L. Patrick Gray III, 88, F.B.I. Chief During Watergate, Dies

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L. Patrick Gray III, 88, F.B.I. Chief During Watergate, Dies

By TODD S. PURDUM
Published: July 6, 2005

L. Patrick Gray III, the former acting director of the F.B.I., whose misplaced trust in Richard M. Nixon and early missteps in handling the Watergate investigation made him a lasting victim of a scandal he ultimately helped to expose, died today at his home in Atlantic Beach, Fla. He was 88.

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Associated Press
L. Patrick Gray was appointed as acting F.B.I. director in 1972.


Ex-F.B.I. Chief Calls Deep Throat's Unmasking a Shock (June 27, 2005) The cause was complications of pancreatic cancer, his family said.

In his Senate confirmation hearings in 1973, Mr. Gray volunteered what amounted to the most dramatic public indication to that point that the president's men were covering up the Watergate break-in, when he disclosed that he had supplied the F.B.I.'s files on the investigation to the White House counsel, John W. Dean 3d, from the outset of the inquiry.

That revelation rocked Washington and spurred Senate investigators to dig deeper. It also led Nixon's aide John D. Ehrlichman to propose, in one of the era's most famous phrases, letting Mr. Gray "twist slowly, slowly in the wind" until he resigned a few weeks later. He endured his fate in stoic silence for more than 30 years, in which he was often portrayed as a feckless footnote to the greatest political scandal of the age.



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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/06/politics/06cnd-gray.html?hp&ex=1120708800&en=26bbc99e6d2f8530&ei=5094&partner=homepage

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