Gray, L(ouis) Patrick, III

▪ 2006

      American lawyer and government official (b. July 18, 1916, St. Louis, Mo.—d. July 6, 2005, Atlantic Beach, Fla.), served as interim director of the FBI after the death of J. Edgar Hoover in 1972. The Watergate scandal broke just weeks after Gray assumed the position, and he soon found himself cast as the fall guy in the White House cover-up. He was forced to resign in 1973. With the 2005 disclosure that FBI official Mark Felt had been the primary leak to the reporters who broke the Watergate story, it became clear that Gray had been betrayed both by his friend Pres. Richard Nixon and by his top aide at the FBI. At the time of his death, Gray was writing a book about Watergate; In Nixon's Web: A Year in the Crosshairs of Watergate, which was completed by his son Ed, was published in 2008.

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