FBI head Gray felt Deep Throat 'bretrayal'

NEW YORK, June 26 (UPI) -- L. Patrick Gray, the acting director of the FBI during the Watergate scandal, says he felt betrayed when he learned his former deputy was Deep Throat.

Gray, speaking publicly for the first time about the matter, said on ABC's "This Week" he felt "like I was hit with a tremendous sledgehammer" when Mark Felt disclosed recently he was the source for much of the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post.

Gray, 88, said Felt told him repeatedly he was not Deep Throat. He said he now realized he failed to stop leaks from the FBI during Watergate because it was Felt's responsibility to stop them, the New York Times reported.

"I think he fooled me, if you want to put it that way," said Gray, "by being the perfect example of the FBI agent that he was."

Gray was named interim FBI director when J. Edgar Hoover died in 1972. He resigned in 1973, after it was revealed that he turned over raw FBI reports to White House Counsel John Dean, and burned files taken from the White House safe of Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt.