Crossfire Cuts Gray

Any lingering possibility that L. Patrick Gray III would win Senate confirmation as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation seemed to evaporate last week. First, the hapless Gray was undercut by the Nixon Administration when Attorney General Richard Kleindienst ordered him to stop talking about the FBI's investigation of the Watergate wiretapping at his confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Then Gray infuriated the White House by conceding to the committee that John W. Dean III, President Nixon's chief legal counsel, probably had lied to FBI agents. All but abandoned by the Administration and under fire from Democratic critics, Gray's position was hopeless.

In his month-long hearing ordeal, Gray had wilted from a brisk and confident nominee to a subdued and almost sullen shadow of the strong leader that the FBI needs. He had been hurt most by the Administration's obsessive concern with preventing disclosure of whatever the FBI was learning about White House connections to the Watergate bugging and political espionage.

To his credit, Gray had offered to let any Senator explore the FBI's vast files on the case. But when he also revealed that such Nixon aides as Herbert Kalmbach, the President's personal attorney, and former Appointments Secretary Dwight Chapin, were linked with an alleged political saboteur, Donald Segretti, Nixon himself protested about Gray's release of "raw" FBI files.

Last week Kleindienst overruled Gray, insisting that the FBI's Watergate files would be open only to the Judiciary Committee Chairman, Mississippi Democrat James Eastland, and the committee's ranking Republican, Nebraska's Roman Hruska. When Kleindienst ordered Gray not to answer any more questions about Watergate, Gray was forced into the humiliating position of refusing to respond to the Senators. "I respectfully decline to answer that question," he would say, his bass voice sometimes quavering as he sounded uncomfortably like someone taking the Fifth Amendment.

To the displeasure of the White House, Gray did answer more questions about his relations with Nixon Counsel Dean. Gray revealed that at the time that Dean was ordered by Nixon to conduct a White House investigation of the Watergate affair, Dean seemed even more interested in finding out how some of the FBI's discoveries were getting into the news. In the four months before the election, Gray testified, he had been asked about leaks at least 15 times by either Dean or John Ehrlichman, Nixon's top domestic adviser. "I resented it," Gray said, "because I don't think there were those leaks within the FBI."

Though Gray resented these scoldings, he turned over to Dean every FBI document on the investigation that he requested. Gray even sent these reports to Dean without telling Kleindienst about it. This was despite a ruling from the FBI's own counsel that no files should be released without the Attorney General's consent. Gray was thus giving information to the White House, whose officials had a political interest in concealing any evidence of their involvement. And he was bypassing Kleindienst, whose department would have the obligation of prosecuting anyone violating federal laws in the case.

Moreover, Gray was giving Dean such information even though the FBI'S investigation had shown that it was Dean who had first suggested that one of the wiretap conspirators, G. Gordon Liddy, be hired for "security and investigative" work by the Committee for the Re-Election of the President. Adamantly, Gray said that he would continue to give Dean FBI information.

Yet West Virginia's Democrat Robert Byrd drew a damaging assessment of Dean from Gray. Byrd got Gray to confirm that on June 19, two days after the arrests at the Watergate, Dean had ordered the opening of a safe and the clearing out of a desk in the Executive Office Building office of one of the arrested men, E. Howard Hunt Jr. Dean then held Hunt's office property, including papers and a gun, for six days before turning them over to the FBI. Meanwhile, on June 22, Dean was present at an FBI interview with another White House aide, Charles W. Colson, and was asked by an agent whether Hunt had an E.O.B. office. Dean, according to Gray, "indicated at thattime that he didn't know whether Mr. Hunt had an office" and had said that "he'd have to check it out."

With that, Byrd asked: "He lied to the agent, didn't he?"

Gray hesitated, then replied meekly: "I would have to conclude that probably is correct."

A White House press release, without mentioning Gray, called Byrd's charge "reprehensible, unfortunate, unfair and incorrect. Mr. Dean flatly denies that he ever misled or lied to an agent of the FBI." TIME has learned that Dean telephoned Gray late last week and demanded that Gray retract this testimony, but Gray refused to do so.

Gray's automatic acceptance of the White House position on Watergate bothered the Senators. Had Dean's tie with Liddy worried Gray? "The President of the United States is not going to appoint his own counsel to conduct this kind of investigation, if the President has any reason to believe that his counsel has been involved," said Gray. Why hadn't Gray asked Nixon whether he really wanted the raw FBI files on Watergate? "I did not deem it appropriate." Amazed at Gray's assumption that all presidential aides are to be so completely trusted, Byrd observed coldly: "Christ himself was betrayed by one of his chosen few."

At week's end Gray's testimony apparently was over, but the Judiciary Committee prolonged the matter by suspending hearings for a week. There no longer was any great pressure upon Republicans to support a nominee with whom the Administration was quarreling. Gerald L. Warren, deputy presidential press secretary, said without elaboration that Nixon still "supports the nomination." Yet it clearly was time for either the committee to vote on Gray or for Gray to withdraw--and for the search for a more qualified and independent FBI director to begin.

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