In Nixon’s Web by L. Patrick Gray III & ED Gray

Author:L. Patrick Gray III & ED Gray
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company

This meeting, the first ever between a sitting president and his nominee to be the director of the FBI, was obviously one of great historical importance, yet in his memoir John Ehrlichman dismissed it in a single sentence.

Almost as soon as we returned from San Clemente (where the weather was terrible) the President left for Florida to find the sun. In between, he nominated Pat Gray to be permanent Director of the FBI.

—John Ehrlichman

Witness to Power, 1982

Later, I obtained from the White House files a copy of Ehrlichman’s handwritten notes of the meeting. They’re six pages long and they match my version with precision. And why shouldn’t they? The meeting was secretly taped and transcribed, copies of which are now available to every American.

There are two other important accounts of this meeting in print. One is contained in RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon and the other can be found in All the President’s Men. Nixon’s can at best be described, politely, as an abridgement. Woodward and Bernstein’s is blatantly false.

Let’s look first at what Nixon wants us to believe.

After Edgar Hoover’s death in May 1972 I had named Pat Gray, then an Assistant Attorney General, as Acting Director of the FBI. Gray had earned a reputation in Washington as one of the most efficient, sound, and genial administrators in the city. As Acting Director during the summer and fall of 1972 Gray had overseen the Bureau’s Watergate investigation. He was proud of the extent and intensity of that investigation, and he was eager to defend it in any forum.

I decided to nominate Gray to be the FBI’s permanent Director, and I met with him on February 14 to discuss the post. I assured him that I was not worried about anything that might come out at his nomination hearings involving Watergate: “I’m not concerned about the substance, about the facts coming out,” I said. My only concern was the condition he would be in after the partisan battering he could expect to receive in the hearings.

He responded that he was ready. “I’m not ashamed for it to hang out because I think the administration has done a hell of a fine job in going after this thing,” he said. He told me that at the end of the first week he had called in the agents working on the investigation and “just gave them unshirted hell and told them to go and go with all the vim and vigor possible.” He said that the week after the break-in even Larry O’Brien had said that he was very happy with the job the FBI was doing.

Gray was sure that he could convince even nonbelievers that the FBI had proceeded without showing favor in the Watergate investigation. He certainly believed it himself.

Diary

At least getting Gray before the committee he can tell a pretty good story. It is a true story of a thorough investigation and this of course knocks down the cover-up. As I emphasized to Ehrlichman and Haldeman and Colson, but I am not sure that they all buy it, it is the cover-up, not the deed, that is really bad here.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.