Ben, Riley, Abigail, and Patrick head to Mount Rushmore where they meet Wilkinson, who has kidnapped Ben's mother. In the book, Ben finds a picture of the missing plank from the desk and an entry by President Coolidge, who found the plank in 1924, had it destroyed, and commissioned Gutzon Borglum to carve Mount Rushmore to erase the map's landmarks. The President reveals the location of the book, in the Library of Congress. He convinces the President (Bruce Greenwood) to follow him into a secret tunnel where he confronts him about the book the President sympathetically warns Ben that his actions will be interpreted as an attempt to kidnap the president, which is a federal offense. Kennedy.īen crashes the President's birthday party at Mount Vernon. Riley tells Ben that the Book of Secrets contains documents collected by presidents for presidents' eyes only, covering such controversial subjects as the eighteen minutes erased from the Watergate tapes, Area 51, and the assassination of John F. Ben discovers that the second plank is missing, but he does find a stamp bearing the seal of the Book of Secrets. Ben and Abigail coax Abigail's new love interest, Connor (Ty Burrell), who works at the White House, into letting them into the office to see the desk. She does so, but points out that some of the glyphs are partial, leading Ben to conclude another plank must be hidden in the other Resolute desk in the Oval Office. Emily Appleton (Helen Mirren) for help in translating the symbols. At Ben's insistence, Patrick reluctantly asks his ex-wife and Ben's mother, Dr. Wilkinson eventually obtains the plank, but not before Ben manages to photograph it.

Meanwhile, Wilkinson clones Patrick Gates' (Jon Voight) cell phone in order to track Ben's whereabouts. From the Queen's desk, Ben obtains an ancient wooden plank with ancient symbols carved into it. Thanks to Riley who had previously hacked into the security system, they escape the cell and reach the desk via service elevator. Ben makes a scene by pretending to be drunk and starting a fake argument with Abigail, and they are both arrested. Ben then heads to London to look at the desk at Buckingham Palace with the help of his friend Riley Poole (Justin Bartha) and estranged girlfriend, Abigail Chase (Diane Kruger). He travels to Paris, where he finds a clue engraved on the torch of the scale model of the Statue of Liberty on the Île aux Cygnes, referring to the two Resolute desks. He discovers a cipher pointing to Édouard Laboulaye hidden on the back of the diary page. Ben sets out to prove the innocence of his great-great-grandfather. Black market dealer Mitch Wilkinson (Ed Harris) displays one of the 18 missing pages of John Wilkes Booth's diary, with Thomas Gates' name on it, convincing everyone that Thomas was not only a conspirator, but the grand architect of the Lincoln assassination. Over 140 years later, Ben Gates (Nicolas Cage) is telling his great-great-grandfather's story at a Civilian Heroes conference. Thomas is shot, and the gunman attempts to retrieve the pages, but only obtains a page fragment. He rips several pages from the diary and throws them in the fireplace. Thomas solves the puzzle, a clue to a map to Cibola, the city of gold, but realizes the men are still loyal to the South and have a sinister motive for finding the treasure. While he does so, Booth leaves to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln. In 1865, John Wilkes Booth and Michael O'Laughlen, both members of the Knights of the Golden Circle, enter a tavern and approach Thomas Gates (Ben Gates' great-great-grandfather), a well-known puzzle solver, to decode a message written in Booth's diary.

National treasure book of secrets movie