An essential portrait

In Nixon’s Web: A Year in the Crosshairs of Watergate, by L. Patrick Gray with Ed Gray

The revelation that FBI man Mark Felt was Bob Woodward’s Deep Throat produced an unexpected by-product. Felt’s nemesis, former Acting Director of the FBI L. Patrick Gray, was moved to break his thirty-year silence and rebut the lies and half-truths that flowed from the Felt apologists. Unfortunately, Gray was dying of pancreatic cancer and gave only one interview after Felt’s exposure.

In his last weeks, Gray began writing his memoirs. His son, Ed Gray, completed the book after his father’s death.

In Nixon’s Web is a valuable source for Watergate junkies. It also provides new information about the Hoover-era FBI and the actions of old guard Hoover loyalists like Mark Felt. Finally, it fleshes out our picture of L. Patrick Gray who for too long has been portrayed as a cardboard villain in order to highlight the noble heroism of Deep Throat.

The flesh and blood Mark felt comes off badly in Gray’s telling. He was an inveterate leakernot just to Woodward but to the New York Times and Time magazine as well. His leaks were not confined to Watergate but were aimed at discrediting Gray and his attempts to curb the tyrannical abuses of Hoover and his minions. Moreover, when confronted about the leaks, Felt lied and tried to direct suspicion at other, innocent parties.

Ed Gray has also unearthed powerful evidence that Woodward overstated Felt’s role and credited Deep Throat with information that came from other sources. The “Deep Throat as composite” theory is far from dead.

Patrick Gray comes across as an honest and patriotic man who was, unfortunately, naïve and unsophisticated about politics. Had he been more cynical, he would have been more suspicious of Dean and Magruder, which might have broken the cover-up in the summer of 1972.

Nonetheless, Gray was never a Watergate conspirator. Nor did he impede the investigation in any material way. Moreover, at critical points in the drama, Gray helped expose the conspirators.

For example, Gray told the Senate Judiciary committee in March 1973 that John Dean had “probably” lied to the FBI on 22 June 1972 when he professed ignorance about Howard Hunt’s White House office. Gray’s statement helped convince Dean that the game was up and sent him scurrying to the Watergate Special Prosecutors and the Ervin committee.

Ed Gray is acutely aware of the chasm between his father’s image and his actual performance. He believes that this gap grows out of the mythmaking melodrama of All the President’s Men. To make Deep Throat look good, Woodward and Bernstein had to paint Gray in the worst possible light. Later writers fell in line with the myth and never looked closely at the facts.

His argument has a lot of merit. Fortunately, this book goes a long way toward restoring L. Patrick Gray’s good name.