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Between missions, Black Ops Cold War sends you back to a safe house where you talk to your team, study an evidence board and pick the next job. The board is where the campaign hides its puzzles: two optional side operations that need evidence gathered elsewhere, and a locked room with its own riddle. Our three campaign pages cover those puzzles, and this guide gathers them around the one thing they share, the evidence.
The evidence ledger
Six collectibles across five story missions unlock the two side operations. Miss one and the operation stays unsolvable until you replay the mission, so it is worth knowing where each drops before you start.
| Evidence | Mission | Where | Feeds |
|---|---|---|---|
| A Coded Message | Nowhere Left to Run | Handed over by Qasim at the end once he gives up Arash; do not throw him off the roof | Operation Chaos passphrase |
| Numbers Station Broadcast | Brick in the Wall | An audio reel on a table inside the factory, around the point where you free the informant | Operation Chaos passphrase and code |
| Front Page of the Observer | Redlight, Greenlight | Upstairs in the fake ’80s bar, during the photo intel part of the mission | Operation Chaos code |
| Kraus’ Ledger | Brick in the Wall | The top drawer of the cabinet by the bed in Kraus’ apartment | Red Circus travel dates and cities |
| Audio Report in Moscow | Echoes of a Cold War | On the table in the command room with the collapsed gateway, next to a mug, an ashtray and the payphone | Red Circus suspect gender |
| Dead Drop List | Desperate Measures | The Records Room | Red Circus travel dates and cities |
The locked room in the safe house
The safe house has a gate with a six-digit lock, and our safe house gate page finds the three clues that give it away: a clipboard on the left wall of the hallway behind the safe room, reached through a small office with blinds; a Warren Commission Report lying on the ground under a floodlight; and a Dallas news clipping on the right wall of the darkroom. Together they point to the date of the Kennedy assassination, and the code is 11-22-63. You can skip the clues and type it straight in.
Inside are a computer and an arcade cabinet. The computer runs text adventures, launched by typing the list command and then a game’s name, with a keyboard overlay appearing even on a controller. The cabinet starts with only Pitfall II unlocked and adds games as the campaign goes on, which is what the Retro Gamer Dark Ops challenge in our mechanics guide tracks.
Operation Chaos: decrypting the floppy disk
Operation Chaos asks you to open an encrypted disk at the CIA console, which wants a passphrase and a numeric code. Our Operation Chaos page notes that the answers differ from player to player, so it teaches the method rather than the solution.
- Open the Coded Message. It shows a run of red numbers and a run of blue numbers with gaps; work out the missing figures in each sequence.
- Add the two missing numbers together, then listen to the Numbers Station Broadcast. The city read out against that total is your passphrase.
- Open the Front Page of the Observer and pick out the highlighted letters. Unscrambled, they spell a second city.
- Return to the broadcast and note the number sequence read against that second city. That is the code.
- Enter the code and the passphrase together at the console to decrypt the disk and close the operation.
Operation Red Circus: naming the moles
Red Circus is detective work: three of the people on the board are double agents working for Perseus, and our Operation Red Circus page explains how the three pieces of evidence narrow the field. Kraus’ Ledger and the Dead Drop List both give travel dates and cities; cross-check them against the suspects’ movements to shortlist the ones who could have been in the right place at the right time. The Audio Report from Moscow gives the gender of the agents, which removes the rest. Mark the three that survive both filters on the evidence board and the operation opens.
Why the side operations matter
Neither operation changes which ending you get; that comes down to whether you tell the truth in the final interrogation, as our endings guide explains. What they change is the recap that closes the campaign, which reports whether you cracked the disk and whether you lied about the Red Circus suspects. Decrypting the disk also completes a Dark Ops challenge. The puzzles exist by design: before launch, Raven Software’s senior creative director Dan Vondrak told the Official PlayStation Magazine that an ’80s game would have made players solve a puzzle to unlock a side mission, and our report on the RPG-like puzzles keeps his account of the two optional missions that grew out of that idea.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a single answer to Operation Chaos?
No. The cities and numbers change between players, so any code you read online is unlikely to match yours; follow the method above with your own evidence.
What if I threw Qasim off the roof?
You lose the Coded Message and with it the passphrase. Replay Nowhere Left to Run and let him talk.
Can I skip the safe house clues?
Yes. Walk to the gate and enter 11-22-63; the clues only exist to make the code guessable. For the rest of the campaign, including both endings, go back to the Black Ops Cold War hub.