by L. Patrick Gray III with Ed Gray.

Times Books. 288 pages. $26.

BY JOHN J. MONAGHAN JR.
Special to the Journal

If there’s an ounce of skepticism in your being, it’ll be on high alert as you read Pat Gray’s post mortem apologia pro vita sua. (Gray died before he finished the work and his son picked it up for the last couple of chapters.)

Gray had begun his book in the early 1980s, abandoned it, then resurrected it in 2005 when W. Mark Felt, once acting associate director of the FBI, said he was Deep Throat and that Gray was one of the Watergate conspirators.

Gray wasn’t, he wanted the world to know. In massive detail with extensive documentation, much of it reproduced in the book, he pleads his case.

A huge Nixon supporter, Gray was assistant U.S. attorney general in charge of the Civil Division when J. Edgar Hoover died and Nixon tapped him to be acting director of the FBI over many career FBI people who wanted the job — Mark Felt in particular. Gray’s connections with, concerns over and mistrust of Mark Felt are everywhere, especially as they involved leaks of confidential FBI investigations to the press.

Gray’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee and how he was bloodied, particularly by Ted Kennedy, is covered in depth; the nomination was ultimately withdrawn by Nixon at Gray’s manipulated request.

He gives a step-by-step look into the FBI’s probe of the Watergate break-in, and White House efforts to have the CIA persuade the FBI that it was one of their undercover operations. It’s perhaps there that skepticism peaks — the process makes one wonder how the FBI ever catches anyone.

Gray had little contact with the president until it was time for his confirmation hearing. Then he met with Nixon at the Oval Office. He found a rambling president bouncing from one topic to the next, instructing Gray to lie-detect all FBI personnel to ferret out leakers, telling Gray that Felt was the leaker, suggesting that Gray provide the White House deniability for actions it might take to curb leaks.

Now about that skepticism: Mine abated toward the end of the book. The questions that confront you: Was Pat Gray as naive as he would have us believe? Was he “a little on the stupid side,” as Nixon contends in one of the Oval Office tapes? Was he simply kept in the dark by a bunch of career FBI people who wanted his job and who ignored him and did what they chose? Was he, as he claims, “an idealist, a patriot who loved his country?”

After 288 pages, my money’s on a little of each, with a whole lot of quiet back-stabbing from a disaffected Mark Felt et al., and a substantial dose of “patriot.” IN NIXON’S WEB: A Year in the Crosshairs of Watergate,

jjmbooks@verizon.net