The President's Book of Secrets

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Narrator:
He is the most

powerful person in the world.

He commands the greatest

military in history.

And every public move he makes

is recorded and analyzed.

(Richard Nixon) I shall resign

the Presidency effective at noon

tomorrow.

Narrator:
But in an era where

almost nothing can be kept

private, does the President of

the United States have secrets--

information so forbidden, so

potentially dangerous that it

must be kept hidden from the

public?

(Dan Rather) There are some

things that you don't want to

put in writing any more than you

have to.

(Whispering voice)

(Newt Gingrich) We keep lots

of secrets, we keep an amazing

number of secrets.

(Allan Lichtman) There are

absolutely presidential secrets

that have never been revealed.

Narrator:
But if there are

secrets, where would they be

kept-- in a computer, a safe, a

locked briefcase-- and who else,

if anyone, could be trusted to

share them?

(Dan Quayle) There are things

that George Bush 41 and I know

that not too many other people

know.

Narrator:
There are those who

believe in the existence of

book-- a book that contains the

topmost secrets of the united

States of America, a book passed

down from one President to

another in a nearly unbroken

chain that extends all the way

back to the beginning of the

nation's highest office and

whose content is known to only

five living persons.

But does such a book exist?

Is there really a President's

Book of Secrets?

(John Roberts) Are you

prepared to take the oath,

Senator?

(Barack Obama) I am.

Roberts:
I, Barack Hussein

Obama...

Obama:
I, Barack Hussein

Obama, do solemnly swear...

Narrator:
On January 20,

2009, Chief Justice of the

Supreme Court John Roberts

administers the oath of office

to President-elect Barack Obama.

Roberts:
So help you God?

Obama:
So help me God.

Roberts:
Congratulations,

Mr. President.

(Cheering and applause)

Narrator:
Later that day,

upon arriving in the oval

office, the nation's 44th

President discovers a single

envelope atop his desk.

Addressed to "44," it contains

a personal message from the

outgoing President, George w.

Bush.

But when asked about the letter,

President Obama declines to

reveal its contents.

But why?

What could have been so

important, so confidential that

only another President's eyes

could behold the letter's

contents?

Did it involve matters of

national security?

Did it contain critical

information about the economy?

Or much, much more?

Some have even speculated that

there is, in fact, an entire

book filled with such secret

information, a so-called book

of secrets passed on from one

President to another.

If so, what would be in it?

From election to inauguration,

President-elect Barack Obama had

only 78 days to prepare himself

to take office.

But how did he get up to speed?

Did he have he from a secret

book left behind by his

predecessor, or was the

intelligence he received from

less audacious and more

conventional sources?

Rather:
A lot of it is told

orally, and understandably and

rightfully so.

There are some things that you

don't want to put in writing any

more than you have to.

Quayle:
The ones that were

probably the most interesting,

ones where they said, "Okay,

well, let me just tell you some

other things that we know."

They didn't really want to put

that down on paper.

Narrator:
In the weeks before

the inauguration, former CIA

Director Michael Hayden briefed

President-elect Obama regarding

ongoing covert activity by the

United States against its

foreign enemies.

(Michael Hayden) I began by

saying, "Mr. President-elect,

these have all been personally

authorized by the presidents.

But they are not authorized by

the person of the President.

They are authorized by the

office of the President.

So Mr. President, unless you

tell us to stop something, the

afternoon after you've been

sworn in, we'll still be doing

all of the."

That's called the attention-

getting step...

(Laughing):
...When you do the

briefing.

And, and then I, then I walked

him through it.

(Ron Kaufman) Quite frankly,

you know things from briefings

that you didn't know before--

the size of the debt, the threat

from overseas, the amount of

terrorists that may be in the

country.

Things that you know on the

surface from your briefings, but

when you get down to the depth

of it, you say, "Holy smokes,

wish I had known that during

the campaign."

It's one thing to be the

candidate.

It's another thing to have your

finger on the button,

as they say.

Narrator:
But no matter how

well-briefed or thoroughly

informed, few incoming

presidents are prepared for

just what they will learn on

inauguration day.

Only then will he or she have

unlimited access to all

classified documents, answers to

almost any national security

question they might have.

But how might this new secret

knowledge affect the President's

policies and priorities?

And could this be the real

reason for the marked

differences between the rhetoric

of a presidential candidate...

George H.W. Bush: Read my

lips:
No new taxes.

Obama:
We will start getting

to work.

We will close Guantanamo.

Narrator:
...And the rhetoric

of a President who now has

access to more sophisticated

government intelligence?

Hayden:
You elect a President

because of vision.

He has a view of the world and

he has a view of where he wants

to take the world.

Okay, sometimes that view is not

consistent with the intelligence

officer's view of the world as

it is.

(Clay Johnson) The greatest

example I can imagine is a

person who ascended to President

by death-- Harry Truman-- who,

upon becoming President, learned

that there was an atomic bomb.

Gingrich:
Harry Truman as

Vice President did not know that

we had built the atomic bomb.

When he became President and was

being briefed on the scale of

the weapon and the potential

power it had, and he literally

knew nothing about it.

Johns:
You think it changed

his thinking about how he waged

the war?

You bet.

Rather:
I often wonder what

he said to his wife when he went

back in the family quarters,

just after he learned of that.

Narrator:
Today the President

has a unique handle on the

nuclear arsenal.

Everywhere he goes he is

accompanied by a military aide

who carries a 45-pound briefcase

known as the "nuclear football."

(Peter Metzger) It's seen in

pictures all the time.

It's a black kind of doctor-

looking briefcase that I used to

say contained a tuna sandwich

and a Playboy magazine.

What's in it is highly

classified, but what it does is

allows the President, as the

commander in chief, to be

connected to the national

military command center and

those force commanders who must

respond to an order to initiate

a nuclear action.

Narrator:
Officially known as

the President's emergency

satchel, the nuclear football

was initiated in the 1950s by

President Dwight Eisenhower.

(Michael Bohn) The Cold War

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