National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007)

Director Jon Turteltaub and producer Jerry Bruckheimer released National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007), an American action-adventure film. The story takes place five days after the Civil War’s end, as John Wilkes Booth and Michael O’Laughlen, members of the KGC, ask Thomas Gates to decipher a message copied into Booth’s diary. Though Thomas decodes the Playfair cipher, he realizes that Booth and O’Laughlen have ulterior motives to aid the Confederacy. In a race against time, Thomas burns the cipher pages and shares the keyword with his son Charles before succumbing to his injuries from O’Laughlen’s gunshot. Over 140 years later, esteemed treasure hunter Ben Gates recounts this historic event at a Civilian Heroes conference.

Mitch Wilkinson, a black market dealer, provides the page fragment containing Thomas Gates’ name alongside those of Mary Surratt and Dr. Samuel Mudd. The general public believes that Thomas was involved in Lincoln’s assassination and Ben, along with his father Patrick, embarks on a mission to disprove it. Through the use of spectral imaging, Ben uncovers traces of a cipher on the diary page which, when decoded using the keyword, leads them to the smaller Statue of Liberty in Paris. While traveling there, Ben and his companion Riley Poole stumble upon an engraving that references the Resolute desks. They then head to London where they reluctantly recruit Ben’s estranged girlfriend, Dr. Abigail Chase, en route. Secretly sneaking into Buckingham Palace, Ben and Abigail manage to obtain a Pre-Columbian carved plank from a concealed drawer.