Sanborn Papers: Archive Research Collection
In March 2026, we examined the Jim Sanborn papers at the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. The collection spans circa 1950–2023 and includes working cipher materials, design sketches, correspondence, production documents, and conceptual notes from Sanborn's career. Not everything in the papers is open: some folders are restricted, and the scrambled K4 plaintext strips that writers Jarett Kobek and Richard Byrne found there in September 2025 have since been sealed at Sanborn’s request. This page presents a curated subset of photographs from our research visit, selected for their relevance to Kryptos and the unsolved K4 cipher. The selection prioritizes documents that reveal Sanborn's encryption thinking, keyword choices, construction methods, and conceptual framework.
Copyright & Research Use Notice
All photographs depict materials from the Jim Sanborn papers held at the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Copyright in the original works depicted remains with Jim Sanborn and/or other applicable rights holders. No claim of ownership is made or implied.
These images are presented in good faith for purposes of non-commercial research, scholarship, education, and commentary regarding the unsolved Kryptos K4 cipher. The Archives of American Art is a public research repository of the Smithsonian Institution; these materials were examined in person under standard research access procedures, and photographs were taken in accordance with the archive's research photography policies.
We believe this use is consistent with principles of fair use under 17 U.S.C. § 107, but we do not present this as a legal conclusion. In accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. § 512), if you are the rights holder and believe any material here infringes your copyright, please send a written notice to contact@kryptosbot.com identifying the specific material and we will promptly remove or disable access to it.
1. “He Lied” & Coordinate Manipulation
Perhaps the most provocative single page in the entire collection: two versions of the K2 coordinates in Sanborn's hand, one degree apart, with an emphatic annotation.
“He Lied”: Coordinate Manipulation
IMG_1384 (CRITICAL DOCUMENT)
Two coordinate sets in Sanborn's hand with “He lied” circled emphatically between them:
38° 57′ 6.5″ N / 77° 8′ 44″ W
37° 57′ 6.5″ N / 77° 8′ 44″ W
The top set matches the K2 plaintext coordinates, pointing to a location near CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. The bottom set changes only the latitude degree: 38°→37°. Everything else (minutes, seconds, and the entire longitude) is identical. This single-degree shift moves the position approximately 69 miles south to King and Queen County, Virginia, near Newtown. The 37° variant is the one printed on the US dust jacket of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (2003); asked about it, Brown and his publisher said the one-degree discrepancy was intentional. The page is undated, so we cannot tell whether it was written before or after that book appeared.
A note on precision: Both coordinate sets specify arc-seconds to one decimal place (6.5″). One arc-second of latitude is approximately 101 feet (31 meters); a tenth of an arc-second is roughly 10 feet. Read on a modern map datum, the K2 coordinates fall about 174 feet (53 meters) southeast of the sculpture, so the extra decimal does not pin the sculpture itself. These papers do not say where Sanborn got the values or whether the sub-second figure is meant as part of the puzzle.
2. PALIMPSEST, ABSCISSA & Keyword Evidence
Among the most significant finds: Sanborn's notebook pages explicitly referencing PALIMPSEST and ABSCISSA (the keywords of K1 and K2) and ECLIPSE. They record how Sanborn described his keyword choices and what the words meant to him. The main page (IMG_1340) appears to date from years after the sculpture was finished, so it is probably a later account rather than working notes from the time Kryptos was made.
Keyword & Cipher Process Notes
IMG_1340 (CRITICAL DOCUMENT)
A dense notebook page, mostly to-do items and phone numbers, with a short numbered list of notes about Kryptos at the bottom. Two to-do items suggest a date years after Kryptos was finished: one says to email someone, and another names an “Avenue North Project” by Temple University in Philadelphia, a development planned in the mid-2000s. The notes read:
“Code originally developed to keep things secret in the military”
“Keywords chosen for their mysterious nature AND how they fit into the Aesthetics”
“Palimpsest is to write or […]” / “ABSCISSA”
The list goes on with two more numbered notes. The second-to-last line of the page reads: “Extra L at end of line, Bottom chart s[…]” (the last word is hard to read; “section”, “seeding” and “reading” have all been proposed). This is notable because the Kryptos Vigenère tableau has a well-known anomaly: row N contains an extra L, creating an H-I-L-L reading down the column. Read with the next line, which is about the question marks, the note most likely records this feature of the carved chart rather than a step in enciphering. The last line reads: “? or like 4, 8, 10, 25 (+) coded” followed by additional characters that are too difficult to read with confidence. The numbers 4, 8, 10 and 25 are exactly the carved lines (counting from the top of the cipher side) that hold its four question marks, so the line most likely notes where the question marks sit: bookkeeping, not a cipher instruction. Higher on this same page, item 10 is a starred to-do item, a definition of ABSCISSA, confirming Sanborn researched this term specifically.
ECLIPSE & PALIMPSEST Defined
IMG_1566
Sanborn defining thematic vocabulary in his own hand:
“Eclipse: Blocked, shaded from view, Shadow of the moon, Loss of Light”
“Palimpsest: to write or then erase”
ECLIPSE may have been a keyword candidate, or simply a word for hiding. “Blocked, shaded from view” may echo the idea of hiding described in IMG_1236. The PALIMPSEST definition (“to write or then erase”) stresses writing and erasing. The page also carries contact details for Italian stone suppliers (Graniti e Marmi di Baveno, and a granite firm in Marina di Carrara); it does not say which project they were for.
“A Choice of 3 Words”
IMG_1567
In the context of CIA/KGB/Top Secret culture, Sanborn writes:
“A choice of 3 words most typified the way of life”
This could refer to three keywords for the cipher (KRYPTOS, PALIMPSEST, ABSCISSA?), three thematic concepts of espionage, or three words that characterize the intelligence world. The page also references “The current acronym for CIA” / “KGB” / “Top Secret” and “The most common type free [text] / Computer/Typewriter.” Faded pencil text including “Palimpsest” is visible in the lower portion.
3. Cipher Methods & Process Notes
Sanborn's handwritten lists of cipher systems, intelligence terminology, and encoding methods. These reveal what he was taught and what he studied.
Cipher Types List
IMG_1569
Sanborn's handwritten list of encoding methods:
“Beaufort cipher, Compass cipher, Morse code, Alphabet code”
Below: “Cryptonyms” with a note about how they work (see IMG_1570), then “Overlord” (underlined) followed by “Normandy Invasion, H Bo[mb]…” — Overlord was the Allied codename for the Normandy invasion. Seeing the Beaufort cipher named in Sanborn's own hand shows he was at least aware of the method. Beaufort was not used in the solved sections (K1 and K2 use a keyed-alphabet variant of the Vigenère cipher; K3 is a rearrangement), but Beaufort variants are standard candidates in K4 testing. “Compass cipher” may be Sanborn's own term for the compass rose element.
CIA Cryptonym System
IMG_1570
Sanborn's description of how CIA cryptonyms work:
“2 letters determine general category or place, followed by letters that form a word with the first two”
This is a precise description of the cryptonym system (e.g., KU = CIA internal → KUBARK). Also visible: “[Normandy Inva]sion, H Bomb, Bombing of Dresden” and “[Blue] stripe access” (Top Secret classification marking), and “[bu]rst transmitters.”
CIA Tradecraft Glossary
IMG_1571
A complete intelligence vocabulary page: “CIA = Kubark” (CIA's own cryptonym), “Top Secret = Blue Stripe Access,” “Polygraph = Flutter,” “OSS WWII Agency” (CIA predecessor), “MI5” (British intelligence), “condensed & burst transmitters” (covert communications), “Codes in the Shadows,” “Smoke and Mirrors,” “Secrecy: store house of the magic wands,” “Frequency Tables forming.” The mention of Frequency Tables shows Sanborn knew about frequency analysis. A sketch of a three-dimensional box appears alongside.
4. Cipher Working Materials & Tableaux
Sanborn's handwritten tableaux, grids, and encoding worksheets. Note: Kryptos uses the Latin alphabet only. Some grids below were created for the separate Cyrillic Projector installation but reveal Sanborn's cipher construction methods. The K1/K2 encoding chart he released in 2010 is examined cell by cell on its own page.
KRYPTOS-Keyed (KA) Vigenère Tableau
IMG_1223
A handwritten Vigenère-style tableau on the KRYPTOS keyword-mixed alphabet (KA): 26 rows, each a shifted copy of KRYPTOSABCDEFGHIJLMNQUVWXZ, 30 letters wide, with a plain A–Z row along the bottom. This is the kind of table used to encipher K1 and K2; K3 is a pure transposition and does not use it. The large letter “A” is visible at top, and a sketch of the sculpture form appears above. A version of this tableau is cut, mirror-reversed, into the right half of the sculpture’s copper screen; this sheet is a handwritten copy.
KA Tableau Detail: Circled Letters
IMG_1224
Close-up of the KA tableau showing individual handwritten letters. A circled “H” is visible. Circled letters may mark specific lookup operations performed during encryption.
Repeating Key Pattern Grid
IMG_1211
A grid on graph paper with a row of Cyrillic letters and, beneath it, the five-letter Cyrillic sequence ФЧШЖИ repeated along the row: the layout of a repeating key written under a message. The Cyrillic suggests it belongs to the Cyrillic Projector work rather than Kryptos.
Russian Enciphering Worksheet
IMG_1202
A large worksheet in Cyrillic (apart from a few margin notes), in blocks of three rows: a line of Russian text, the word МЕДУЗА (MEDUZA, Russian for “jellyfish” or “Medusa”) repeated as a key, and a third row that looks like the enciphered result. The Russian text is about Andrei Sakharov’s appeal to the Pugwash conference, the subject of the second part of Sanborn’s Cyrillic Projector sculpture, so the sheet appears to be working material for that sculpture, not for Kryptos. A separate typed page in Arabic lies beside it.
5. Creation Process & Sanborn's Own Words
Primary source documents in which Sanborn describes his creation process, including working notes and the CIA dedication ceremony transcript (the ceremony speech is publicly available through other sources; the physical document provides context for surrounding annotations).
“I Wrote the Plain Text to Be Enigmatic”
IMG_1410
A notebook page (oriented sideways) where Sanborn writes about creating Kryptos. The first two numbered lines read:
“I wrote the plain text to be enigmatic and…” / “I encoded it to make it challenging”
The note is about Kryptos as a whole, and K1 to K3 show what it means in practice: they read as English, but their meaning is obscure. A correct K4 decryption may be similarly cryptic, so scoring methods should not assume ordinary, clear prose. On the page, “Plain” is written in above the first line. Lower down, it says that in 1988 encoding and cryptography were “forgotten arts” and appears to mention the “worldwide coverage” Kryptos later received, so these notes look back on the work rather than recording its making.
Dedication: “Two Systems of Enciphering”
IMG_1249
From the November 3, 1990 dedication ceremony transcript (this passage is publicly known from other sources). Sanborn states:
“There are two systems of enciphering the bottom text. No one really asked me if there are two systems to encipher the bottom text until today at sort of the eleventh hour, and yes, there are two separate systems and that is a major clue in itself, apparently.”
The physical document provides full context for the surrounding remarks about the petrified tree and installation symbolism. The “bottom text” refers to the lower portion of the copper plate containing K3 and K4.
Sanborn Describes the CIA Project
IMG_1483 (added April 2026)
A pitch letter from Sanborn to a prospective client, written before the Kryptos installation was complete. Key passage:
“I am currently working on an extensive artwork and environmental design for the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia. Included in this project are two large water feature incoporating whirlpools and wave pools which demonstrate the Coriolus Force, that natural force created by the spin of the earth.”
(Quoted with the letter’s own spelling.) The letter also describes his materials philosophy (“laying down a geological reference to the site’s early beginnings”) and lists “massive lodestones (a rock which has been magnetized by lightning)” among materials from his earlier projects; a lodestone is also part of the Kryptos installation. Signed with the address 903 Girard St NE, Washington DC.
6. Steganographic Evidence
Documents that touch on hiding a message within a larger set of characters. Some researchers have proposed a filler-letter or Cardan-grille model for K4; these notes are consistent with that idea but do not show it, and none of them is tied to K4 specifically.
“Encrypted Message Is Included Within…”
IMG_1236 (CRITICAL DOCUMENT)
Sanborn's handwritten note beneath a sketch:
“encrypted message is included within set of modern day font characters. Could be done to shade an area”
The note places the encrypted message within a larger set of ordinary type characters and says this “could be done to shade an area”; it does not say how, or whether, the meaningful characters would be picked out. Compare to the ECLIPSE definition in IMG_1566: “Blocked, shaded from view.” A sketch of a sculptural form appears above the text; it is not certain whether this depicts Kryptos or another work.
“Code Breaker” Overlay Concept
IMG_1555
A sketch of two stacked, angled sheets with wavy lines on them: the upper one labeled “Code Breaker”, the lower one “Coded”. Reading it as a physical overlay or grille is an interpretation; the sketch has no hole pattern or dimensions and may be an artistic metaphor for a decoding filter. (An earlier caption read a word in IMG_1569 as “Overlay” supporting this idea; on re-examination that word is “Overlord”, the D-Day codename.) Whether this sketch reflects a method actually used in Kryptos is unknown.
Map-Like Transparency Overlay
IMG_1221
A golden/amber transparency showing a map-like street grid over what appears to be a printed KA tableau. The cryptographically relevant fact is the physical overlay itself: Sanborn was experimenting with layered materials over cipher content. The specific map identity should be treated as unverified unless it is independently matched against the raw image. The overlay technique (placing a map-like transparency over cipher materials) may relate to the “shade an area” concept described in IMG_1236.
7. Punctuation & Letterform Anomalies
The cipher side of Kryptos contains exactly four question marks: three as punctuation inside K2's message text, and one on the line between K3 and K4. A stencil template in the archive shows an anomaly worth examining.
Punctuation Stencil: J Drawn Over ?
IMG_1531 (ANOMALY)
A sheet of large printed characters (! ? $), apparently type or stencil artwork; nothing on it says which work it was for. On the bottom row, the question mark has a pencil-drawn J outlined over it, with the question mark’s dot inside the curve of the J. The cipher side carries exactly four question marks: three as punctuation inside K2's message, one between K3 and K4. K2’s three read as ordinary question marks in its solved text, so a J reading could apply at most to the one between K3 and K4, which comes at the end of K3, whose solved text closes with “can you see anything”.
8. Production, Source Texts & Stencils
Documents related to physical production: stencil orders, waterjet cutting specifications, source texts, and material samples.
Mirror-Image Waterjet Invoice (July 1994)
IMG_1543
Invoice: “Waterjet cutting of stainless steel mirror.” Key spec: “TEXT TO BE MIRROR IMAGE WORDS” with “EAWEE” shown as mirrored FUMEE. Instruction: “USE THE LETTERS FUMEE ENGLISH ALPHABET.” Confirms Sanborn used mirror-reversed text as a technique. Dimensions: 14″×14″, letters 1/2″ high.
Stencil Type Job Order
IMG_1238
A job order headed “misc type for jim sanborn stencil type”, with the note “7a88 on a side” (its meaning is unclear, and we do not read it as a cipher grid). On the sculpture, K4 takes up the end of one carved line and the three lines below it, not seven rows. The sample text is a passage about Washington museums, including the Phillips Collection and Anderson House.
FUMEE Repeating Stencil (Aug. 1994)
IMG_1242
Fax from Laser Applications, Inc. filled with repeating “FUMEE” (French: “smoke”). A stencil cutting proof with thematic fill text resonating with concealment themes.
“OBMAN” (Deception) Repeating Text
IMG_1540
Stencil sheet with repeating Russian “ОБМАН” (OBMAN = “deception”). Handwritten notes: “bowl exactly same,” “SVET” (light), “FUME.” Deception as fill text alongside smoke.
Waterjet Invoice: Copper Plate
IMG_1541
July 1994 invoice: “Waterjet cutting of 3/16″ Copper plate,” 48″ diameter, “For lines of text use Russian decoding chart enclosed.”
9. Navigation & Color Symbolism
Sanborn's detailed study of junction buoys, navigation markers, and port/starboard color systems. We note a possible parallel that these pages do not state: the green of the copper patina and the red of the granite are also the starboard and port navigation colors. Junction buoys mark bifurcations: choosing which path to take.
Junction Buoy Study
IMG_1428
Detailed study of junction buoys (bifurcation buoys): Left: “CAN ODD#” (Black buoy, Green Light Flash). Right: “NUN EVEN#” (Red buoy, Red Light Flash). Below: boat diagram with Port (Red Lt) and Starboard (Green Lt). Junction buoys mark a bifurcation: choosing which channel to take.
“Ships! Why Are They Red & Green”
IMG_1614
Sanborn's notes: “Ships!” “Why are they Red & Green,” “Port & Starboard,” “Navigation,” “Storms at Sea,” “false readings,” “uncharted.” The green (copper patina) and red (granite) of the Kryptos installation may echo the port/starboard navigation colors; this is our reading, not something the note states. “False readings” resonates with the cryptographic concept of misleading signals.
10. Concept, Design & Themes
Conceptual notes, coordinate work, thematic brainstorming, and design sketches revealing the intellectual framework behind Kryptos.
“Avoid the Pitfall of the Obvious”
IMG_1560
Sanborn's design maxim. Below: sketches of sculptural forms including a cylinder and star/compass element.
“TRUTH” Thematic Pairs
IMG_1561
Dichotomy pairs: Shadow/Light, Truth/Lies, Fact/Fiction, Life/Death, Light/Dark, Blue/Yellow Dichroic, Red/Green. Also: “Filter Names: French, English, Russian, Arabic, Chinese, Malay.”
Thematic Word List
IMG_1574
“Invisible Forces, Listening Devices, Communication, Secrecy, Hiding, Manipulation, Security, Illusion.”
“Balance Between Lodestone / Meteorite”
IMG_1581
“Codes, mystery novel ‘the shadow,’ meteorites ‘messages’ coded ‘where it landed,’ Balance between lodestone / meteorite.”
Copper “Veil”: Phrase List
IMG_1580 (added April 2026)
A list of phrases under the heading “copper ‘Veil’”, apparently for a copper work of that name; the page does not say whether the text was to be encrypted. The phrases form an extraction or escape sequence: “Grab the rope / Step onto the shore / Step into the Boat / Land on the runway / ‘Grab my arm’ / ‘Hold onto the raft’ / Quickly / Hurry.” Whether this relates to Kryptos K4 or a separate work is unknown. See next image for continuation.
Copper “Veil” — Continuation
IMG_1582 (added April 2026)
The list continues with increasingly urgent phrases: “Duck / Crawl / Tunnel / Run / Fly / Hold your breath / Get out of the way / Take cover / Quiet / Get down / Shhh / I can’t breathe / My heart’s pounding / Catch your breath.” The progression from movement commands to visceral physical sensations is striking. The page does not say whether these phrases were meant to be encrypted.
11. Sculpture, Site Design & Broader Context
Concept sketches for the CIA courtyard installation, compass studies, and related contextual documents.
Morse Tables Concept Drawing
IMG_1587
A concept sketch of angled, triangular slabs set around a central vertical form. The page does not name the project; we file it with the Morse code element because Kryptos’s Morse code is cut into copper sheets set between stone slabs, and a cross-section at the bottom labels layered slabs: “Red” (granite), “Cu” (copper), “Black” (stone). One possible reading, ours rather than Sanborn’s, links these colors to navigation markers (red = port, green/copper patina = starboard; see IMG_1428, IMG_1614).
Early Kryptos Concept Sketches
IMG_1595 (added April 2026)
Sanborn’s early concept drawings for the Kryptos sculpture. Top: a petrified-tree column (“pet tree”) set against stepped layers of stone, labeled green layer, red and black granite, white granite or marble, and copper plate. Middle left: an object labeled “Meteorite” (a meteorite is not a lodestone; compare IMG_1581, “Balance between lodestone / meteorite”). Center: a cylinder with a copper top section and spiral, stepped bands around its base, annotated “Copper / white marble / pet tree / green stain.” Bottom: “Cut out copper,” consistent with the perforated letterform technique. The page is undated.
“Red Slate Ridge Through Courtyard”
IMG_1573 (added April 2026)
Courtyard design sketch. The banded cylinder at left and the banded triangle at right may show one form twice, wrapped and laid flat; the page does not label them. The top sketch shows a vertical column (perhaps the petrified tree) among tall grasses under a ridge line. The flat, jagged element at center right may represent the red slate ridge named in the heading.
Sketch with “Go: C.I.A.” Note
IMG_1591
A perspective sketch: a central strip of rectangular slabs, with rows of small circles running beside it and branching off at angles, crossed by angled ridges. Notes at lower right read “Calls: W.P.A. Kirkpatrick” and “Go: C.I.A.” The C.I.A. note may tie it to the Kryptos project, but the page does not say what the sketch shows, and the S-curved copper screen does not appear in it.
Compass Rose Studies
IMG_1518
Three hand-drawn compass roses on graph paper, each marked N, S, E and W and each with a single needle drawn well off north, running roughly from west-southwest to east-northeast. The page gives no angles or other labels. The compass rose is a physical element of the Kryptos installation (engraved on a stone slab, pointing to a lodestone); these studies may reflect the design process for that element.
Red Granite Slab & Copper Patina Circle
IMG_1100
A piece of red granite at the Kryptos site with a prominent green-blue circular stain on its surface. The color and concentric ring pattern are consistent with copper patina (verdigris), the natural oxidation product of copper or bronze exposed to weather. Whether the stain is accidental or deliberate cannot be told from the photo; one of Sanborn’s concept sketches is annotated “green stain” (IMG_1595).
“Perforated with Descriptive Text”
IMG_1152
A proposal board for a different project, a “King Street Gateway” in Alexandria, Virginia, using the same cut-through copper technique as Kryptos: copper “perforated with descriptive text”, and a vertical piece cut with the city’s earliest published map so that “light from the sun will pass through this map and project an enlarged image of this document on the plaza paving.” It lists dates from Alexandria’s history that could be cut into the copper.
“Coded Creations, Inside Messages”
IMG_1492
Washington Post article by Paul Richard, with the subheading “From CIA Secrets to the Corcoran, Jim Sanborn’s Room-Size R…” (the rest is cut off in our photo). It describes two room-size installations at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, “Code Room” and “Listening Post”, together called “Covert Obsolescence.”
12. Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol & Other Records
After Dan Brown published The Lost Symbol (2009), Sanborn contacted his attorney over potential intellectual-property concerns. His lawyer’s memo (November 24, 2009) survives in the archive. This section also holds a 1992 gallery consignment list and a press article from Sanborn’s files.
Chapter 53, Alexandria & the Masonic Connection
Composite (archival + reference)
In several places in The Lost Symbol, Brown refers to Kryptos by name and quotes it. Chapter 53, however, never mentions Kryptos, yet Sanborn circled it and flagged it for his lawyer. The chapter describes a 4×4 cipher square, “segmented ciphers” from ancient Greece, a “Masonic pyramid,” and the idea that a puzzle can only be solved by combining two separate elements. Sanborn grew up in the Alexandria–Arlington area. The map-like transparency in his papers (IMG_1221) appears to show Old Town Alexandria and the Potomac shore down to Jones Point, site of the original DC boundary cornerstone; that identification is ours and unverified (see IMG_1221 above). The composite sets it beside an uncommissioned proposal by Sanborn and Jim Urban for an Alexandria art installation, whose drawing includes a tower we identify as the George Washington Masonic National Memorial, and adds a reference photo of the Jones Point lighthouse. The arrows and labels are ours.
Gallery Consignment: “SECRET PAST” Duplicates Text of Kryptos
IMG_1485 (added April 2026)
A September 15, 1992 consignment list from the Nancy Drysdale Gallery in Washington, DC, documenting Sanborn’s CIA-themed artworks and their prices. The most significant entry:
“5. SECRET PAST (Courtyard) — 1/2: Cyrillic Alphabet and KGB document, 1/2: duplicates text of Kryptos at CIA Headquarters. Copper, Petrified wood. 80″×45″×13″ — $35,000”
This confirms that a separate Sanborn artwork existed that duplicates the text of Kryptos. Other pieces listed include FRAGMENTS (pulped CIA documents, $1,200), COVERT OPERATION (pulped CIA documents, $3,000), and CLANDESTINE DEVICE (KGB documents, etched copper and fossil sandstone, $10,000). The use of copper and petrified wood in SECRET PAST mirrors the Kryptos installation materials.
K1–K3 Solving: From Sanborn’s Files
IMG_1197 (added April 2026)
A copy of a 1999 newspaper article on the solving of K1–K3, printed from a website in June 2009 and kept in Sanborn’s files. It quotes Jim Gillogly (“a 53-year-old cryptographer at Mentat Inc.”) and David Stein, who worked for the CIA “as a physicist and senior analyst”. Both quotes below are Stein’s. (It was later revealed that an NSA team had solved K1 to K3 in 1992–93, before either of them.)
“The Kryptos puzzle is a layered puzzle, and we may find that it has layers within layers within layers.”
“Kryptos was meant to be solved with pencil and paper.”
Former CIA Director William Webster said he had long since forgotten the answer: “I have zero memory of this.” The content of this article is publicly available from other sources; its significance here is as a document Sanborn kept in his own working files.
About This Collection
The Jim Sanborn papers are held at the Archives of American Art, a bureau of the Smithsonian Institution. The selection presented here focuses on materials with direct or indirect relevance to Kryptos and its encryption. Many additional pages (business notes, unrelated installation documentation, and near-duplicate photos) were reviewed and excluded to maintain research density.
How to help: If you notice something in these images that we've missed, can provide a better transcription of any handwritten text, or can identify the source of any quoted material, please email contact@kryptosbot.com.