March 8, 1973

For a fifth day, Patrick Gray was questioned by the Judiciary Committee.

Ted Kennedy was the leading questioner, and while there were no new major revelations, Gray once again did poorly. Kennedy pressed him mainly again on cooperation with John Dean; he also questions why the FBI didn't follow up to the Washington Post's story that CRP staff LaRue and Mardian had been involved in destroying files after the arrests. Gray's defense is, basically, that since the FBI hadn't discovered anything about that in their original questioning, there was no need to go back and investigate further just because of a newspaper story, since nothing was better than an FBI investigation at getting to the truth. Democrats on the committee, it's safe to say, were not convinced.

After he was gone for the day, the committee brought in another witness (a political scientist) and talked among themselves a bit. Here's where things stood, at least for the Democrats on the committee:

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Senator Tunney. [...] It was brought to my attention a few moments ago that John Dean, the same John Dean to whom was sent the information given the FBI in strict confidence to avoid the scrutiny of the CRP lawyers, that this same John Dean was actually the one who brought Gordon Liddy to CRP headquarters in December 1971. He recommended Liddy for the job as counsel and told the CRP Director that Liddy would be particularly good, and I quote, "for intelligence work." After that meeting between Dean, Liddy, and Jeb Magruder, Liddy was hired for the position that included his functioning in the Watergate conspiracy.

So John Dean himself was the one who put Liddy in that position. Jeb Magruder testified to these facts under oath in January 1973. Presumably he was asked the same questions by the FBI and gave the same answers to the FBI on July 20, 1972, the very day before Mr. Gray changed his previous policy and agreed to provide the sensitive investigative materials to Mr. Dean on the White House staff.

If Mr. Gray bothered to check on July 21, whether John Dean's name had come up at all in the investigation, he would have found or should have found that John Dean got Gordon Liddy, Liddy 's job at the CRP. That would have totally disqualified Mr. Dean from access to any, let alone all, FBI files and data.

I believe no action should be taken by this committee on the confirmation of Mr. Gray until we have a complete explanation from both Mr. Gray and. Mr. Dean before this committee under oath.