"I want the Brookings Institute safe cleaned out"

Photo: The passport of E. Howard Hunt

Washington Post front page — On July 1, 1971, President Richard Nixon woke up to this headline in his local paper

President Richard M. Nixon had just lost a Supreme Court case 6-3. The justices ruled unanimously that the President could not prohibit the New York Times, Washington Post, and other newspapers from publishing the Pentagon Papers, a classified Defense Department history of America’s Vietnam War. Now, Nixon was worried. The study had stopped before his administration took office, so its publication posed no threat to him (though it did reflect poorly on his Democratic predecessors, Lyndon B. Johnson and John F. Kennedy). But the notion that the leak was the work of a conspiracy did worry him, since his own secrets might be revealed next.

His conspiracy theory proved wrong in the long run, but in the short run Nixon acted on it. He decided to put together a team, later known as the Plumbers, to gather and then leak information about the people he suspected were conspiring against him. He also wanted the team to break into the Brookings Institution, because he (mistakenly) thought it had a classified report on Lyndon Johnson’s decision in October 1968 to stop the bombing of North Vietnam and to start peace talks to end the war. Nixon had undermined those negotiations by secretly encouraging South Vietnam to boycott the peace talks, and he had been obsessed ever since with getting his hands on every bit of classified information available on the bombing halt. Nixon had big (and criminal) plans, but first he needed to find someone to run the team.

Date: Thursday, July 1, 1971
Time: 8:45 a.m.–9:52 a.m.
Participants: Richard M. Nixon, H. R. "Bob" Haldeman
Location: Oval Office
Tape: 534-002B

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(President Nixon): —get to [John D.] Ehrlichman. Now, will you please get—

(H. R. "Bob" Haldeman): Yeah, we did that.

(President Nixon): I want you to find me a man by noon—I won't be ready till one [o'clock]—till 12:30. A recommendation of the man to work directly with me on this whole situation. You know what I mean? I've got to have—I've got to have one. I mean, I can't have a high-minded lawyer like John Ehrlichman or, you know, [John W.] Dean [III] or somebody like that.

I want a son of a bitch. I want somebody just as tough as I am for a change, just as tough as I was, I would say, in the [Alger] Hiss case, where we won the case in the press. These goddamn lawyers, you know, all whining around about, you know . . .

I'll never forget that they were all so worried about the [Charles] Manson case. I knew exactly what we were doing on the Manson. You got to win some things in the press. These guys don't understand. They have no understanding of politics. They have no understanding of public relations.

John [N.] Mitchell's that way. John [ pounding on the desk] is always worried about is it technically correct? Do you think, for Christ sakes, the New York Times is worried about all the legal niceties? Those sons of bitches are killing them!

They're [ unclear] by leaking to the press. This is what we've got to get—I want you to shake these [ unclear] up around here. Now, you do it. Shake them up! Get them off their goddamn dead asses and say, "Now, this is what you should talk about. We're up against an enemy, a conspiracy. They're using any means. [ banging desk for emphasis] We are going to use any means." Is that clear? [ Haldeman acknowledges.] Did they get the Brookings Institute raided last night? No?

(Haldeman): No, sir, they didn't.

(President Nixon): Get it done! I want it done! [ banging desk for emphasis] I want the Brookings Institute safe cleaned out, and have it cleaned out in a way that it makes somebody else [ unclear].