Carol Ritz's Blog

I love spies. Dead drops. Secret Identities. Impossible Missions.

When I was twelve, I read Snow Treasure, about Norwegian children who smuggle gold past Nazi guards to an awaiting ship. That was it. I was hooked. Ever since I’ve been fascinated by the skills and bravery of those who risk their lives to conduct secret operations for their country. If a movie has spies in it, I’ve probably seen it. I’ve read Ian Fleming, Jean LeCarre, and countless other spy novels. I’ve also read tons of nonfiction books about codes and ciphers, the CIA and the NSA and spent many evenings watching documentaries about intelligence operations.

I was never a spy myself but live in the DC metro area where many neighbors and friends work for the intelligence community.  Not only do they lie, steal and perhaps even kill as part of their job, they must also keep their activities secret from their own families. They also give up many of their freedoms (speech, association, travel) in order to protect ours.

Will be reviewing some of these books, documentaries and movies for my blog and also for Goodreads. Meanwhile,  if you have a great book or movie you’d like to recommend, would love to hear about it!

Who was Thomas Jefferson Beale?

A fun thing about novels is playing what if? Choosing to connect the dots between Beale and Thomas Jefferson opened up a lot of dramatic possibilities.

For 200 years, rumors have circulated that Thomas Jefferson had illegitimate children with his slave, Sally Hemings.  Known to be a great beauty, she was the child of another slave-master relationship, the half-sister of Jefferson’s dead wife Martha, and 7/8 Caucasian. Given Sally’s appearance and the intimate quarters in Paris, it is plausible she and Jefferson had an intimate relationship. In fact, a recent DNA study proved that a Jefferson male fathered at least one of Sally Hemings’ children, and circumstantial evidence points to Thomas.

Could Thomas Jefferson Beale also be his illegitimate son? The timing works. According to the legend, Beale left his treasure around 1820.  Sally was rumored to have been pregnant when she returned from Paris, and to have had the child in 1790. Coincidentally, a boy named Thomas born into the Jefferson slave household in 1790 mysteriously disappeared from the farm records.

What if the child was adopted into a white family named Beale? Sally could have stayed in France, which had abolished slavery, and kept her freedom, but she agreed to go back to Virginia with Jefferson. It is rumored that she returned in exchange for Jefferson’s promise to free her child. What if she also demanded that he have their child adopted into a white family and raised as white? Her child would have been 15/16 Caucasian and it would have been a simple matter for such a child to pass as white. In fact, two of Sally Hemings known children left Jefferson’s home around 1820 and disappeared into white society. But who would have adopted him? The Beale family was large and was related by marriage to Jefferson’s best friend and neighbor, James Madison.  There was a Thomas Beale from that family who could have been adopted, and who was also the right age to have been born in 1790 and to have left the treasure in Virginia in 1820.

The fact that it’s possible doesn’t mean it’s true, but it would make a great story. I decided to go for it!

According to the legend, Beale created 3 ciphers to a massive treasure, then disappeared. Only one of the ciphers has been solved. So what exactly is a cipher?

In classic cryptography, a cipher works on individual letters or bits. Substituting numbers (or pictures or symbols) for letters would be a cipher. Like a=1,b=2, c=3 etc. or a=z, b=y, c=x So anyone who has ever done an acrostic puzzle or used a decoder ring has solved a cipher.

In the Beale Legend, there are 3 ciphers of a type that could fall into several categories. It’s a polyalphabetic substitution cipher because more than one number can represent a letter of the alphabet. and a one pad cipher because the key is used just once. To come up with the cipher, Beale took the Declaration of independence (the key document) and numbered the words. To put his message into cipher, he took each letter of his message and substituted a number corresponding to the word that started with that letter.

Each word was numbered from 1 to 1322. It began:

When(1) in(2) the(3) course(4) of(5) human(6) events(7) it(8) becomes(9) necessary(10) for(11) one(12) people(13) to(14) dissolve(15) the(16) political(17) bands(18) which(19) have(20) connected(21) them(22) with(23) another(24) and(25) to(26) assume(27) among(28) the(29) powers(30) of(31) the(32) earth(33) the(34) separate(35) and(36) equal(37) station(38) to(39) which(40) the(41) laws(42)

To code your message, you match your letters to the first letter of any word, then substitute the number for the letter. Like if I wanted to code help, I could write it:

h e l p

6, 7,42,13

Beale used the Declaration of Independence, but the key document could be anything—a book, a letter. Find the right key document, and anybody could decode them. Without it, they’re unbreakable—even with the most powerful computers.

Which is why the Beale Ciphers have remained unbroken for nearly 200 years.

Have you ever become obsessed with a mystery? I’m  hooked on The Beale Papers.

Published anonymously in 1885, the pamphlet told an intriguing tale:

In the early 1800’s, the United States was weakened by war, surrounded by enemies and nearly bankrupt. A man named Thomas Jefferson Beale went west into Spanish territory and brought back gold. In 1821 Beale disappeared along with three tons of treasure.

The only clues to its location were 3 ciphers he left behind. Only one has been broken and the Beale Treasure has never been found.

At first, I was convinced the story was a hoax (the Beale Witch Project of its day). Then I learned that members of the National Security Agency, the CIA and private computer firms have searched for the treasure for years.

Why, I wondered, would they care about this treasure, when they’ve ignored every other treasure trove?  What if the Beale legend was true? If Beale’s secrets were bigger than his treasure? I couldn’t stop thinking about it, researching the clues and possibilities.

Before long, my quest became the inspiration for my first novel, which follows a young codebreaker who must solve the mystery to find his brother’s killer.

Want to know more about the Beale Treasure? Try these links Beale Cipher Analysis Beale on Wikipedia

Have you ever been obsessed with a mystery? Would love to hear about it!