During this time, the FBI was in charge of the initial investigation into the burglaries that sparked the Watergate scandal, which eventually led to the resignation of President Nixon.

Gray initially attended Rice University; however, his true goal was to be admitted to the United States Naval Academy.

At the time, however, Gray could not afford the bus or train fare to Annapolis, so he hired on as an apprentice seaman on a tramp steamer out of Galveston.

During the journey to Philadelphia (the closest the steamer could get him to Maryland), Gray taught calculus to the ship's captain, a Bulgarian named Frank Solis, in return for basic lessons in navigation.

[5] Once at the academy, Gray walked onto the football team as the starting quarterback, played varsity lacrosse and boxed as a light heavyweight.

[6] In 1945, Gray visited Beatrice Castle Kirk (1923–2019), the widow of his Naval Academy classmate, Lieutenant Commander Edward Emmet DeGarmo (1917–1945).

He indicated his desire to retire from the Navy, but Chief of Naval Operations Arleigh Burke told him, "If you stay, you'll have my job some day.

On June 17, 1972, just six weeks after Gray took office at the FBI, five men were arrested after breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate hotel complex in Washington, D.C. Gray first learned of the Watergate break-ins on June 17 from Wes Grapp, the Special Agent in Charge of the Los Angeles field office.

[12] On June 23, 1972, White House Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman and President Nixon held one of the infamous "smoking gun" conversations in which they conspired to use the CIA to block the FBI investigation into the money trail leading from the Watergate burglars to the Committee to Re-elect the President, which would constitute hard evidence that Committee members were involved in the planning of the burglaries.

This conversation implicitly stated that the FBI should not interview Manuel Ogarrio and Kenneth Dahlberg, individuals connected with the money used to fund the Watergate burglars.

Once the decision was made, Gray called Vernon Walters and demanded that written request the next morning, or he would order the interviews to go forth.

[15] The next morning, Walters arrived and delivered a three-page memorandum, marked "SECRET", that did not ask the FBI to hold off on the interviews.

The meeting concluded with Walters suggesting to Gray that he should warn the President that some members of the White House staff were hindering the FBI's investigation.

We were both apprehensive about the meeting as we walked to a park and sat down on a bench overlooking the Potomac, discussing my request to obtain FBI 302s and AirTels on the Watergate investigation.

"The first set of papers in there were false top-secret cables indicating that the Kennedy administration had much to do with the assassination of the Vietnamese president (Diem)," Gray said.

"[4] After learning from Ehrlichman that Dean was cooperating with the US Attorney and would be revealing what happened on June 21, Gray told his staunchest congressional supporter, Senator Lowell Weicker, so that he might be prepared for that revelation.

[26] For the next eight years, Gray defended his actions as Acting Director of the FBI, testifying before five federal grand juries and four committees of Congress.

In 1978, Gray was indicted, along with Assistant Director Edward Miller, for allegedly having approved illegal break-ins during the Nixon administration.

Felt and Miller, who had approved the illegal break-ins during the tenures of four separate FBI directors, including Hoover, Gray, William Ruckelshaus, and Clarence M. Kelley, were convicted and later pardoned by President Ronald Reagan.

[32] In a 2005 Vanity Fair article,[33] Mark Felt claimed to be Deep Throat, the infamous source of leaks to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

[35][36] Gray spoke about the Watergate scandal for the first time in 32 years on June 26, 2005, ten days before his death from pancreatic cancer.

Smith left his job the next day for Yale Law School, and Phelps lost track of the story while covering the 1972 Republican Convention.

[44] The archive would grow even after Gray left the FBI as a direct result of the legal proceedings in which he was forced to take part in the years to follow.