Auctioning Off the Key to Kryptos

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Welcome to Spycast, the official podcast of the International Spy Museum. I'm your guest host, Flora Warshaw, and this week I will take you into the shadows of espionage, intelligence, and covert operations across the globe. At the CIA headquarters in Langley, you will find Kryptos, a large curved copper panel that holds the letters to four encrypted messages. The first three messages, K1 through 3, were solved in the 90s, but K4 continued to mystify cryptographers for decades.

That is until Jim Sanborn, the artist, decided to auction off the plain text and the coding charts that can crack the very code. Bobby Livingston is the auctioneer who sold Jim Sanborn's private archive just recently for a staggering amount. Bobby, welcome to Spycast. I know you were here recently for the press conference regarding the cryptos auctions.

Yeah, the press conference at the spy museum was fantastic. We had a lot of media there and um the uh executive director you know introduced us and so we were very grateful for that. There's a lot of excitement about crypto.

So to get started, how much did you know about cryptos before you started this process? I didn't know anything. I didn't know anything about cryptos. And uh I had to learn pretty fast. The first thing is that cryptos is a sculpture that's at Langley in at the CIA, but it's enclosed. The public can't see it. It's part of the an art installation that's for the employees of the the CIA. So the general public can't see cryptos. You know how I found out even cryptos existed

was we had a client who buys vintage computers from us. He lives in Spain, and we were talking to him and he said, um, you know, I'm obsessed with Cryptos and K4, you know, and you guys should auction it. And we're like, what? What are you even talking about? And then he you know he explained who Jim Sanborn was and he explained what the cryptos installation was and where it was that was in the CIA headquarters. And that on the installation on the sculpture are four secret messages.

And three of them were solved already by the members of the CIA and NSA people that were able to see this. Sculpture. But the fourth one, what they call K four. has mystified the public and cryptologists and people that are trying to crack it. It's become a challenge, like the greatest secret. You know, it's a CIA secret. It's, you know, but it's a piece of art, a living, breathing piece of art.

So uh when we learned about that, and then we learned about Jim Samborn, the artist, who was approaching his 80th birthday and You know, he's been contacted for years and years and years about what does it say? And also people have been submitting wrong answers every week. For thirty-five years. I heard that he started charging fifty dollars per submission.

of people trying to crack it. I know, because he just gets flooded and um it's gotten to the point for him at 80, you know, I I need to stop. I mean, I I want the artwork to continue to to live. Which K four and cryptos does because it is still challenging, you know. And so you when you gaze upon a piece of artwork and you know what three quarters of it says, but there's a quarter of that

piece of artwork that you can't possibly understand until you get the answer. And how are members of the public attempting to solve it if they couldn't see the sculpture? Is it just because there's now so many images online that they were like, we feel like we're there, we can try and figure it out? That's right. So over the years photos leaked out of

Cryptos installation and the four panels have been transcribed by people. So, you know, it's it's a it's 96 characters and it's been encrypted by a cipher that only Sanborn and the guy he worked with. to encrypt the message. So over the years people have seen it and tried to crack it. But one of the things is like Sanborn got so frustrated that people couldn't crack it. He started to give away clues.

And so he just, okay, look, it says Berlin clock in this position, you know, and he gave out another clue over the years to like, please. So you know someone do this. Yeah. You know, at least a guide. You know, maybe they could re reverse engineer it, you know, because the the coding charts uh were sophisticated enough that the codebreakers could not break this.

And I was at the spy museum. You guys have so many Enigma machines and so many cool coding machines. So you can just imagine what, you know, in between what he wrote down and what's on that. Sculpture is this Enigma machine that would decode it, you know, and it but it's it's understanding this coding charts and then the plain the plain text.

Take me back to when you first met Jim. We were talking to this, you know, this client and he told us to reach out to Jim Sanborn because he Sanborn had been telling the New York Times, I'm gonna auction this, I think. I don't know what I'm gonna do with it. We uh Reached out to him and uh Bobby Eaton, uh my colleague at our auction. flew down to Cym.

Bobby spent the afternoon with Jim and went over everything and uh you know how we would handle this because we we needed to learn what else we're actually going to auction off, you know, and uh because we typically auction physical, tangible objects. We don't We don't sell secrets, right? We don't that's not what we sell. We sell the piece of paper. The secret is written.

That's what we were gonna sell was just the plain text, the the piece of paper that had the ninety-six character message on it that he originally wrote. So Stanborn was all like yes. Let's auction it. He, you know, he wanted to m find what he calls a new cryptos keeper. Someone that's going to, you know, um keep this going, keep it alive, but he doesn't want to have to answer the questions anymore and doesn't want to have to give the answer, but he wanted to find

The right person to take over this challenge. Samborn really wanted to transfer the responsibility of the artwork to a new. And auction seemed like the way for him him to go. And so he decided um to go with RR auction. But can you run me through exactly what Sanborn decided to sell for the person who was gonna purchase this entire archive? What exactly would they be getting? They would be getting

the physical piece of paper that has the ninety-six characters on it that's called K four now. They'd also get the coding charts that were used to encrypt it. So meaning the person would be able to reverse engineer and be able to understand what's on the installation. Uh so they would get that. And then he also had the original pieces of K1, K2, K3, and the coding charts. And then he had a prototype.

a small section of what cryptos would look like that he made, that he presented to the United States government when he got the contract to actually install this piece of artwork into Langley headquarters at CIA. And you also got the contract he signed and you also got his CIA badge that he had to wear.

He told me they followed me around everywhere. You know, anytime I was on there, he had like someone watching him. Even if he went into the men's room, there was somebody with Sam Born. That's how top secret Langley is. And you know, that's what we were sound. Now, the the other thing that the person got though was an afternoon with Sanborn. That was part of the appeal because Jim Sanborn, the artist, for the first time is gonna sit down with the witty bitter.

and explain to them the cryptos as a whole what K two, K three, K th four all together mean, you know, what the message is, because it's not just the four separate messages, but they they're all intertwined. My interpretation, your interpretation might be totally different than what he created. And so uh that knowledge He's transferring to the new keeper. But that's not something all I can sell, all our auction can offer is here's an afternoon with Sambo.

That's it. But what the knowledge in his head, you know, that's not something that we could, you know, transfer title to, right? That has to be an experience. That was a real special part of it. Also in the the archive materials. There was two unique new things that he told me about. He has an alternate K1 message and coding chart. And he's got an alternate K4 message encoding charts. Now the alternate K4 is now known as K5.

So that is brand new and nobody's ever even seen the encoded encrypted text.

So in early September of this year, Sam Bourne was contacted by two men who believed that they had the plain text to K-4. They believed they had figured out the encrypted text. Can you explain why? Well, first off, they didn't unencrypt anything. And it's very important before we talk about that. The encryption method, how you solve the puzzles, very, very important. Well what so what Sanborn did, because I never took possession of the actual archive of materials.

or the coding charts when I asked him okay what are we like you just asked me well what are we selling okay you're gonna get the plain text and he goes and you're gonna get copies of the coding charts um and he's being transparent he says because the originals are in the Smithsonian And I put that on the website in the description and we got all this media. And suddenly he calls and says, I've just been contacted by these two guys. They went down the Smithsonian and in there.

They found some clues uh and were able to reassemble the act the the original plain text. What Sanborn had done after he installed or around the time he installed the actual sculpture. The CIA said, hey. What does it say on there? Are you making a political statement? Is there some a dirty joke on here? We gotta know what it says. And so what happened was he he cut up several pieces of of the the message that he could show to

his handlers at the CIA that it was a good message, but it wasn't something to be concerned about. So an archivist had gone and sorted everything and Sandboard did not realize that these pieces of the paper were in his archive. And so they were able to um go to the Smithsonian and they were took pictures of these. They were able to figure out what the message was and they they paid their fifty dollars. Submitted it.

And then wrote to Sanborn and says, you know, this is what it says, and we don't want to hurt your auction. And so Sanborn, Sanborn calls me up and like immediately after seeing 35 years of Wrong answers. He saw the right answer. Right. We we talked about it and uh you know, it's like we've got to disclose that these guys found this in your archive. Sanborn says, Well I gotta go down the Smithsonian, I gotta seal the paper so nobody else Guess it. So he did that. I took off

copies you know you know off the description he had given me and we went and sealed the the papers. These two uh uh researchers told Sam Born that they would be cool and not release the plaintext. But what I wanted was an NDA. Like, okay, be cool. Don't mess with Sandboard's option. Sign this piece of paper so they can give it to the winning bidder or, you know, to assure the public you guys aren't gonna

release this thing. But they wouldn't do it. So then I said, well look, Sandboard, I'm I'm in a transactional business. You know, I work for an auction. company. I we hire consultants, we hire uh researchers, we we hire authenticators. This is all part of what we do. And so I said, offer them a piece of the action. That didn't apparently didn't go over well with these guys. And they got very upset. uh that that would happen. And then um

They called the New York Times and gave them the answer. Oh, they told the New York Times what it was. My my understanding is they read it to them over the phone. And so uh the New York Times then has an obligation to do what I was gonna do, which was to inform the public that this has happened. Which we did. So we had made an announcement not only on our website but to the press that these guys were able to reassemble the plaintext and had said they weren't going to release it.

And my point to to these researchers, like you guys are heroes, you know, you tipped him off. uh let's seal the papers and let's have Sam Born have a payday. You know, I never spoke to these guys directly, but that's that was the message and then and they didn't like that either. You know? Yeah. So so uh they decided to call the New York Time. And luckily the New York Times was uh respectful of Sanborn and his rights and uh didn't didn't publish that. That's what's kind of happened with that.

Even though, you know, you think it did slightly damage the auction, it was estimated prior to the auction that, you know, this archive could go for between$300,000 to$500,000. But the actual price was set at$962,000. Were you surprised by this? Did you really think it could have gone for more than this or less than this? What figures were you thinking of? Well, it absolutely was gonna go for a lot more because we had people um because of the New York Times article decide not to be.

And it's regrettable. It's regrettable. So I think it would have gone for a lot more. But uh with all of that, we're satisfied um with with w w what happened. But I do think it went for it would have gone for a lot more and the people that won it got a good deal. When we come back, we find out how the auction went down and discuss what other fascinating artifacts were also being auctioned to the public.

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Don't operate in the shadows, gain total visibility and help secure your mission. Visit Palo Alto Networks.com and fortify your digital defenses today. So how did the auction play out? That was really amazing. Um when we first announced it uh when in August, before we had ever written a description, um cryptos is one of these mythological Mysteries. And it's been written about, there's documentaries about it. So when he announced this, the we

You know, we had major media attention that wanted, wow, Sanborn's finally gonna reveal this mystery. So we had lots of uh people from around the world registering, but then because he announced it uh several months. before we the actual sell. Typically we won't we don't do that because I couldn't take a bid because I still didn't know what we were selling. But then as the when we opened the auction, it started slowly, you know, I think we started at 25,000.

Sat there for and then a hundred thousand and then sat there and then I think that the night of the auction or the day of the auction, it was around two hundred thousand, two hundred and twenty thousand. So there was four really serious bidders on it. And usually, you know, you like to have two, but when you have four, you know you're gonna have a

A good thing. So we knew we were going to get to that 300,000 to 500,000, right? So we kind of closed the gallery door at 7 p.m. If you didn't bid before seven, you're not getting in. So the last hour was pretty exciting because these two parties that were left were were battling it out. The auction is thrilling.

We really exceed expectations. Other times we fail. It's a disaster, you know. But we try to keep it even, Keel. And we were really excited for for Sanborn um to be able to raise that kind of money for him so he can um deal with some of his issues. And also really happy with who ended up with it. Which I couldn't tell him either. I mean but I ha I have to I respe have to respect both parties at this point. Our auction's responsibility is that physical, tangible archive.

That's what we're selling. So um the secret is with them. And now they can do with it. But I know that the it's not going to get buried away and I know it's not going to be released public.

So the Cryptos archive wasn't the only group of items that was being sold off at the auction. Can you describe what else you sold? I know there was talks of Rosetta Stone papers and Enigma machines. Yeah. Uh you know, we sell more Enigma machines than any other auction house and we've been getting, you know, between two hundred and five hundred thousand dollars for them. By the way, the spy museum

almost has a monopoly on them. They've got so many. They're so fabulous. Um and so yeah, we we sold two different types of Enigma machines, one pre war, one wartime, for several hundred thousand dollars each, which was Fantastic. Um and they work, you know. Uh have you played with uh Enigma machines at those? I haven't personally no. You should go down there and get one of the working ones because

You know, it's it's very mechanical. It's like yeah, it's like Swiss main. They still work if you've got the light bulbs and the batteries and you can type in a coded message, you know, and it will unencrypt it for you by switching the rotors and putting it. So we had a couple of those and they're and they're fantastic. The other archive that we sold for over a hundred thousand dollars was some of the working

papers used to decrypt the Egyptian hieroglyphics, the what they call the Rosetta Stone. As you know Well, I actually didn't know this. Did you know that was Napoleon's troops, the French, are the ones that found the Rosetta Stone when Napoleon decided, I'm gonna invade Egypt? And he and he took like fifty scientists and people with him to document antiquities'cause Napoleon was a collector too, you know? And then Napoleon loses to the English. And so the English grab

the Rosetta Stone and take it to London where it is now today. So we had we have an original rubbing of the top half of the Rosetta Stone. And then we have the working papers of Sir Thomas Young, the English scientist that was racing to decrypt hieroglyphics, working papers with pencil notations where they're um actually translating

the hieroglyphics to the Coptic and breaking the code of hieroglyphics. So we also had hieroglyphics and things from Champagne, the French guy who decrypted the Rosetta stone. So those sold well too. So um Yeah, we just had a great spy auction with all kinds of amazing artifacts and letters. So it's f it was fabulous.

Why do you think people are so fascinated by the code-breaking world? And can you kind of speak to the importance? And I will obviously reference the SPY Museum here, you know, what is the importance in upholding the history and legacy of this? Well I I you know I think since

Probably before there was writ written communications, things were done in code. Military secrets were forever encoded. You didn't want your opponents knowing what your plans were, how many troops you have, or you know, what the weather was. So I think through time immemorial there's been coding. And Is it Sudoku, Sudoku, crossword puzzles? Humans have that brain, you know, they're fascinated with trying to solve that puzzle. Whatever that is, we want to know what it says.

Right. So I think there's this fascination to try to break the code and and With cryptos, you know, by the way, it's installed in the garden of the CIA where the code breakers are working all day, probably breaking codes that you know, the Russians and the Chinese and who knows who else, you know, and then they go out in the courtyard and challenge to do this. And so this is this passion to unencrypt messages

Because you know you can write something normal and it comes out garbled, right? And and to be able to ungarble that, you know, is quite the challenge. And I think it's in human nature to try to Listen in, find out the secret. How many military troops are there? You know, what are their plans? And so throughout military history,

There are coded messages. And I think I saw some that you have some at the spy museum. There's some Revolutionary War coded messages. By the way, your exhibit there uh is really complete, really fantastic. Um I really enjoy my time.

Now finally, tell me just in general about some of the most fascinating things that have come across your radar in this business. Like I know you said you ha sold a lot of rare manuscripts and documents that have been encoded, and I'm just kind of wondering what else has come across your desk? We specialize in manuscripts. and documents. And there has been coded messages that we've sold, but I I want to tell you my very, very, very favorite.

object because it was in a foreign language for me. I had to unencode it. We had this we had this picture. You know that famous picture of Einstein with his tongue sticking out, right? I mean it's one it's like the most famous photo of Albert Einstein. And uh I had just started at the auction house and one of my colleagues opens up this box and out comes this museum quality silver gelatin print oversized.

Of Einstein with his tongue sticking up and on it he has written something in German and I am like What does that say? And uh one of my colleagues of course puts it in a Google translate or something and it's totally garbled. Like I needed uh a cipher to understand what it said. It didn't make any sense and uh We didn't pay to have a professional translator, but I in this case I said listen

you know because they wanted the consigner to pay and that the consigner had bought this at another auction for eight thousand dollars all the money she had she had bought this because she knew it was valuable so we got to translated And Einstein on there in German had written basically This gesture is aimed at all humanity. Albert Einstein took he was sticking his tongue out at the world and he knew the power of that image, which I thought was So fascinating.

And if you go and if you track down the original photo, it's a press photo. It was his birthday. He was a professor at Princeton, but he was so world famous, Einstein.

that hit paparazzi and one of the cameramen said professor einstein give us a smile for your birthday and he sticks his tongue out for a split second and one of the guys gets it and there's Einstein with his time sticking out but if you see the photo he's sitting next to an elderly couple So he Einstein actually sees it in the newspaper, writes to the guy Says, listen, I like that picture of me, but can you crop out my friends and send me a print? And this is what

I have it in my hands. So this is Einstein's own personal copy of the most famous photo of him ever taken. Einstein was type sticking out. And wouldn't you know it? Seven, eight weeks later, after they said She spent that eight grand. We sold her for one hundred twenty five thousand dollars. You know why? Because we unencoded, we decrypted Einstein's message to the world, you know, by translating that German. So that's my favorite.

That's absolutely amazing. Um well Bobby, it's been so fascinating having you on today. Thank you so much. Oh, I'm so grateful. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of Spycast. If you like the episode, follow us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and leave us a rating or review. It really helps. And if you have any feedback or want to hear about a particular topic, you can reach us by email at spycast at spymuseum.org.

I'm your guest host, Flora Warshaw, and this show is brought to you from Airwave, Goat Rodeo, and the International Spy Museum in Washington.