Page 38 : Beale Ciphers Analyses
The Gillogly strings debunked
In 1980, James Gillogly, a computer scientist at the think tank RAND and the president of the American Cryptogram Association wrote a paper titled The Beale Cipher: A Dissenting Opinion. When Beale cipher 1 is decoded with the Declaration of Independence it produces several character strings, the best known being ABFDEFGHIIJKLMMNOHPP. This is statistically impossible so he concludes "When viewed as a hoax it makes perfect sense." In the course of his analysis he also states that the third letter above, F, is the result of a coding error.
Over the ensuing years this paper became the major support for those who believe The Beale Papers story is a hoax. This page will show that that Mr. Gillogly's arguments are clearly false, that the strings are presented exactly as intended, and with a clear purpose.
We begin by listing several of the character strings in the same sequence as they appear in Beale cipher 1 when decrypted with the Declaration of Independence.
AABB AAA PPP AABBCC TTTTT AAA AAA ABFDEFGHIIJKLMMNOHPP TTT TTTT
AAA AAA AAA ... the letter A 3 times, repeated 3 times, illustrating 33
AABBCC ... the first 3 letters of the alphabet with 3 repetitions, illustrating 33
PPP TTT ... another 33
In the long string ABFDEFGHIIJKLMMNOHPP
the 3rd letter F is highlighted by being out of sequence
and it is out of sequence by 3 spaces (DEF) ... illustrating 33
and there are 3 letters doubled, II MM PP
Further, in his paper Mr. Gillogly references Dr. Carl Hammer's paper "How did TJB encode B2?" as follows: "...the person who encrypted B2 made errors of this type, or about one every 33 letters".
And the following is also from Dr. Hammer's paper: "...the last 33 I's encoded are all repetitions of numbered elements used earlier."
The entire Beale story is based on 3 ciphers and 3 letters from TJB to Robert Morriss, yet again 33.
It is impossible not to see the character strings as a signature by the freemason author of The Beale Papers as the numbers 3 and 33 are paramount in their order.
Who are the freemasons?
Freemasonry is the largest and oldest fraternal organization in the world—an oath-bound society, often devoted to fellowship, moral discipline, and mutual assistance. Today, freemasons are a social and philanthropic organization meant to make its members lead more virtuous and socially oriented lives.
These US Presidents were known to be freemasons: George Washington, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William H. Taft, Warren G. Harding, and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Freemasons are very serious citizens and notably are not prone to trickery and hoaxes as Mr. Gillogly would have us believe.
So the character strings were put there for a clear purpose: to identify the author as a freemason and to say that this cipher cannot be solved using the Declaration of independence as a key. It follows the reader must look elsewhere for a solution.
With due deference to Mr. Gillogly, his paper also states "The observations in this paper do not constitute an unequivocal proof that the Beale treasure cipher, Bl, is a hoax.." Indeed! Paul James Smith has produced a solution. Critics can doubt the details of his solution but they cannot deny that it is "a" solution... the only one
