Mr. Haldeman responded, ''But who do we have to do it?''

''Well, don't discuss it here. You talk to . . . you're to break into the place, rifle the files, and bring me,'' Mr. Nixon responded, according to the newspaper's transcript.

The transcript provides hard evidence for Nixon's well-known interest in the liberal think tank.

An aide to Mr. Nixon, Charles Colson testified before the Senate Watergate committee that Mr. Nixon had talked of a plan to ''firebomb'' Brookings in the days after the June 30 meeting, according to the report. The fire would have allowed agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to accompany firemen into the building and get the documents Mr. Nixon wanted.

The newspaper also quoted from Nixon's 1975 memoirs, in which he recounts telling his staff that he wanted Vietnam files that he believed were at Brookings delivered to him, ''even if it meant having to get it surreptitiously.''

National Archive logs and Haldeman's diaries note that Mr. Nixon's national security adviser, Henry A. Kissinger, Attorney General John N. Mitchell and Defense Secretary Melvin R. Laird were present at the June 30 meeting.

''I have no such recollection,'' of the meeting, Mr. Kissinger said on Wednesday when reached by the Examiner. ''Nixon often said exalted things that people didn't think would be done,'' he said.