PHILADELPHIA: A coded message in a book purchased four years ago for 25 cents implies that Edwin M. Stanton, Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of War, was involved in the president’s assassination, it was disclosed yesterday. Ray Neff, of New Jersey, said the book belonged to Brig-Gen L.C. Baker, the Union Army’s Chief of Secret Police.

Neff, writing in the current issue of the Civil War Times, said scribblings on the flyleaf and small dots under letters in the text formed a 250-word coded message. He said Gen Baker, who served directly under Stanton, stated in the message that the death of Lincoln was caused by persons “officially close” to him.

Neff said he purchased the book, a copy of Colburn’s United Service magazine, Series II, 1864, while browsing through old volumes at a bookstore. He said he and his wife attempted to decipher the code and after getting only a few scattered words in months of part-time work, enlisted the aid of the late Leonard Foursche, a professional cryptographer.

Neff said the code was deciphered to read; “I am constantly being followed. They are professionals. I cannot fool them.” Then followed an allegorical passage “in New Rome there walked three men” a Judas, a Brutus and a spy. “The fallen man lay dying, Judas came and paid respects to one he hated, and when at last he saw him die, he said ‘now the ages have him, and the nations now have I’.” Stanton, at Lincoln’s bedside was believed to have said, “Now he belongs to the ages”.

The coded message continues, “but lest one is left to wonder what has happened to the spy, it was I, Lafayette C. Baker, 2-5-68”.

A signature block, identified by police as Gen Baker’s, was brought out through chemical treatment. Neff said that Gen Baker possibly wrote the message as an act of revenge or while insane, but nonetheless, he said, it does fit the pattern of accusations against Stanton.— Agencies