With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Ex-F.B.I. Chief's Book Revisits Watergate

Long after the death of the chief players, a new book challenges some assumptions and offers new theories about Watergate, asserting for instance that President Richard M. Nixon and his aides learned about a spy in their midst from a highly unlikely source.

The book is by L. Patrick Gray III, who was acting director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from J. Edgar Hoover’s death in May 1972 until April 1973, when he quit after it became clear that he had been manipulated by the Nixon White House. The humiliation made him consider suicide, Mr. Gray’s book says, but he did not want to be “a convenient dead target for Nixon and his rats.”

Mr. Gray worked on the book for years before his death at 88 on July 6, 2005. Titled “In Nixon’s Web: A Year in the Crosshairs of Watergate,” it was completed by his son Ed and is being published by Times Books, an imprint of Henry Holt & Company.
Read entire article at NYT