Now checking the sources (ha!) the transcript of the original book has only &quot;Thomas J. Beale&quot; 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&#x27;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):<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.unmuseum.org&#x2F;bealepap.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.unmuseum.org&#x2F;bealepap.htm</a><p>So if the joke exists it&#x27;s not so obvious as Skeptoid writes, we just have Thomas J. and the Declaration of Independence in the book.<p>Still the conclusion that using the known key for 2 on the code 1 gives the substrings &quot;abbbccccdde&quot; and &quot;abcdefghiijklmmnoh&quot; seems symptomatic:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;rogergrambihler.tripod.com&#x2F;BealeHoax.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;rogergrambihler.tripod.com&#x2F;BealeHoax.htm</a> (a)<p>( (a) nicely fitting for the subject, the investigation is on Tripod, and it still exists! Yay, Tripod!)