Editing Final Report 2010 (section)

===The Code===
[[Image:Somertoncode.jpg|thumb|left|600px|The handwriting of the Somerton Man showing his pencil markings in the back of a book of poetry by Omar Khayyam.]]
The code found in the back of The Rubaiyat revealed a sequence of 40 – 50 letters.  It has been dismissed as unsolvable for some time due to the quality of hand writing and the available quantity of letters. The first character on the first and third line looks like an “M” or “W”, and the fifth line’s first character looks like an “I” or a “V”. The second line is crossed out (and is omitted entirely in previous cracking attempts), and there is an “X” above the “O” on the fourth line. Due to the ambiguity of some of these letters and lines, some possibly wrong assumptions could be made as to what is and isn’t a part of the code.

Professional attempts at unlocking this code were largely limited due to the lack of modern techniques and strategies, because they were carried out decades earlier. When the code was analysed by experts in the Australian Department of Defence in 1978, they made the following statements regarding the code:

* There are insufficient symbols to provide a pattern.
* The symbols could be a complex substitute code or the meaningless response to a disturbed mind.
* It is not possible to provide a satisfactory answer.


To this day, both the identity of the Somerton Man and the code has yet to be solved and provides the basis for our research project. Due to the apparent cause of death, a spy theory also began circulating. In 1947, The US Army’s Signal Intelligence Service, as part of Operation Venona, discovered that there had been top secret material leaked from Australia’s Department of External Affairs to the Soviet embassy in Canberra. Three months prior to the death of the Somerton Man, on the 16th of August 1948, an overdose of digitalis was reported as the cause of death for US Assistant Treasury Secretary Harry Dexter White, who had been accused of Soviet espionage under Operation Venona. Due to the possible similar causes of their death, this added to suspicions of the unknown man being a Soviet spy.