controversial aspects.) That sounds a bit like Jim Sanborn’s modus operandi, minus the fringe science, of course. Here is an interesting quote that suggests that Sanborn shares Tompkins’ low opinion of biotech:
“[Adam Lerner, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art] sees a connection between Sanborn and some of today's artistic activists, who incorporate real science into their art to drive home a political point -- about the failings of biotech, maybe, or the way we use our land. Yet there's a difference: Sanborn's work never preaches, it just shows.
"What is the comment? You don't know," Lerner says. "That is what makes it so good."”
-Blake Gopnik, Sparking Interest Within the Sphere of Art, Washington Post , Aug 25, 2009
And so we have established potential connections between Peter Tompkins, Ed Scheidt, Herbert J Sanborn Sr, and Jim Sanborn himself.
Combined with the findings of the last few sections, I have detailed numerous potential connections between Peter Tompkins and Kryptos.
Tompkins was an OSS spy that had an impact on the history of the CIA, wrote an espionage book that was most likely known to both Sanborn and Scheidt, and probably had (at least) a professional relationship with Jim Sanborn’s father. Tompkins’ subsequent books contain material that is rich with parallels to various elements of Kryptos and quotes by Jim Sanborn. No other treatment that I have seen explains so many Kryptos elements in one simple coherent thesis: Kryptos is based upon the literary works of Peter Tompkins.
Perhaps not all of these discoveries are meaningful, but I am inclined to believe that the net result is that Kryptos indeed contains references to works by Tompkins. And as long as we are entertaining the notion that such references exist, we might as well wonder why. When asked how many encryption techniques were used in Kryptos, Sanborn responded “maybe five or six”. Is it a stretch to consider that a book code - one of the most mysterious and alluring of the encryption methods - is one of them? Given that APEX Theory strongly suggests that a book code is required, I already have my answer. But for those of you who don’t subscribe to APEX Theory, you could at least consider the ramifications of these new findings. Perhaps you can use them as a springboard for your own studies.
With regard to the Morse Code, I believe that I have correctly interpreted all of the pieces in their proper order (with the possible exception of “Shadow Forces”, which may have been avoided by use of brute force decryption).
DIGETALEEE INTERPRETATU: Step (4) Dig Tale Interpretation
TISYOUR POSITION: Step (6) (Wha)T is Your Position
VIRTUALLY INVISIBLE: Step (7) The Underground, because the top layer is “transparent”, or “virtually invisible”
SHADOW FORCES: ? Step (8) The Latitudes ?
LUCID MEMORY: Step (9) Keywords for Quagmire III
RQ: Step (10) APEX? - A reference to the Great Pyramid
SOS: Step (11) - A reference to Secrets of the Soil
Suggested Step Process:
Combining the discoveries presented here with the book code conclusion of earlier steps, I believe that one of the three Tompkins books discussed above (i.e. A Spy in Rome, Secrets of the Great Pyramid, or Secrets of the Soil) is possibly the source. My current favorite is Secrets of the Soil because of the presence of “SOS” as the last clue in the Morse Code and because of the proximity of the whirlpool to the sculpture. My second favorite is A Spy in Rome because of the three books it is the most relevant to the CIA and yet is not referenced at all. (Perhaps the last challenge is to put all of the pieces together to find Tompkins and then take the final step to relevance.) The other book, Secrets of the Great Pyramid, is left as the least likely candidate due to (1) the location of its reference in the interior of the Morse clues rather than at the end, and (2) the relative distance from the sculpture to the elements that reference these books (i.e. the whirlpool is closer than the limestone piece).
In APEX Theory, K4 is deconstructed using various clues and signs, and the result is a sequence of 48 characters that I refer to as the “APEX Sequence”. Actually, there are three variants of the APEX Sequence that arise from minor variations of a convention used in step 9. These variants, with differences colored in red, are...
APEX 1:
“EBXAJRAAJPPBEHBLDVEPEXXDXOVFXPARFZPEFACAGPEDPRXN”
APEX 2:
“EBLAJRAAJPPBEHBLDVEPEAXDXOVFXPARFZSEFACAGPEDPRXN”
APEX 3:
“EBLAJRAAJPPKEHBMDVEPEAXDXOVFXPARFZSEFACAGPEDPRXN”
To complete the solution of K4, I believe we need to group the characters in pairs or triplets, yielding either 24 or 16 words, respectively, extracted from the appropriate book. If done properly, this may result in a message of the expected length (around 100 characters). But a complication arises in that there are numerous ways one could use the APEX sequences to index into a book, and it’s possible that another transposition of characters or words is also required. I can conceive of over a hundred possible combinations of steps that may still be needed (not to mention the ones I have yet to conceive of) and since I don’t have any of these books in digital form, each combination will involve some manual effort.
I now have copies of the potential books, and I am preparing for a focused study in early April. (I usually only have a few hours per month to pursue Kryptos ideas, but upcoming events are providing me an opportunity to spend about 9 days of significant focus.) Between now and the study period, I’ll contemplate the possible existence of more clues in order to constrain the search space. I will document my findings and report them sometime in April 2010. Stay tuned.
Update 4/24/2010: Well, I didn’t have nearly as much time as I had hoped to dedicate to this pursuit. I was able to investigate various transpositions and groupings (into pairs and triples) of the APEX sequences as well as various mappings of letters into numbers (for the purpose of indexing into a book). With book codes, clues can sometimes be drawn from number patterns if they exist. For instance, if every third number is always less than, say, about 12 then it may be an indication that every third number is pointing to where the word appears on the line in which it lives. (Presumably, the other numbers would be used to indicate the page and line.) So the bad news is that I have nothing to really report. The good news is that I am all set up for furthering this study as time allows. Also, I had a chance to read the book Secrets of the Soil, and I found a lot of interesting stuff in there that may be relevant to K5, i.e. the mystery that lives beyond K4.
