Morning Edition, June 9, 2005 · For 15 years, a bronze sculpture in the CIA's courtyard has taunted amateur and professional code-breakers alike. Kryptos is a copper wall that features four long coded passages. Cryptographers from the National Security Administration and the CIA have cracked the first three.

I was *extremely* annoyed to only find out about this segment *after* it aired. But at least there's a stream on the website.

I'm also very disappointed in NPR, since it looks like they pulled most of the factoids for their piece straight out of the Wall Street Journal article. I got no contacts from them, whatsoever, which is a big flag to me that the reporter was *not* doing their homework. I'd had higher hopes for NPR's journalism. Then again, they did get quotes from Sanborn and Scheidt, so that's good.

I also find it amusing that the mainstream press is just now catching up with the article that Wired.Com did over four months ago. The reporter for the wired.com piece, Kim Zetter, did an excellent and thorough job, and it's really her article that eventually sparked the WSJ article, which sparked multiple types of coverage: An invitation for me to be on a local St. Louis talk-radio show, an upcoming piece on Philadelphia media for another Kryptos researcher, a CNN segment that'll probably air next week, and the NPR segment which aired today. And the NPR segment is probably what sparked an article that'll be upcoming in the U.K. newspaper "The Guardian", probably hitting the wires this weekend.

It's fascinating watching the press ripples, to see who picks up which story.

And tracing backwards: Kim's wired.com article was sparked by the talk I gave at Def Con, which can be traced back to my own introduction to Kryptos, via the PhreakNIC v3.0 Code which JonnyX wrote back in 1999.

"The flapping of a butterfly's wings," indeed....

Elonka :)

NPR : CIA Experts Still Spooked by Kryptos Puzzle