Original subtitles

[music playing]

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.

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?

There's some things that you don't want to put in writing

any more than you have to.

We keep lots of secrets.

We keep an amazing number of secrets.

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?

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 a 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.

JOHN ROBERTS: I, Barack Hussein Obama.

I, Barack Hussein Obama.

do solemnly swear.

NARRATOR: On January 20th, 2009, Chief Justice of the Supreme

Court John Roberts administered the oath of office

to President-elect Barack Obama.

So help you God?

So help me God.

Congratulations, Mr. President.

[cheering]

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 informationm, 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 help from a secret book left behind

by his predecessor?

Or was the intelligence he received from less audacious

and more conventional sources?

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.

The ones that were probably the most interesting, ones

where they said, OK, 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.

I began by saying, Mr. President-elect,

these have all been personally authorized by the president.

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 these.

That's called the attention getting

step, when you do the briefing, and then I walked him

through it.

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 may be in the country.

Things that you know on the surface from your briefings

but when you're down to the depth of you say, holy smokes,

I wish I'd known that during the campaign.

It's one thing to be the candidate.

It's another 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--

Read my lips.

No new taxes.

We will start getting the work.

We will close Guantanamo.

NARRATOR: --and the rhetoric of a president, who now has access

to more sophisticated government intelligence.

You elect a president because of vision.

He has a view of the world.

He has a view of where he wants to take the world.

Sometimes that view is not consistent

with the intelligence officer's view of the world as it is.

The greatest example I can imagine

is a person who ascended to the presidency

by death, Harry Truman, who upon becoming president

learned that there was an atomic bomb.

Harry Truman as vice president did not

know that we had built the atomic bomb.

When he became president, was being briefed on the scale

of the weapon and the potential power

it had, and he literally knew nothing about it.

You think it changed his thinking about how

we wage the war?

You bet.

I often wonder what he said to his wife

when he went back in the family quarters

just after he learned that.

NARRATOR: Today, the president has a unique handle

on the nuclear arsenal.

Everywhere he goes, he's accompanied by a military aide

who carries a 45 pound briefcase known as the nuclear football.

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 it 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.

The Cold War drove a lot of things

that the president did over the years.

One of them was dealing with a surprise attack

by the Soviet Union, a bolt from the blue, missiles on the way.

Our retaliatory strategy was massive retaliation

during most of that time, mutually assured destruction.

According to the Constitution, the president of the United

States is the person who would make that decision.

And so there was a notion that something

that the president had to have the capability

to make that decision anywhere and everywhere

and at all times.

Forget about togetherness between the president

and his wife.

The real togetherness is between the president and the carrier

of the nuclear football that contains the nuclear codes.

NARRATOR: During his transition, the President-elect

is briefed on how to use the codes.

Then during the inauguration, the military

readies two cases, one each for both

the outgoing and incoming presidents.

This serves to both immediately transfer power

and to deter any surprise attacks.

Now let's say there's a report of some kind

of a nuclear attack on the United States.

They open the football.

There is this complicated list of all the various options

the president has, from all out launching everything

and destroying the world, to a surgical attack,

to using tactical weapons.

And the president has got to absorb all this information

in literally a matter of minutes and decide what to do.

NARRATOR: But while a new president comes into office

knowing he will receive the nuclear codes, is he in fact

the only person who can authorize a nuclear attack?

In theory, no nuclear weapon, in theory,

could be launched without the president's say so.

In practice, there was delegation

in the case of the ballistic missile submarines.

Because submarines could not be reached all the time reliably,

had authority to act independently in reality.

Although this is a very delicate subject.

NARRATOR: Fortunately, since World War II,

no president has authorized the use of nuclear weapons

against an enemy target.

But what if the unthinkable does happen

and the military is caught off guard?

Just what are the president's plans for his and the country's

survival?

Could they be found in an actual book of secrets?

In the event of a national emergency,

it is likely that our president's book of secrets

would contain information concerning hidden bunkers,

secret escape routes, and destinations designed

to protect the chief executive, his family, and key members

of his administration.

Such information would have been essential on September 11,

2001, when a team of terrorists hijacked four airliners,

piloting two of them into the towers of the World Trade

Center in New York.

A third into the Pentagon.

And the fourth allegedly targeting the Capitol building

in Washington DC.

The last two planes were still in the air

when President George W. Bush, while visiting

with schoolchildren in Florida, was informed of the attack,

and soon after escorted to Air Force One.

I was traveling with President Bush all day

on September 11th as well.

And we took off.

Probably the quickest takeoff I'd

ever experienced on Air Force One.

Suffice it to say that there are plans and protocols for a lot

of contingencies, so we knew that we were

going to one of several places.

NARRATOR: With the government of the United States apparently

under siege, staff at the White House

also responded to the news.

I was having breakfast with a colleague in the White House

mess in the basement of the West Wing lobby.

At that point, then we gathered the staff.

We just told them to run, run out of the complex

as fast as you can.

NARRATOR: But while the staff were ordered to evacuate,

Secret Service agents quickly escorted Vice President Dick

Cheney and several high ranking officials

to a hidden bunker below the White House known

as the President's Emergency Operation Center or PEOC.

It's in the East Wing basement.

It's an old World War II bomb shelter

with a great big heavy door, full of bunks,

and canned foods, and canned water, and all that.

Cheney and Condi Rice and a few other people

rode out the storm on 9/11 in the PEOC.

NARRATOR: But what if the president's home and office

had been threatened?

Are there methods or avenues of escape from the White House

itself?

And could this information be outlined in a book of secrets?

I was very surprised to learn the quick routes that

needed to be taken in case of an emergency.

And not something that I can discuss,

but there are ways that the president can be moved

from point A to point B very quickly in an emergency

situation.

There is a back staircase from the second floor of the White

House to the third floor of the White House.

And the door was hidden and painted into the wall.

There was no doorknob.

You just touched the door and it opened.

And then there's also tunnels from the White House

under the Treasury building to get out on the other side.

And so I would use the tunnels and get out that way

so I didn't have to go out the front gate.

There were evacuation plans.

They give you a yellow pouch, probably about yay big,

and it actually turns into a gas mask in case of there's

any type of chemical attack, or biological attack, anything

that's airborne that could threaten the individual.

So they give you that.

It's supposed to help you breathe for long enough

to get out of the city.

We were all responsible for knowing what we were supposed

to do in an emergency.

And you had regular briefings and updates to make sure

that you knew because it could happen.

It could happen any moment.

There are other places around town,

but it's pretty sensitive, their location

and their capabilities.

I really can't talk about it.

We know that not far from Washington DC,

there are major underground facilities.

There's one in Virginia in the Shenandoah Mountains known

as the Mount Weather facility, which apparently

is an entire underground city.

And of course, there is another command post in Colorado.

And I would guess there are probably

hundreds of these secure locations around the country

to which the president could be brought.

NARRATOR: Could there really be hundreds

of these secret bunkers spread out across the United States?

And if so, are they all kept ready to secure the president's

safety at a moment's notice?

The very first thing you need is isolation.

You need to be isolated from the threat.

If the threat gets to you, the facility is of no use.

Once you've isolated the person, the very next thing you need

is purified clean air.

If you have enough food, and enough water,

and enough utilities, then you can last indefinitely.

The safety isn't in the fortress.

The safety is in no one knowing where you are.

NARRATOR: But no matter how safe these bunkers are, according

to security experts, the book of secrets

would probably indicate that it is even safer for a president

to stay on the move.

Part of they're getting ready for any terrible occasion

like that, it means getting transportation plans available.

Those are all scheduled ahead of time.

It's all classified and should not be discussed publicly.

But the systems are there.

They have to work perfectly and work immediately.

So I can tell you with firsthand experience

because I stood in for the president

on one of those drills.

I got into the presidential helicopter

and flew to a secret location in the mountains near Camp David.

We landed and refueled the helicopter by hand.

We had a crank pump and a 55 gallon barrel of av-gas,

and then we took off again.

And we circled around and finally landed at the airport

in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

And the tower had closed the airport.

And sitting at the end of the runway was this big white 747.

And we scrambled up the nose wheel ladder

into the main cabin.

And I sat down on this great big leather chair with president

on the back.

And they said, what are your orders, Mr. President?

And I said, well, let's get out of here.

And I'm telling you, they hit the thrust on those engines

and we took off like a rocket.

And it was a great fun.

And we landed at Andrews Air Force Base.

And I went back to my office and my illusions of grandeur

sort of faded away.

NARRATOR: But what if despite the existence of emergency

escape plans and regular drills, neither the president

nor the vice president survive a catastrophic attack on America?

What happens to the government of the United States

if Washington DC is actually wiped out?

Most likely, the president's book of secrets

would contain a chapter on a top secret emergency program known

as the continuity of government, designed to ensure that someone

is always in charge.

It starts with a very simple premise, which is what if there

is a nuclear event or a biological event,

and you eliminate the leadership of the US government?

What happens?

I mean, how do you deal with it?

In a modern real time world, with missiles and everything

else, how many minutes can you spend not having somebody

in charge?

It's the continuity of government.

It's the president, vice president, speaker--

those are the three key people.

But there's a lot of other continuity government.

You got the congressmen, got your cabinet,

you got the military.

We have to be 1,000% contact every single moment

of every single day.

That's the way it works in all administrations.

NARRATOR: However, there are even more secret parts

of this strategy that insiders refer to as the doomsday plan.

In the event of a nuclear attack,

three teams of government officials

would be sent out from Washington

to different locations.

Each team would be prepared to assume leadership

of the country, and would include a cabinet member who

was prepared to become president.

So the executive branch has taken it upon itself

to develop plans for a doomsday scenario that are not

based in the Constitution.

There are plans to keep the government and the country

going under martial law.

They're all extra constitutional.

There's nothing in the Constitution

and there's nothing in the laws of the United States

to govern what would happen under these kinds of doomsday

scenarios.

The Reagan administration in particular

invested a great deal of money in maintenance of continuity

of government.

But that was against the Soviets.

We found all of a sudden in 2001 that we were up against a much

more complex opponent who was much more likely to use

a chemical or biological or nuclear weapon in a way

that we had never really thought about before.

And so under President Bush, there was a very serious effort

at rethinking continuity of government

and putting money into it.

Well I held several positions working for President Bush.

After Director of Advance, I ran an office of cabinet affairs.

And part of that was interacting with the president's cabinet,

who are all in the line of succession for the presidency.

And part of that is getting read into all those programs

and having the security clearance to do that.

And there were many times during the course

of my work in the White House that I would have a hard time

going to sleep.

But I remember probably the hardest time I'd gone to sleep

was the night after I had spent 2 and 1/2 hours being read

into that program.

And thinking, you know look, I'm a staff person.

I just couldn't imagine being the president

and have to be in charge of all this.

It was pretty sobering.

NARRATOR: But underground bunkers and doomsday plans

only serve as defensive strategies.

What about the president's military options?

What kinds of super secret weapons

does he have at his disposal?

And could a book of secrets suggest when and how

the most powerful man in America might unleash the world's

deadliest forces?

In writing an entry into a book of secrets,

would a President include information

about secret briefings by intelligence agencies in which

covert operations and highly classified weapons systems

might be revealed?

Six days a week, the nation's chief executive

chairs the National Security Session,

where he is briefed on all the intelligence issues threatening

the United States.

At each of these meetings, CIA officers

pass along the President's Daily Briefing, or PDB.

This top secret document recounts and analyzes

what intelligence agents are doing around the world.

You might think of it a little bit like a magazine.

It's a small loose leaf book, maybe 15 or 20 pages.

Not necessarily each page a full length page.

Different articles that covers various topics.

And I think depending on the day of the week,

there would be an emphasis on one kind of topic

rather than another.

It is not relentlessly negative,

but it rarely celebrates life.

It's a book about the issues and the problems of the day.

It can be anything from a very specific tactical issue that

arises imminently to something that's

a somewhat more long term strategic look

at a particular problem.

Every Thursday, I went to see the president.

In addition to the PDB, I gave the president

an operational briefing on what CIA was doing.

The majority of that was covert action.

That's activity designed to influence

foreign political military economic events.

Occasionally, I would actually talk about espionage.

Mr. President, we are now able to do this.

We now have access to that.

Those of us who worked in the field during the Cold War--

and I spent over 10 years in the field--

were aware that it was quite possible--

and in some cases likely--

that the intelligence that we were collecting

might well be on the president's desk the following morning

and affect the course of foreign affairs.

NARRATOR: To combat potential problems,

the president has in his arsenal a wide range

of secret intelligence weapons.

Among the most effective and deadly of these in recent

years have been the drones.

These small remote controlled planes

have been used extensively during the wars in Iraq

and Afghanistan.

Drones have served both as reconnaissance tools

and, because they can carry a weapons payload, as killing

machines.

In fact, it can get quite exotic.

Nowadays, they can look at the feed from a drone

over Afghanistan in real time.

The military can type that back to the White House.

And you can sit there in the sit room

and watch what the operator's watching.

NARRATOR: But in addition to secret weapon systems,

wouldn't the president's book of secrets

also include information about top secret agencies?

Organizations that are so clandestine that just

mentioning their names could get a government worker arrested.

We've all heard of NASA.

Well, it turns out there's another space agency as well,

which is called the National Reconnaissance Office.

It was started in the early 1960s

and the fact of its existence wasn't made public until 1992.

So over 30 years, we had a secret space agency whose very

existence was secret.

NARRATOR: The National Reconnaissance Office

develops and operates a series of spy satellites

that fly in low Earth orbit and use advanced space and imaging

technologies.

There's a class of satellites descended from something called

keyholes, which are essentially photographic reconnaissance

satellites.

Giant cameras taking pictures of the ground.

There's another class of optical reconnaissance satellites

called the onyx system.

And what that does is something called synthetic aperture

radar.

It shoots radar beams down to the surface of the Earth

and collects them back to create maps and images.

That allows you to see through clouds.

It allows you to see into the ground.

And it allows you to see at night.

And indeed, military personnel assigned to the onyx program

wear patches that say we own the night.

Oftentimes, the intelligence is very limited.

But there are other times when they have

what's called actionable intelligence, which means

intelligence of a quality that it allows you to use a predator

drone to target a member of the Al-Qaeda leadership.

President Obama has acted on actionable intelligence

numerous times, and actually ordered the killing of Al-Qaeda

leaders.

NARRATOR: The National Reconnaissance Office also

operates massive eavesdropping satellites that can actually

listen in to international phone calls or intercept computer

communication.

These satellites suck up all of the information that

is being routed through communication satellites.

Years ago, when I was representing Mohamed Al-Fayed

dealing with Princess Diana's death,

NSA supposedly picked up surveillance of the ambassador

to the United States from Brazil's wife talking

to Princess Diana about certain sexual dalliances that Princess

Diana was engaged in.

Now the NSA was not secretly monitoring

Diana for the purpose of trying to find out.

Apparently, they were monitoring Brazil because

of sensitive negotiations that were

going on with US-Brazil issues and the rain forest.

The fact that information was picked up by the NSA,

that information is some of the most closely guarded secrets.

And it's the method of communication or signals

intelligence that really is at the heart of some of the most

key fundamental secrets the United States has.

NARRATOR: But perhaps the president's

most valuable intelligence tool isn't located up in space

or across the Potomac River.

Just one floor below the Oval Office

sits a room that is the heart of the president's intelligence

operations.

Most people think of the Situation Room

as a meeting room, but it's really the president's

intelligence center.

And it was started in 1961 by John Kennedy

to allow him to know what the rest of the government

knew at the same time.

Previous presidents had been hostage to the state department

or defense or intelligence for information.

And he realized during the Cuban Missile Crisis

that he couldn't really run the government unless he

had a more rapid arrival of information at the White House.

Today, the president could not do his job without the White

House Situation Room.

NARRATOR: For decades, the Situation Room consisted

of two or three rooms crammed with people and equipment.

But in 2007, during the administration of George W.

Bush, it was expanded to 13 rooms, filled with the ultimate

in high tech, top secret, and super secure communication

capabilities.

The largest of those rooms has walls called whisper walls

to disallow ambient noise.

It has at the end a knowledge wall

on which can be projected pictures, and satellite

pictures, surveillance pictures, and so forth.

Throughout the White House Situation Room

you have a number of phone tubes or we call them Superman tubes

with the capability to have unclassified telephones as well

as top secret telephone.

If the president needs a private moment, or anyone else,

he steps into the director's office.

And they flip a switch and it instantly fogs the glass

so it gives him more privacy.

NARRATOR: The Situation Room also

contains a secret and secure video conferencing system that

allows the president to communicate face

to face with international leaders, ambassadors,

and military commanders.

Every Wednesday, President Bush

met by secure video teleconference

with Prime Minister Maliki or President

Karzai of Afghanistan.

President Bush used to like to say,

I don't want to talk to him on the phone.

I want to look him in the eye.

And then he was able to do that in the new Situation Room.

NARRATOR: Today, the Situation Room functions

as the president's global information and response

center.

It's manned by military aides 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

95% of the information that goes

to the president on a daily basis

is funneled through the Sit Room.

When the oil spill in the Gulf started,

the Sit Room probably became engaged immediately

and reporting on that routinely.

Even though it's not in their portfolio,

the staff knows that it's important to the presidency.

NARRATOR: But who or what determines if something

as a crisis?

And will the protocols for that decision

be contained in a book of secrets?

It varies with President to President,

but it all boils down to recognizing what's a big deal

and what's not.

Reagan asked that only two people contact him after hours,

and that was his chief of staff and his head security advisor.

Whereas other presidents are much more willing to talk

to most anybody.

I remember that President Bush was awakened when Chief Justice

Rehnquist died.

And you would think that that might be something

that you could wait til the morning to tell him.

But the Supreme Court plays such an important role

in the structure of our country that President Bush

had to be told right away.

And so the chief of staff has to make that decision on

whether or not they were going to be wakened.

NARRATOR: Although the White House has had decades

to learn how to deal effectively with traditional threats,

in the 21st century, the nation's enemies are not

so easy to detect or deter.

A cyber attack could seriously compromise the nation's

financial, communications, and military capabilities.

But does the president have any secret means

to protect our most classified information?

And could that knowledge be found

pages of a book of secrets?

In the age of smartphones, iPads, and Kindles,

might the information contained in a president's book

of secrets now be stored, retrieved, and even carried

around digitally?

Could this be the reason why President Barack Obama is

rarely seen without his BlackBerry?

And if so, might the highly sensitive

communications contained within it

be vulnerable to leaks or even a cyber attack?

You could do it on an iPad or something like that.

Then you have a security issues because you'd want to make

sure nobody penetrated it.

I mean, I like technology, but sometimes the plain old

fashioned pen and paper actually work pretty effectively.

He is a very, very connected president.

It's part of what got him elected.

And he insisted on keeping his portable communications device

with him.

As with any cell phone, the moment

he speaks on it to whoever it is and about whatever the subject

is, that can be intercepted by people doing intercepts

of electronic communications.

And therefore, you have the possibility, indeed

the probability that the conversations of the President

of the United States would be picked up by someone that we

don't want to pick it up.

Eventually, as you might imagine,

the new president of United States

is telling you to do something, you figure out a solution,

which was to build an NSA secured version of this device

so he's able to keep in touch with a few people.

NARRATOR: Although President Obama and others in the White

House staff received secured phones,

the threat of these devices falling into the wrong hands

is still a problem which plagues the White House.

An iPhone like this-- and I'm just holding it in my hand--

has the capacity of approximately 1,750 copies

of all seven Harry Potter novels.

It is an astonishing amount of storage information.

If you start to think about how much secret government

information could be kept on one of these devices,

it starts to be astonishing.

You could have secret access codes.

You could have directions to undisclosed locations.

You could have so much information,

and that's just if you got a hold of the device.

Now there's a second and much more scary

issue, if it falls into enemy hands

and then is returned back to its owner unchanged.

There is the ability to put onto a smartphone in about

15 minutes a piece of software that runs undetectably,

and turns a BlackBerry or other smartphone into a very

dangerous surveillance device.

For example, there was a recent theft of White House

blackberries in New Orleans during the recent leaders

conference.

These phones were returned eventually to their owners.

But before they're returned to their owners,

they must be wiped completely, and zeroed out, and rebuilt

because the potential of having basically a piece of software

hidden in the background that's doing very, very

dangerous things exists.

And this is not science fiction.

The thing about these security breaches

is that they seem incredibly benign.

They seem really simple.

But when you're talking about the Executive

Office of the President of the United States, we all care.

Every telephone, every bit of electronic gear

can be a transmitter and a receiver.

And so it's feasible that a telephone could pick up

certain RF emanations within the Oval Office and transmit it.

We've certainly done it.

We've stood outside foreign embassies

and followed IBM mag typewriters,

and could replicate everything that was

typed on that machine that way.

NARRATOR: When Michael Bohn became the director

of the White House Situation Room,

he noticed a similar vulnerability.

When I got there, there were no RF shields on the windows.

And I said, somebody could sit at the Hay-Adams Hotel

across the street and pick up conversations

from the Oval Office.

And I threw a fit.

And the Secret Service said, don't worry about it.

We've got it covered.

But I had the Sit Room windows covered with a fine metal mesh

that would stop certain kinds of radiation

from coming in or going out.

NARRATOR: In July 2009, computer systems in the White House,

the Pentagon, and the New York Stock Exchange began to crash.

Three days later, State Department and Homeland

Security websites disappeared, and servers at the Treasury,

National Security Agency, and even the Pentagon

came under attack.

The strikes were the work of computer hackers sending out

covert messages from somewhere in North Korea.

These attacks amount to an intelligence attack.

It is probing your defenses.

And some would say preparing the battlefield in case there were

a cyber war.

NARRATOR: The damage was eventually contained

and the evidence showed no attempt to gain control

over any government systems.

But the cyber attack revealed a vulnerability

that has existed since 1985, when email was first

used in the White House under President Ronald Reagan.

When you or I send an email message,

nothing really is going to go wrong if somebody sees it.

If somebody in the White House sends an email message

and it gets intercepted before it should be, people could die.

The United States is subjected to thousands of cyber attacks

every single day.

Will some of those places where they penetrate

lead to information which is classified, sensitive,

or information they don't have?

Can they get far enough to perhaps take over a computer,

to create a Trojan horse out of it?

A so-called botnet in which in the event of conflict,

a number of our computers could be used against us

or to stop functioning.

NARRATOR: Ironically, in the months prior to the July 2009

cyber attack, President Barack Obama

had ordered Secretary of Defense Robert Gaetz

to create Pentagon based Cyber Command Division,

with both offensive and defensive capabilities.

Cyberspace is real and so are the risks that come with it.

Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups

have spoken of their desire to unleash a cyber

attack on our country.

NARRATOR: But just how vulnerable

are the nation's most vital computer stored secrets?

In the event of a cyber attack that

brought down all or part of our power grid,

our electrical power grid, what would

be the consequences of that?

Quite clearly, the consequences would be a very high degree

of chaos throughout the country.

NARRATOR: While the information age has ushered

in a new generation of high tech spy gear,

the Cold War era methods of the past century

also continue to threaten the president.

Might a president's book of secrets

contain information about spies who have infiltrated the White

House?

I am not aware of any listening device found

in the Oval Office or the Situation Room,

which does not mean it might not have happened.

We certainly recall within the period of the 90s,

there was an instance where a Russian military intelligence

officer had managed to get a listening device into the state

department.

So that's getting close.

The KGB tried very hard to put people into the White House.

But as far as I know, no cases were discovered in the Cold

War.

And then when there was a brief moment in Moscow when

the secrets were out between the old Soviet system

and the arrival of Mr. Putin's rebuilding of the Soviet style,

in between there was a gap when people talked a lot.

And we never heard of anybody during the Cold War

who managed to get a spy into the White House.

NARRATOR: Often the biggest reason

classified information and communication becomes

compromised or enters the public domain

isn't due to any foreign espionage agency,

but rather because of those working closest

to the president or within the government bureaucracy.

All presidents go crazy over leaks.

It's the one thing that is sure to irritate or enrage

an American president.

And there's not a single one of them

who has been immune to this.

It's actually a colossal waste of the president's time

because it's very hard to track leaks.

Nixon set up the plumbers unit, they called it,

to try to plug the leaks.

And it didn't work.

It contributed to the Watergate scandal.

And all of the efforts that presidents right through Obama

to try to guess who might be leaking get mad at their staff

over leaks.

Every president the United States probably going back

to George Washington uttered those silly words, there

will be no leaks.

NARRATOR: In the summer of 2010, some of the United States war

plans became public when the website Wikileaks published

tens of thousands of classified reports and private emails.

The documents, which contained intricate details

of military operations in Afghanistan,

appeared to have been leaked from a source within US Army

intelligence.

If so, could the highly sensitive information contained

within a president's book of secrets

be similarly compromised?

People feel you can't keep a secret in Washington.

I have found that that's simply not the case.

There are many, many secrets that have never seen

the light of public knowledge.

There are absolutely presidential secrets

that have never been revealed from the White House.

Let's not forget, a lot of what happens in government

happens in what we call the invisible government--

the intelligence agencies, secret military operations,

about which we may know nothing.

NARRATOR: But in the age of cyber terrorism and government

embedded whistle-blowers, is it really possible

that there is a presidential book of secrets containing

information that has never been disclosed or leaked?

If so, what might a curious president find out about some

of the long held myths, mysteries,

and scandals locked away in the White House?

If a president's book of secrets exists, some of the chapters

would likely be devoted to the many long held presidential

myths, mysteries, and conspiracy theories.

I think anyone who would have the opportunity to say, well,

if I had the choice of knowing some of the most closely

guarded secrets of the United States, what would they be?

And probably in the current era, one

would think about the same things

that President Clinton allegedly came up with when

he came to the Oval Office.

Who actually killed President Kennedy?

Are there UFO aliens living among us,

or somewhere secreted away in a chamber

that no one knows about?

How did our technology come about?

Did Velcro actually come from aliens?

Which has been an allegation in some classified, so-called

classified books.

NARRATOR: But with a book of secrets,

could the president find out the truth

about anything he wants to know, even the nation's most

top secret information, simply by asking for it?

Can he even open files that have been ordered sealed?

Technically, he has the ability to learn everything.

But as a practical matter, a lot of agencies

do keep the secrets.

And frankly, sometimes the president doesn't want to know.

Once you get to become US president,

you don't have to have a clearance,

you don't have to follow any rules,

and there's no classification.

I've never been a president.

But as I understand it from presidents,

they're very keen to know what their predecessors did.

Since World War II, we've been enveloped in secrecy.

Everything is kept secret.

The public knows very little.

The National Archives is currently

saying that it has a backlog of 408 million pages of classified

records.

Despite the fact that Congress passed a law trying to get all

of the Kennedy assassination records out,

there are still about 50,000 pages of CIA records relating

to the Kennedy assassination that are being withheld today.

NARRATOR: If a president's book of secrets does exist,

might it silence once and for all those conspiracy

theorists who maintain that President Bush had

advanced knowledge of the terrorist attacks

on September 11th, 2001?

There were those who believe the Bush presidency was

faltering.

Bush's approval ratings were fairly low

and he needed an enemy.

He needed to kind of recreate the Cold War with a new enemy,

and that new enemy would be Al-Qaeda.

That there was an intelligence report

warning about an attack on the United States using airplanes.

That Bush knew about this and let the 9/11 attack take place

in order to get his enemies.

There are even more lurid versions of the Bush conspiracy

theory that in fact, the attackers on 9/11

were US intelligence operatives.

NARRATOR: But if such audacious claims were even partially

true, wouldn't President Bush's political rivals

have eagerly exposed it?

I always go by the Pennsylvania Avenue rule, which

is never say anything unless you expect it to be shouted

in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue

because everything leaks.

And I guarantee if the president had tried to orchestrate

something like 9/11, there would have been catastrophic leaks.

A lot of people believe in conspiracy theories

because they're not close to the government.

And they don't see that this bumbling noisy leaky structure

is incapable of conspiracies.

This is an enormously energetic complex system.

And different agencies have different habits

and different patterns.

And so there's too much chaos in the American system

they have a big fat conspiracy secret.

But as a species, we've had conspiracy theories

from the very beginning.

It frightens people to believe that the world could be large,

random, and uncaring.

NARRATOR: One of the most enduring conspiracy theories

that surround the Office of the President

first took root in 1947, when the US military reported

that an alien spaceship had crashed landed outside Roswell,

New Mexico.

Although the government quickly revised its initial report,

according to believers, the remains

of the ship and possibly even its alien crew were whisked off

to a secret military airbase in Nevada called Area 51.

There is nothing around Area 51 for hundreds of miles

really.

I mean, you drive in on a long, long dirt road.

And there are ground sensors in that road so base security know

that you're coming.

Eventually you arrive, and it's really a series of signs.

There's not very even a clearly defined border.

And that's the point that you don't want to go beyond.

There are contractors that show up in pickup trucks

and they kind of watch you and surveil you.

And of course what that means is you

have people that are devoted to trying to figure out

whether or not they were aliens there.

NARRATOR: But could such a fantastic claim be true?

And if so, wouldn't the US president know about it?

I think it depends on the sense of humor

of the president.

But I can't help but think that some of them, upon assuming

the office, asked their predecessor, come on, what's

the deal with alien technology?

The alien situation is very interesting

because we had the same issue.

I mean, there are people out there that really believe

that there are these aliens.

And we literally spent some time looking at this.

But there was nothing conclusive that came of it.

In truth though, the reason why there's so much secrecy

about Area 51 is that is where the Air Force develops its most

secret and sensitive planes, including its high flying

surveillance planes and the stealth fighters.

They also apparently develop weapons systems there.

At least according to the government.

But hey, there are plenty of people

who believe that's an elaborate cover up

for a storehouse of an alien ship,

alien bodies, and maybe even live aliens.

NARRATOR: Over the years, presidents

have unintentionally or perhaps deliberately helped

fuel the debate.

In 1969, Jimmy Carter was on his way

to a Lions Club meeting.

And he and a dozen other people witnessed what at least a bunch

of them thought was clearly an unidentified flying object.

It was a very bright light.

It turned colors.

And it advanced toward them and stayed just

beyond a copse of trees.

Carter was shaken.

He was struck by it.

He remembered it.

But not until 1973 did he report it to an International UFO

agency, by which time he was governor of Georgia.

There was an investigation into Area 51

during the Clinton administration.

There were also some lawsuits involving Area 51,

and the Clinton administration invoked executive secrets

and did not release any information about Area 51.

And by the very fact that it's been kept so secret,

that spawns all kinds of rumors and all kinds of speculations.

NARRATOR: In later interviews, President Clinton

admitted the investigations never found any evidence

of aliens or alien technology.

But he said that even though he didn't find any evidence

of it, well, it wouldn't have been the first time

that bureaucrats had lied to a president.

NARRATOR: Government cover ups about assassinations

and alien invasions may be far fetched,

but this isn't to suggest there aren't real life dangers facing

the leader of the free world.

Nearly every day, assassination plots

against the president or a member of his family

are uncovered.

But just how are these schemes thwarted?

And what might a president's book of secrets

reveal about the undercover plans and methods that

are used to protect the most powerful person on Earth?

They follow him.

They watch him.

And they protect him with their very lives.

They are the Secret Service.

And if the president has or keeps a book of secrets,

they would know about it.

And they are sworn to silence.

When the Secret Service begins to protect someone,

there's a briefing provided.

And certainly for a new president,

the briefing's fairly extensive.

I can't talk about some of the things that are discussed,

but you know, the president is given an overview of what

his life is going to be like.

When a person is under protection, of course,

they're being shadowed basically all the time,

except when they go to the bathroom,

or when they sleep at night, when they're

in their private residence.

But even then, of course they're watched from the outside.

There are monitors that we had which would tell us

at any given time where any member

of the first or second family were.

So you would either see POTUS, president of the United States,

and it would say Oval Office.

Or POTUS, Marine One.

Or POTUS, Camp David.

So you always had an idea of where he was going

and where he was.

Not everybody had those monitors, just obviously people

who needed to know.

There is a peephole that leads into the Oval Office

from the area where the president's personal aide

and the president's personal secretary sit.

And it's used to see how meetings are going,

to see if things are running on schedule, to make

sure the president's OK.

Clinton and Obama both said the same thing.

They feel like they're in a gilded cage,

almost in a prison in some ways.

Once you lose your anonymity, you appreciate more the values

of privacy.

It's a very isolating lifestyle.

And there was not a lot of young people.

And so the staff and the Secret Service, all of us

younger people hung out together.

My oldest son remarks to this day.

Said, well, it was really great.

I'd be driven home in a black sedan.

And these great big iron gates would open up.

And they let me in.

And then they would slam them shut.

And I felt like I was coming home to jail.

Now that's a rather dramatic expression.

I told him I don't believe that it was quite that bad.

But clearly, it was tough on him.

NARRATOR: The Secret Service was set up by the Treasury

Department in 1865 as an investigative agency working

financial crimes.

But after the assassination of President William McKinley

in 1901, the Secret Service was brought

in to function in effect as the president's official bodyguard.

Now under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland

Security, the ranks of the Secret Service

include thousands of uniformed and undercover agents,

all tasked with keeping the president

secure from outside threats.

And what a lot of people may not realize

is that there is a core of people who threaten

the president all the time.

They're well known.

And it doesn't matter who the president is.

What the Secret Service worries more about are the people

they don't know who don't threaten the president overtly.

NARRATOR: But would a book of secrets helped the president

prepare for the kind of security procedures

that he would have to observe while holding the nation's

highest office?

I'll use a rope line as an example

because that's more or less the more dangerous times, when he's

shaking hands in a rope line.

The Secret Service works very hard on developing, training,

and having agents able to react to issues in a rope line.

I think what's interesting is how the agents look at people

differently because you don't have one technique that's being

used.

My own was that, you know, you looked at eyes.

When you look in their eyes, you can

get a sense of whether they belong there or not, what

their state of mind is.

I think all the agents look for anomalies, you know,

what's not right in this crowd.

People with hands in their pockets,

people who are not engaged in the event,

you know, things that don't belong.

Also, in a crowd, the Secret Service

will have agents who don't appear

to be agents, who are not wearing

the traditional squiggly earpiece.

And they will circulate in the crowd

and get a feel for anybody who might be a possible threat.

The size of the team is very large, certainly

in the hundreds.

What you see is absolutely the tip of the iceberg.

There are so many people that really

have to go with the president wherever he travels.

There's going to be a 26 car motorcade.

Because there's not just the security that

has to go with him, and the police, the motorcycles,

medical assistants, the staff has to be there, and the press.

When you add it all up, it takes a lot of people to do this.

They'll have three dimensional mock ups of the routes.

They'll plan where counter sniper teams will be.

The Secret Service will actually take away

any mailboxes on the route because they

could have explosives.

They will seal by welding the manhole

covers so that nobody can plant explosives in the manholes

and blow up the president.

When Barack Obama was inaugurated,

he and Michelle got out of the limousine twice

and they are told where is the best place to get out.

Whether it's a planned event or an unplanned event,

every step is choreographed, and it has to be.

NARRATOR: The massive protection surrounding the president can

turn a simple trip across town into an enormous and complex

operation.

Even a casual visit to a friend's house

warrants the full Secret Service treatment.

Before President Bush and Laura

were going to have dinner at Clay Johnson's and Anne

Johnson's home in Spring Valley, Washington,

the Secret Service showed up, and did their usual advance

work.

And checked it out, set up an operation center

in the basement.

Put cones in front of the house so that other people would not

park there.

And asked Anne Johnson what closet they could

use in case there's an attack.

They put some extra special lights in there.

And I asked him what he was doing.

He said, well, that's where we'll

take the president in case there's an incident here.

And I said, well, it's a very small closet.

You really can't get very many people in there.

And he said, we only have to get me and the president in there.

And I said, well, what happens to the rest of us?

He looked at me with kind of a you're on your own buddy.

NARRATOR: A president's book of secrets

might also have to include information

about what the chief executive needs to know in the event

of an attack on his life.

For example, who's in charge, the president or his guardians?

Ultimately, the president's in charge.

That's basically the law.

But I think as a practical matter,

the president looks to the Secret Service

for guidance in a crisis.

If there's a shooting, or you know,

some major event, Secret Service just

reacts and doesn't ask permission,

and just basically moves the president.

The Secret Service is there all the time.

They know where the president is.

They see him.

They know who's with him.

They are observing him all the time.

They know what's going on.

NARRATOR: Of course, while the Secret Service never

leaves the president's side, its agents

do not have access to the same classified data as he does.

But could there be information that even the president doesn't

know?

Information about secret programs and institutions

so highly sensitive that whether in a file, a program,

or a book of secrets, it cannot even be shared with

a nation's highest elected official.

And if the President of the United States doesn't know,

who does?

A president's term in office usually lasts between four

and eight years.

Because of this, many suspect that long time Washington power

brokers, intelligence officers, or military commanders

might keep secrets from the president.

But could this be true?

Could there be information so important or so vital

to national security that even the president cannot know

of it?

Secret disclosures that were not even

be recorded in a president's book of secrets.

That's an interesting question to ask if the president can

ever be denied access.

I think the answer to that must be no.

It'd be hard to imagine how that would be legally possible.

But that's not to say that the president does or is advised

to get into the details of all kinds

of classified information.

Some of it he may need to know.

Some of it may be better for him not to know.

We need to think very carefully

about whether some secrets are not even shared

with the president, and who decides that those secrets

should not be shared with our elected, not only commander

in chief, but head of state and head of government.

And if so, italicized, all caps, underscore, if so,

then who decides that the president is not to know?

And on what basis did they make that decision?

Is that constitutional?

Is it legal?

And perhaps most importantly, is it healthy for the country?

First, let me say I take full responsibility

for my own actions and for those of my administration.

As angry as I may be about activities undertaken

without my knowledge, I am still accountable

for those activities.

NARRATOR: But while it's hard to prove that government secrets

might be deliberately withheld, the fact is a president cannot

possibly be told everything that is going on.

Technically, he has the ability to learn everything.

But as a practical matter, somebody has to sort it out.

Somebody has to say these are important, these aren't.

These are urgent, these aren't.

There's too much information worldwide.

Somebody once figured out that the amount of information

in the Sunday New York Times was larger

than the amount of information a villager in England

in the 16th century would have received in their lifetime.

A lot of what happens in government happens in what we

call the invisible government-- the intelligence agencies,

secret military operations, about which we may know

nothing.

A lot of that information has come out,

a lot of books written about covert operations.

But I guarantee there is a huge amount of information

about covert operations abroad, and about the extent to which

the intelligence agencies of the United States

have manipulated and controlled the American people

in this country that have never come out.

In the early 1960s the joint chiefs of staff

drew up a plan called Operation Northwoods in which they

planned a series of acts against American civilians

and the hijackings of planes so they could blame it

on Cuba as a pretext to an invasion against Cuba.

We didn't learn about that until the 1990s,

more than 30 years later.

That secret was kept.

NARRATOR: But just how are these secret military operations

and research programs financed?

And wouldn't the means of securing financing

have to be detailed for the president,

perhaps in a book of secrets?

Information, for example, concerning the president's

black budget.

The black budget is the secret part of the federal budget.

It's a part of the federal budget

that Congress is actually not able to see.

You can find a lot of the black budget

in a section of the defense budget called

research development test and evaluation.

This is a document you can download

from the internet from the DOD comptroller's website.

If you open that up and start to look at the line items,

you'll find some very curious things.

You'll find strange code names like pilot fish or retract

larch.

There will be millions of allocated to these programs

and there will be no corresponding justification

for them.

NARRATOR: Many of the projects funded by the president's

black budget involves secret government

or military facilities located around the United States.

In Utah, the Dugway Proving Ground

is rumored to be a testing facility

for biological and chemical weapons defense systems.

In California, the Vandenberg Air Force Base

is thought by many to be the launching site for spy

satellites.

In terms of what goes on at one of these black sites,

of course it has to do with what kinds of programs

are being run there.

At a place like Area 51 or the Tonopah Test Range,

there will be people conducting flight test operations,

evaluating different kinds of experimental technologies,

and forward that information onto the intelligence community

for analysis.

NARRATOR: Incoming presidents no doubt

understand that there are many ongoing secret military

experiments and research programs

that they are not fully briefed on.

But what they might not realize is the size and extent

of this shadowy black budget world.

In theory, the president may have access to all of it.

But as a practical matter, he doesn't.

It's not as much that presidents wouldn't be told,

but there's so much out there that is secret, and so much

planning at all the agency levels

that it might not percolate up to the president's level

until perhaps the last minute.

I think a lot of us have this sense that, oh yeah, sure,

the government, they do some secret stuff.

There's a couple of secret airplanes, do this and that.

But when we look at the scale of the black budget,

we're talking about $30 to $50 billion annually.

The scale of this is enormous.

On his first day in office, President Obama

signed an executive order saying the burden of proof

should be on those who want to keep secrets,

not on those who want to declassify information, the way

it's been in the past.

The president recognizes that the government

is keeping too many secrets.

NARRATOR: But if the president's book of secrets

doesn't contain information concerning

all of the government's covert operations, where or to whom

might the president look to find it?

Or is it possible that there is an individual or a group

of individuals that has a hidden agenda for the United States

of America?

An agenda so secret that it dare not be written about, even

in a president's book of secrets.

The Freemasons, the Council on Foreign Relations,

the New World Order, Skull and Bones--

there are many who believe that the nation's business is run

by secret societies, cabals run by shadowy figures

who operate according to hidden agendas and secret rules.

If so, wouldn't information about these so-called secret

alliances and their purpose have to be

shared with each president in a book of secrets?

Perhaps the answer can be found by examining those closest

to the president.

Those advisors, often unelected, who

wield both power and influence.

The power, as it were, behind the throne.

The president has to trust a large number of people.

And a new president knows, I can't trust, really trust

that many people.

But I have to know that sooner or later,

at least a few of them are going to prove

not worthy of that trust.

People in politics all have a big piece of their brain

that says there's a conspiracy.

There's a conspiracy against us.

There's a conspiracy against them.

And I remember when I first got into politics helping 41,

people who were really afraid of several international groups.

The Council for Foreign Affairs were some evil force

of bad guys trying to take over, make this whole world like one

world government.

The president knows he can't trust anybody.

If he wants to trust somebody, he has to get a dog.

Every possible person who has access

to a candidate or a president is continuously

trying to influence him.

So each time somebody approaches the president

with some information, that information is usually wrapped

or is part of or justifies something that somebody wants.

If you centralize this much power in one city

and you centralize this much money in one city,

you're going to have a huge number of people

who try to shape it.

No matter how much President Obama says that he doesn't want

to be surrounded by yes men, as he told me in an interview

that I did with him, he said a lot of times they won't say it

to me directly, and I'll only find out later

that they object.

So a lot of times the president doesn't get the information

that he needs because people feel intimidated,

or they don't want to be argumentative

with the president.

NARRATOR: In Washington, the fact that the president is

often isolated both socially and informationally

is known as being trapped inside the bubble.

To combat this problem, presidents often

turn to unofficial advisors outside the White House.

The term used is kitchen cabinet.

That is to say people that the president has not appointed

to office, who have not been confirmed by Congress,

and who are nevertheless very powerful and influential.

Ronald Reagan, for example, who became president when he was

not young had lived a long life, had many friends,

close friends, a lot of people were very intensely loyal

to him.

Only a handful of them came into the presidency

as the Secretary of Defense Weinberger, Secretary of State

Shultz.

The others would come and visit him,

and there were his kitchen cabinet.

Every president has such people.

Sometimes it causes a problem because whereas

his formal advisor, the people he names to important positions

are examined by the public, and examined by Congress,

and have to be confirmed, their background checked,

and their history is known, these

are the people are private people who

have the right to privacy and usually are very private.

NARRATOR: But where do presidents

make these alliances that become so important when they are

in office?

Very often they stretch back to their days in college,

where lifelong friendships could be forged.

Of course, Yale is a citadel of the establishment.

Many American presidents have gone there, including George HW

Bush and George W. Bush.

George W. Bush was a good friend when

I was an undergraduate at Yale.

In fact, we were a fraternity brothers

and did fraternity parties together.

And John Kerry, future Senator and presidential candidate,

was a year ahead of me, president of the Yale Political

Union.

Joe Lieberman, Senator from Connecticut,

was three years ahead of me, chairman of the Yale Daily

News.

And then I went to law school, and in my third year,

I met Hillary Rodham.

And then after I graduated Yale Law School,

she introduced me to somebody that she was quite interested

in, thought had a great political future.

And his name was Bill Clinton.

NARRATOR: But do these connections really

mean that there are hidden requirements to hold

the nation's top office?

And might a president's book of secrets

contain information about a secret organization

that is pulling the strings in the White House?

Secrecy is a very, very powerful tool

of wielding power.

If you're able to do things and not tell other people about it,

this represents an enormous really kind

of monarchical power.

NARRATOR: But there is one clandestine fraternity

in particular that attracts more suspicion than others.

Skull and Bones has become renowned perhaps as the most

elite and powerful of all the secret societies.

Headquartered in a crypt like building

in the middle of the Yale University campus

in New Haven, Connecticut, it claims a long list

of influential alumni.

Skull and Bones has counted among its members presidents,

senators, congressmen, CIA officials.

The list goes on and on.

Members get power, they can get money,

they can get connections, all because they share this one

tie.

One of the things that feeds the legend about Skull

and Bones is that particularly in recent years,

presidents have tended to get around themselves

a very large number of people who

come from the Northeastern part of the United States

and/or the financial world, Wall Street,

and/or Ivy League schools.

Skull and Bones exists only to get Bonesmen

into those positions of power, and then

to have those powerful men then elevate other Bonesmen

into positions of prestige.

But is there a secret world agenda?

Or do they want to dominate everything just

for the sake of world domination?

No, that's just a conspiracy theory.

NARRATOR: But conspiracy theories

notwithstanding, the fact is presidents,

just like everyone else, are made of not only skulls

and bones but also flesh and blood.

And for this reason, it is likely

that one of the most important chapters within the book

of secrets would concern not only the presidency,

but the physical, emotional, and mental stability

of the president himself.

Perhaps the final chapter in the president's book of secrets

would cover the most carefully guarded issues related

to the United States chief executive,

including information related to the president's physical

and mental health.

There's a confidence factor for the whole country

if people doubt that their president has the health

and vitality to do the job.

That's going to cause Wall Street to plummet.

It's going to have an effect on the economy.

It's going to encourage Al-Qaeda and other enemies

to do whatever harm they could do to the United States.

So one could argue there is a national security

and economic reason to conceal the president's health.

No other leader has the power to project the kind of force

and influence around the world that an American president

does.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

ALLAN LICHTMAN: Health is relevant,

but presidents have been as un-forthcoming as they possibly

can about their health.

NARRATOR: The responsibility of protecting and if necessary

concealing the president's health falls

to a private physician who travels

with the chief executive 24 hours a day.

This is one of those rare jobs that if the president is sick,

it is the doctor's problem.

The staff will come to you and say, you know,

the president looks tired.

You need to take care of that.

One of the challenges of White House physician

is dealing with the legacy that you've inherited

from the prior administrations.

Meaning, there were medical issues

that you did not reveal to the press that you hid,

that you even denied.

NARRATOR: In the past, some presidents

have gone to great lengths to hide illnesses from the public.

In 1919, Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke,

and his wife was said to have been running the White

House in his last days.

While in office, FDR concealed not only his paralysis caused

by polio, but also the heart disease that ultimately

led to his death in 1945.

Let the word go forth that the torch has been passed

to a new generation of Americans.

JFK was in constant pain.

He suffered from childhood from Addison's disease.

His back was giving him so much pain on a regular basis

that if he didn't receive pain medication every day

on a regular schedule, he'd be flat out on his back.

And consequently, during his presidency,

he was either a little bit doped up

or in excruciating discomfort.

Nobody knew about it at the time.

I mean, a very small clique of people, very few friends.

And those reporters who knew about it didn't talk about it.

NARRATOR: So would a president's book of secrets detail

for the commander in chief the extraordinary means by which

his or her health is to be maintained,

all while ensuring the utmost in national security?

We do have some equipment that we can't talk about in detail,

such as for biochemical warfare.

There is a private suite in the Bethesda Naval Hospital

that is armored that it has its own air supply, its own water

system, that is bomb proof, and it's locked.

It's called the METU, which stands for Medical Evaluation

Treatment Unit.

The beauty of the suite it is self-contained.

On a regular day at the hospital,

you don't even know the president is there.

The hospital goes on business as normal,

and the president could be there,

and he's totally protected.

NARRATOR: But what if a president

fails to heed his doctor's advice?

Are there any secret methods of persuasion

used by a White House physician?

One of the secrets that White House doctors have kept

over the years is, if the president doesn't want

to follow your orders, you have no other recourse but to resort

to higher authority, and that is to appeal to the First Lady

of the United States.

You get pretty good compliance after that.

NARRATOR: For the men and women who actively seek the nation's

highest office, it is certainly no secret

that the physical changes from inauguration to departure

can be startling.

Even the hardiest and most fit will

retire from office looking noticeably grayer and more

careworn.

So why do it?

Is it for power, accomplishment, fame?

Or is it for ultimate knowledge?

The type of knowledge contained within a president's book

of secrets.

On January 8, 2009, during the last days of his presidency,

George W. Bush invited four men to a private reunion

at the White House.

I want to thank the President-elect for joining

the ex-presidents.

President Bush had a lunch with his father, George H.W.

Bush, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter.

It's such a small club of people who have been president

of the United States and only a handful still living

that they do have a connection to each other.

Even if they're from different parties,

they're in the same club.

To the extent we can, we look forward

to sharing our experiences with you.

All of us who have served in this office

understand that the office itself

transcends the individual.

More presidents talk more than people realize.

They don't advertise it, but each president I think

uses the former presidents.

Because who better can explain what

it's like to be in so many circumstances.

They're able to give a unique perspective because they've

been there.

They know what the pressures are.

They know what the issues are.

And to have a president to president discussion,

you understand the entire situation,

and you're able to give some insights.

NARRATOR: Five men, five out of 44,

in an unbroken chain that stretches back

to George Washington and the founding fathers.

Only five who know the truth about whether or not there

actually is a president's book of secrets.

The problem with putting that kind of information

together in one journal is that it can be stolen, copied,

compromised.

I'd be very nervous if I were the president

and I knew some other people had access to that.

I can't quite imagine what the handbook would look like.

But we keep lots of secrets.

We keep an amazing number of secrets.

Well, if there is such a book, I'm not aware of it.

I have my doubts that there is such a book.

But there are deep and abiding secrets.

Presidents themselves certainly keep secrets.

Secrecy is power.

Knowledge is power.

And the more knowledge that is secret, the more powerful

you perceive yourself to be.

The coin of the realm in this town is not money.

It's not even power per se.

It's information.

Those who have it are in power, and those that don't have

aren't.

NARRATOR: But is there really a president's book of secrets?

Or is it simply the collective knowledge

that only the surviving presidents share?

One thing is certain, they're not telling.

I would say that there are things that George Bush 41

and I know that not too many other people know.

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