Austin Code-Breaker Reveals Miss Teen South Carolina Plot
By Editor | September 8, 2007
If you’ve watched any major news network over the last week, you’ve probably seen the story of Miss South Carolina at the 2007 Miss Teen USA pageant.
When asked a straightforward question about the number of Americans who cannot locate the U.S. on a map, the beauty contestant lapsed into a nonsensical diatribe about South Africa, Iraq, and the geographical ignorance of “U.S. Americans.”
Since then, the story has exploded with media- and Internet-driven popularity. Case in point, a video of the botched response was posted on YouTube (see below) and has since been viewed by millions of people.
Click to view coded response
But as it turns out, the incident that many have dismissed as a harmless (but embarrassing) lack of public speaking ability may be something much different — and far more sinister.
When asked the now-infamous map question, Miss Teen South Carolina gave the following response:
“I personally believe … that U.S. Americans are unable to do so … because … uh… some people out there in our nation don’t have maps … and … uh … I believe that our education, like such as in South Africa and … uh … the Iraq, everywhere, like, such as … and I believe that they should … our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S. … uh … or, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries … so we will be able to build up our future … for our [children].”
While the response was laughed off by most people, it raised suspicion in the mind of Bucky Tellroger, a world-renowned cryptographic analyst and UT professor. An expert in code breaking, Tellroger noticed some odd rhythmic repetitions during the botched response, and he set to work analyzing it further.
“There was just something about it,” said Tellroger. “When you analyze hidden codes for as many years as I have, you have a sixth sense about these things. So I started breaking it down, bit by bit.”
While some at the university shrugged off Tellroger’s suspicions, he was able to enlist the support of some fellow code-breakers. The team set up shop in Tellroger’s basement lab, pouring over a printout of the pageant response and playing the sound byte both forward and backward for clues.
“We compared the infamous ‘map’ response to other comments the girl made on the Today Show and elsewhere. We then used some cryptographic pattern isolation tests to supplement words and phrases. After a couple days of work, we came up with a shocking discovery.”
What the team discovered, according to Tellroger, was a hidden and very disturbing message underlying the surface response. As it turns out, the silly response was actually a shrewdly coded call-to-action from the pageant contestant to a vast legion of models around the country.
“It was an attempted uprising,” said Tellroger. “She was calling out to this underground army, telling them that now was the time to mobilize. Near as we can tell, they had intended to take over the world … or at least the United States.”
Tellroger explained various parts of the code:
“When she said, ‘U.S. Americans,’ she was identifying the first phase of the uprising — to take over the U.S. Why else would she use such an odd phrase? She then went on to mention South Africa and Iraq, which are obviously the second and third targets of the takeover. The ‘Asian countries’ she referred to is a bit vague, but unmistakable as part of the overall plot. Her repeated use of ‘uh’ is similar to the ‘break’ frequently used in military code.”
Tellroger dutifully passed his findings along to the National Security Agency, who is revealing the message for additional clues. Not surprisingly, we could not obtain comment from the NSA on the subject, but we will bring you more details as they emerge.
Topics: National News |