The Brookings Institution, a center for the study of public policy questions, appears in the Watergate narrative not as the site of a completed crime but as the intended target of a proposed firebomb-assisted break-in. The plan grew from the White House’s desire to recover documents believed to have been retained by fellow Morton Halperin, and its interruption exposed how far some officials were prepared to go to obtain them.

Setting and Intended Target

Halperin had left Henry Kissinger’s staff to become a fellow at Brookings. The White House believed he had kept classified documents when he departed. His telephone had also been among the Kissinger taps, placing him within the earlier leak-investigation context. Brookings itself presented an obstacle: security was considered too tight for a straightforward burglary. The proposed solution was to create a fire that could provide cover for entry into Halperin’s office and retrieval of the papers.

The Proposed Operation and Its Halt

In the first week of June, a source told Carl Bernstein that a burglary at Brookings had been proposed but, according to the source, John Dean had stopped it. When Bernstein tested the account with a Dean associate, the associate sharpened the description: Charles Colson had wanted to start a fire. A further source, who had heard the account from John Caulfield, said the proposal was for a firebombing, not merely a fire.

The account described Caulfield leaving Colson’s office in alarm and going directly to Dean, saying Colson was out of control and needed to be stopped. Dean then flew to San Clemente to see John Ehrlichman, who was described as the only official with enough influence to intervene. Ehrlichman was unhappy that Dean knew of the plan, but Dean stayed while Ehrlichman called Colson; the operation was shut down. The reporting also indicated that both Dean and Caulfield had told investigators about the episode. Bernstein checked his sources again with investigators before telling Bob Woodward the account was solid; Woodward had worried it might be a setup.

Narrative Significance

Brookings’s security is central to the logic of the proposal: the obstacle to an ordinary break-in prompted consideration of arson as a diversion. The institution thus becomes the concrete setting around which the scheme’s escalation can be measured, from a covert search for documents to a proposed firebombing. The plan did not proceed, but the episode shows that the intended recovery of Halperin’s papers was treated as a reason to contemplate a dangerous operation—and that Dean’s intervention, followed by Ehrlichman’s call to Colson, prevented Brookings from becoming the scene of the contemplated attack.