I just found the story that L. Patrick Gray died today.
For those of you who have been asleep during the last few weeks of "Deep Throat" mania, Gray was named to replace J. Edgar Hoover as acting director of the FBI following Hoover's death, just in time for Watergate.
There was lots of speculation and accusations (mostly by the right wing) that W. Mark Felt leaked info on the Watergate crimes because of bitterness about being passed over for the office. (If Felt had read the FBI Promotion Manual, he would have known that FBI heads are chosen alphabetically by their first initial, so it should have been obvious that W. Mark Felt would have been trumped by L. Patrick Gray in succeeding J. Edgar Hoover.)
L. Patrick Gray III, the former acting director of the F.B.I., whose misplaced trust in Richard M. Nixon and early missteps in handling the Watergate investigation made him a lasting victim of a scandal he ultimately helped to expose, died today at his home in Atlantic Beach, Fla. He was 88.
The cause was complications of pancreatic cancer, his family said.
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