Now checking the sources (ha!) the transcript of the original book has only "Thomas J. Beale" and nowhere Jefferson. Bad, bad Skeptoid! The transcript here appe

Now checking the sources (ha!) the transcript of the original book has only "Thomas J. Beale" and nowhere Jefferson. Bad, bad Skeptoid! The transcript here appears to match the images of the book (in the second link) except for the Declaration, which doesn't match the one in the book (the numbering in the book has the same numbering for two ten word runs, and that is apparently necessary for the correct decoding): http://www.unmuseum.org/bealepap.htm http://www.unmuseum.org/bealepap.htm So if the joke exists it's not so obvious as Skeptoid writes, we just have Thomas J. and the Declaration of Independence in the book. Still the conclusion that using the known key for 2 on the code 1 gives the substrings "abbbccccdde" and "abcdefghiijklmmnoh" seems symptomatic: http://rogergrambihler.tripod.com/BealeHoax.htm http://rogergrambihler.tripod.com/BealeHoax.htm (a) ( (a) nicely fitting for the subject, the investigation is on Tripod, and it still exists! Yay, Tripod!)