Psychiatrist Dr. Sidney Schaefer (James Coburn), is chosen by the US Government to act as the President’s top-secret personal psychoanalyst, from a referral by Don Masters (Godfrey Cambridge), a Central Enquiries Agency (CEA) assassin who vetted Schaefer while undergoing his own psychoanalysis. The decision to choose Schaefer is against the advice of Henry Lux (Walter Burke), the under-five-foot-six-inch director of the all-male, Federal Bureau of Regulation (FBR). ("Lux", like "J. Edgar Hoover", was once a famous make of vacuum cleaner.) Schaefer is given a home in affluent Georgetown, Washington, DC, and assigned a comfortable office connected to the White House by a secret tunnel. From this location he is to be on-call at all hours, to fit the President's hectic schedule.