RICHARD NIXON and WATERGATE 1974 Through the Fire (Part 18) Deep Throat and L. Patrick Gray the truly innocent man of Watergate (Special Edition)

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Arguably, the most famous story of Watergate, save Richard Nixon's resignation itself, is that of the famous Washington Post secret source, My Friend, Mr. X, or better known thanks to the movie and book "All the President's Men" as Deep Throat. He turned out to be the number 2 man at the FBI, W. Mark Felt. Felt denied it for decades even though he was among the list of suspects and he only came forward due to his family pushing him for what appears to be a payday long after Felt himself was capable of making the decision on his own.
But the decision of Mark Felt and his family to step forward also flushed out another man, also in his advanced years, near death due to pancreatic cancer, who had paid a horrible price for a role in Watergate that he had not asked for, nor deserved to have played. L. Patrick Gray was the Acting Director of the FBI following the death of J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover had led the Bureau for nearly a half century and as his health began to fade a power struggle for who would replace him had emerged. When Hoover died, just a month before the break in, Richard Nixon seized the moment to reign in the Bureau that under Hoover had become a power source for its director.
It was in making that play that Nixon turned to Pat Gray so that a new leader, without a dog in the fight for control of the Bureau, could take control and clean house. Gray however soon found himself not only dealing with intrigue within the FBI but intrigue outside of it as well. He was barely on the job a month before he was mislead by the White House Counsel to the President and was being spied on and undermined by his number 2 man at the Bureau.
In this episode we look at both men and how their stories are intertwined, and also how aggrandizing one man's role in Watergate led to the destruction of the other man. Gray has seen his name sullied as an untrustworthy pawn of the White House, who destroyed important Watergate investigation files by throwing them in the Potomac River.
In reality, Gray was an honest man whose only real crime was in believing in the people around him. He was mislead into destroying documents that were found in Howard Hunt's safe, but the materials were both not related to Watergate , and while forged, had content in them that were actually true. All of this cost Gray his chance to be the Director of the FBI, a job he had done well, and wanted to continue serve in. It was certainly a high price for him to pay.
L. Patrick Gray was, in the end, the truly innocent man of Watergate. In this episode we look at both the story of Mark Felt and Patrick Gray.