THE BOOK: IN NIXON'S WEB

In May 1972, L. Patrick Gray III was named to succeed J. Edgar Hoover as the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. A month later came the Watergate break-in and the cover-up by the Nixon administration. Gray soon became ensnared in the web of deceit woven by the president and his subordinates, and in less than a year, he was compelled to resign. For the next thirty-two years, Gray never spoke publicly about Watergate, except for one brief interview before his death in 2005.

IN NIXON'S WEB: A Year in the Crosshairs of Watergate, by L. Patrick Gray III with Ed Gray (Times Books/an imprint of Henry Holt and Company; March 4, 2008; $26.00), is Gray's firsthand account of what really happened during his crucial year as acting director of the FBI, based on a never-before-published first-person account and previously undisclosed documents. He reveals the witches' brew of intrigue and perfidy that permeated Washington, and he tells the unknown story of his complex relationship with his top deputy, Mark Felt, raising disturbing questions about the true identity of the man purported to be Deep Throat.

IN NIXON'S WEB contains details and revelations about Watergate that have never been published before, including

what happened inside the FBI after the infamous "smoking gun" attempt to have the CIA stop the FBI investigation, and how top officials of the CIA lied under oath to cover up their own complicity in the scheme
the surprising name of the person who told the Nixon White House that Mark Felt was leaking to a reporter, and it wasn't to Bob Woodward or even The Washington Post
the White House's efforts to neutralize Gray when it became clear that, unlike his counterparts at the CIA, he would not lie to serve their purposes
Pat Gray always told his son that "Deep Throat" could not have been one man, and after his father died, Ed Gray turned to Woodward's own recently revealed notes and compared them to documents in his father's archive to prove it

Gray's book was completed and expanded by his son, the journalist Ed Gray, who has supplemented the text with revelatory excerpts from documents, tape transcripts, and third-party accounts. This unique inside account will change the way we think about the crisis that destroyed the Nixon presidency.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

L. Patrick Gray III (1916-2005) was acting director of the FBI at the height of the Watergate scandal, from May 1972 to April 1973. He had previously served in the Justice Department as an assistant attorney general, and was a twenty-year veteran of the U.S. Navy.

Ed Gray, his son, is a freelance writer and the founder, with his wife Rebecca, of Gray's Sporting Journal. He is the author of seven books and lives in Lyme, New Hampshire.