The Presidential Seal Stamp

The combined plank shows a seal-mark — the Presidential seal in a form not used outside this single compartment — and the words, in English, "the Book of Secrets." The film's conceit is that an actual leather-bound book, passed from outgoing president to incoming president since George Washington, holds the country's most carefully unrecorded record. Where the book physically lives is itself a secret. The lead in the seal points to the Library of Congress: a particular row, a particular code, accessed only by a sitting president and a small handful of nightshift librarians.