Fearing that the release of the Pentagon Papers presaged a leak of his own secrets, President Nixon created the Plumbers, a White House investigative unit, to stop that leak and to spring new ones on his perceived enemies. His intent was criminal—to leak grand jury information and to burglarize the Brookings Institution, where Nixon mistakenly believed a safe held classified documents about the Vietnam peace talks that he had maneuvered to thwart before the 1968 election.