Page 224 - Codes News Today

Maryland. he couldnt remember how he encyphered the numbers. he couldnt remember the key to break the codes. we needed to sit down with brian reagan to figure out how to use the year book to unlock the code. and so we spent hours and hours together going over different parts of the code. we needed to figure out the relationship between the numbers in the code and the year book itself. and so when you look at the code, the first line of the maryland code was the words number one. we learned that ...

Rest of the message. right towards the end of the interview we pointed smout anomalies that we had observed on the bottom of the code. we said, brian, what is this, why did this happen? the bottom two lines mathematically were not similar to the entire rest of the message. and of course i dont remember, dont remember. brian, his own method of using such complex methods was a detriment in a lot of the codes. he made them overly complex so he couldnt remember how to break them. we needed to know w...

>> we did not know what classified information hed taken. and if brian reagan committed espionage, he deserved to go to jail, and it was my job to put him in jail. so now we have all of our resources towards the case and we are looking very hard at his entire background. from what we learned about brian reagan, he had a difficult childhood. he had dyslexia, and so he couldnt read, and so you can imagine what thats like for a child that cant read. because of dyslexia, people assumed he wasnt br...

>> so now, number one priority is to break the codes, find whatever hes taken or whatever hes giving away. we need to know what he had sto stolen, where is it, has he made contact with a foreign power. brian had secrets and we needed to learn what he knew and we knew we needed to unlock these codes. [ classical music playing ]

On august 23rd, 2001, the fbi arrested brian reagan at dulles airport in virginia just as he was getting ready to board an international flight. >> there are so many different items on him when he was arrested. brian had three different letters with codes on them, sheets and sheets of these three digits. he had cryptic notations. he was basically covered with codes all the way down to his shoes. and we knew we needed to unlock these codes and find whatever hes taking or whatever hes giving away....

Information. that is a really interesting and complex scenario, one ive never seen before. and later they find documents between the sole of his shoe and the liner of his shoe. they contain addresses of the overseas embassies that we were concerned about. and he has a number of documents that are encrypted. >> brian had three different letters with codes on them, sheets and sheets of these three digits. brian had notes with cryptic, seemingly random words written on it. he had cryptic notations ...

Analysis of the laboratory. a crypt analyst is someone who breaks codes. were not breaking codes that are made by computers. were breaking codes made by people. what is this person doing? what are the quirks that produced this type of code? now our sole purpose is breaking these codes as the trial date is getting closer and closer and closer. and so i walked into a room where all of brians codes were laid out, and it was just like a smorgasbord of different codes. it was really kind of overwhelm...

That we would agree to that. and brian reagan said, no. i dont want 12 years. i want eight years. if you dont give me eight years, im going to go to trial. my argument was if we allowed brian reagan to gray mill the government, who says the next spy is not going to try to do the same thing? it was just a bad idea. and so we prepared to go to trial. >> for the first time now in half a century, an espionage trial in the united states could lead to a death sentence. the trial of brian patrick reaga...

This through to the end. and so we went into court. we told our story. i showed the jury where we succeeded and i showed them where we couldnt figure out the codes. and we left it in the hands of the jury. it was a short time later we found that he was convicted. >> brian reagan was found guilty by a jury in february of 2003. this is a man who went from having the potential of 12 years to now waiting sentencing, which ended up being life. strangely enough, while thats an exciting moment, we stil...

You see things. that ray of hope comes. wow, i can actually maybe break this. sometimes, try as you might, you just hit a wall and you cant do anything. then that roller coaster goes back down and you feel like, ill never break this. you have to recognize when youre beat. you have to be able to move on. otherwise youll never sleep again. the one thing is there were so many codes to try, when you got stalled at one, you could start working on another. and so i had this little note and i thought, ...