Gray Goes

L. Patrick Gray, a key pawn in the growing stalemate between Congress and the Nixon Administration, was removed from the board last week, but not before one last attempt to salvage his confirmation as director of the FBI. For weeks, the White House, at least in public, had stuck by Gray while he was being grilled in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings for his partisan handling of the agency and the Watergate investigation. But his testimony had deeply embarrassed several top Administration officials and disillusioned some of his supporters in Congress. Finally, at the White House's bidding, Attorney General Richard Kleindienst last week drove to the Capitol Hill office of Senator James O. Eastland, chairman of the committee, to sound out Gray's chances. Eastland told Kleindienst that he would make another try to get the confirmation passed, but that he saw no hope.

The following day, Eastland called his committee together on two hours' notice. Republican Senator Roman Hruska of Nebraska came prepared to spring the Administration's last gambit: a proposal to delay any decision on the nomination until the Senate completes its Watergate investigation, which might take a year or more and would have given Gray time to resign quietly in the interim. Gray's most powerful opponent on the committee, West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, headed Hruska off with parliamentary maneuvering. When it finally became obvious that Gray's confirmation would never get out of committee, the closed-door session was brought to an end, and Gray telephoned Nixon in San Clemente, Calif., asking him to withdraw his name from consideration.

Ordeal. The congressional rebuff of Gray marked the biggest personal setback for President Nixon since the rejection of his appointments of Clement F. Haynsworth Jr. and G. Harrold Carswell to the Supreme Court. Nixon said that Gray had been the victim of "totally unfair innuendo and suspicion," and defended both the White House's request to see the FBI files on the Watergate case ("completely proper and necessary") and Gray's compliance. But White House rationalizations notwithstanding, Congress seemed determined to diminish partisan influence in the FBI in the future.

Senator Byrd introduced a bill last week that would make the bureau an independent agency, not answerable to the Attorney General, whose director would serve seven years. Washington Senator Henry Jackson introduced a measure that would extend the term to 15 years but require that any candidate have "extensive professional experience" in law enforcement, including ten years in the FBI.

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