I think Mr. Gray has answered his own question

WASHINGTON, June 26 - L. Patrick Gray, the acting director of the F.B.I. at the time of the Watergate break-in, ended more than three decades of silence about his role in the scandal, saying in a television interview broadcast Sunday that he felt shock and betrayal by the disclosure that his former deputy, W. Mark Felt, was Deep Throat.

In an interview on the ABC News program "This Week," Mr. Gray said that he felt "like I was hit with a tremendous sledgehammer" by Mr. Felt's recent disclosure that he was the secret source for Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post reporters who broke important Watergate news relying on Mr. Felt's information.

Mr. Gray, 88, resigned from the Federal Bureau of Investigation in disgrace in 1973. In the ABC interview with George Stephanopoulos, he spoke bitterly of Mr. Felt, saying that "he told me time and again he was not Deep Throat."

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?" Mr. Gray said he now realized that he failed to halt news leaks from the bureau during Watergate because Mr. Felt was in charge of stopping them.

Hmmm. Good question. Why wouldn't Mark Felt have gone to L. Patrick Gray, the acting head of the FBI with his evidence and suspicion of White House crimes?

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.

Oh.

In the interview, Mr. Gray defended his actions, although he admitted that he erred during Watergate in temporarily holding up an investigation following the money trail to a Mexican bank when White House aides falsely told him that it might interfere with a continuing C.I.A. operation.

Mr. Gray said he provided internal F.B.I. investigative files to the White House only after he had been cleared to do so by the bureau's general counsel. He said he had been justified in burning the files because their contents were unrelated to Watergate.

Um, I think we know why Felt wasn't prepared to go to Gray now, don't we? Good story by the Times'David Johnston.

Can we now stop with the last-ditch efforts of the convicted and the disgraced to rehabilitate their past?