THE
Sununer Daily
/o1. LXXXIII, No. 55-S Ann Arbor, Michigan-Saturday, August 4, 1973 Ten Cents Eight Pages
Admits deep cover-up involvement
tels
of role
I
concealing
Hunt's file
WASHINGTON Ap - Former FBI
chief L. Patrick Gray admitted yes-
terday he read secret documents be-
fore he burned them, then lied about
the event for months amidst the
Watergate cover-up.
Gray also told the Senate Water-
gate committee he warned President
Nixon 19 days after the Watergate
break-in that "people on your staff
are trying to mortally wound you
by using the CIA and the FBI"
BUT THE former acting FBI director
contradicted much testimony given earlier
in the day by Lt. Gen. Vernon Walters, the
deputy director of the CIA, who told the
committee he fended off White House
AP Photo
L. PATRICK GRAY, former acting director of the FBI, opens his testimony yes-
terday before the Senate Watergate Committee by reading a prepared statement.
Gray told the committee he read secret documents before burning them.
Justice department reopens
probe of Kent State deaths
" WASHINGTON 0P) - The Justice De-
partment yesterday reopened its investi-
gation of the 1970 killing of four Kent
State University students and suggested
the case may go to a federal grand jury.
Atty. Gen. Elliot Richardson said he re-
vived the case "to make sure the depart-
ment knows as much as can possibly be
learned as to whether there were no vio-
lations of federal law in this matter."
FOUR STUDENTS were killed and nine
others wounded by Ohio National Guards-
men who fired a 13-second burst of gun-
fire into a group of students demonstrat-
ing on May 4, 1970, against the dispatch
of troops into Cambodia.
The National Guard, stationed on cam-
pus after three days of disruptions, at
first said shots were fired in response to
a sniper but later said there was no evi-
dence of sniper fire.
A state grand jury, exonerated the Na-
tional Guard, and former Atty. Gen. John
Mitchell dropped the case in August 1971,
saying there was no evidence to justify
calling a federal grand jury.
RICHARDSON SAID he had no reason
to believe Mitchell's decision was wrong,
but that "there are some areas where an
additional inquiry is desirable."
He did not elaborate and neither did
Asst. Atty. Gen. J. Stanley Pottinger, who
heads the Civil Rights Division conduct-
ing the new investigation. Pottinger said
he sought permission to reopen the case
because he was dissatisfied with some
aspects of the original probe.
MEANWHILE, Sen. Birch Bayh (D-Ind.)
released copies of letters from three Na-
tional Guardsmen who were in the skirm-
ish line. The letters "seem to indicate
that it is possible that it was in fact FBI
informer Terrence Norman who fired the
first shot," Bayh said in a letter to Rich-
ardson, which was inserted into the Con-
gressional Record with the other letters.
Bayh said the commander of a National
Guard company, whose name he with-
held, said in a letter July 27:
"Four enlisted men made the following
statement, "As Norman ran toward our
lines, people were chasing him yelling,
'stop that man-he killed someone.' "
"ANOTHER MAN, a lieutenant, over-
heard Norman tell the campus police,
"I think I shot one of the students--the
students grabbed me and started beating
me, so I pulled my gun,' " the commander
wrote.
efforts to bring the intelligence agency
into the Watergate affair.
The Gray-Walters conflicts concerned
whether there was danger that the FBI's
Watergate investgation could reveal CIA
operations in Mexico, and who tried to
promote that theory.
The papers Gray burned were given to
him June 28, 1972, in the office of John
Ehrlichman, then top domestic advisor to
President Nixon. They had been taken
from the safe of E. Howard Hunt, a former
White House consultant since convicted
in the Watergate break-in.
GRAY ACKNOWLEDGED in his 51-
page prepared statement to the Senate
committee that he was never directly
ordered to destroy the two envelopes of
papers.
"But there was, and is, no doubt in my
mind that destruction was intended," he
said..
Ehrlichman and former White House
counsel John Dean have each testified he
did not intend for Gray to burn the
papers. Gray, however, said Dean told
him "that these files were 'political dyna-
mite,' and 'clearly should not see the
light of day.' "
GRAY SAID the documents followed a
route from under his shirts in an apart-
ment closet to his personal safe and then
to a chest of drawers at his Stonington,
Conn., home.
"I distinctly recall that I burned them
during Christmas week with the Christmas
and household paper trash," he said.
"Immediately before putting them in
the fire I opened one of the files. It
contained what appeared to be copies of
'top secret' State Department cablegrams.
"THE TEXT of the cable implicated offi-
cials of the Kennedy administration in the
assassination of President Diem of South
Vietnam. I had no reason then to doubt
the authenticity of the 'cable' and was
shaken at what I read."
Gray did not know the cables had been
falsified by Hunt.
The burned papers came to haunt Gray
during his Senate hearings in March on
his nomination to be FBI director. He said
he talked to Dean about the papers early
that month but did not tell Dean he had
See GRAY, Page 5
Potfinger