The coded message: 370HSSV O773H...
Received at the White House itself, the President read the coded message then passed it to the Vice President and then to the review of the NSA. The NSA reported after 3 days that they could not crack the code. Sec. of State Rice suggested that Britain's MI-6, whose code breakers had provided previous information to the White House, take a look. MI-6 could not determine the code type, let along the code message itself. Even PM BLair was shown the message, but to no avail.
An MI-6 manager had contacts with his counterpart in the French Government, and with the White House giving the OK, it was forwarded to code breakers in Paris. After reviewing the Code for no more than 5 minutes, French PM Villepin contacted George Bush and Dick Cheney in a conference call. The French PM said simply in English: "...About the message? ... You're holding it upside down! ". Bush thanked the French Prime Minister, hung up, and then turned the message up-side down.
Mystery solved.
istrations
