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Oh, the shock and betrayal.

The Times covers former F.B.I. acting director L. Patrick Gray III's thoughts on W. Mark Felt's coming out as "Deep throat":

L. Patrick Gray III, the acting director of the F.B.I. at the time of the Watergate break-in...felt shock and betrayal by the disclosure that his former deputy, W. Mark Felt, was Deep Throat.

"...I can't begin to tell you how deep was my shock and my grief when I found that it was Mark Felt...I can't understand how Mark could have let himself do to me what he did when I trusted him so implicitly."

If he could, Mr. Gray said, he would say to Mr. Felt: "Mark, why? Why didn't you come to me? Why didn't we work it out together?"

The poor man!

Now, skip down to paragraph ten:

After the bureau began investigating the break-in, Mr. Gray turned over raw F.B.I. interview reports and lead sheets to John W. Dean, Nixon's counsel, who ran the effort to conceal White House ties to the Watergate burglars. Later, in the fireplace of his Connecticut home, Mr. Gray burned files that he had been given from the White House safe of E. Howard Hunt, whose phone number was found in address books of the Watergate burglars.

Mr. Gray said he...had been justified in burning the files because their contents were unrelated to Watergate.

One file contained top-secret cables apparently forged by Mr. Hunt that made it appear the administration of President John F. Kennedy had been implicated in the assassination of President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam in 1963. A second file contained false letters apparently intended to embarrass Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, if he ran for president.

Mr. Gray said he burned the papers because he was following the instructions of Mr. Dean and John D. Ehrlichman, Nixon's top domestic affairs adviser, never to reveal their contents. "I had an order, direct order from the president's principal adviser, to whom he had previously ordered me to report," Mr. Gray said, adding that he trusted Nixon and his aides.

Gee, wonder why Felt didn't go to Gray to "work it out together"?