President Richard Nixon captured himself on tape ordering his aides to break into the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. In the Oval Office on June 17, 1971, the president conferred with his inner circle of closest aides on the best way to respond to the leak of the Pentagon Papers, a top secret Defense Department history of America’s Vietnam War. White House Chief of Staff H.R. “Bob” Haldeman suggested blackmailing Nixon’s predecessor, President Lyndon B.