Hail To The Thief

Title: Bag Man

Rating: 5 Stars

I read this book because I’d listened to the podcast. As a word of warning, there’s not a lot more information here than was already in the podcast. However, since it’s such a great story, reading it was just as fun as listening to it a year ago or so.

When people think of the Nixon administration, for good reason, everyone’s mind goes to Watergate. It was, after all, the largest scandal of the last 100 years (aside from any normal Tuesday during the Trump administration).

I was ten years old in 1973. Therefore, I do have memories of it, but they are the memories of a ten year old kid. I do remember that, before Nixon resigned, his Vice President, Spiro Agnew had resigned some months previously. From what I remember, it seemed to be some minor tax charge. He didn’t even plead guilty. He pleaded some fancy term like nolo contendere. Shortly after resigning, he’d appear on talk shows and complain about the over zealous prosecutors that had it in for him. He was just a victim of the justice system. At the time, it seemed to me like some minor kerfuffle.

Boy was I wrong. Spiro Agnew was, to put it mildly, bent like a pretzel.

It started off when he was elected a county executive. This was during the 1960s, when there was a huge suburban building boom. This called for all kinds of infrastructure. Roads needed to be built. Bridges needed to be built. Agnew figured that the paltry salary of an executive wasn’t near good enough. He called in some people from engineering firms and asked them to come up a proposal for how much kickback he could reasonably ask for. Dutifully, they came up with a number around five percent.

From then on, the cost of doing business in the county included a five percent kickback. In some cases, he quite literally had a bag man. The bag man’s job was to serve as the intermediary between the guy (and yes, of course they were all white men) with the cash in the envelope and Agnew. For some of the more trusted of his criminal cohorts, Agnew cut out the middle man and accepted cash in an envelope himself. It was bribery in its most venal and primitive form. You want work, you pay me cash.

A few short years later, he was elected Governor of Maryland. His increase in responsibility drove up his need for cash. Now responsible for state wide projects, his graft increased in scale. 

After just two years of being the Governor, Nixon picked him up out of complete obscurity to be his running mate. As the red meat conservative, he was able to deal out the race baiting, antisemitic, anti-feminist, media hating vitriol while Nixon could keep himself ostensibly above the fray. This combination was effective. They barely squeaked out a victory in 1968 but crushed the Democrats in 1972.

Through all of this, Agnew saw no need not to keep his hand stretched out. He felt he was still owed for those contracts that were awarded in Maryland while he was Governor. He even tried to reach out and take over responsibility of some federal contracts. Believe it or not, while in his office at the White House, people were still coming to him with envelopes full of cash. In fact, sometimes when people would come in, he’d point at the ceiling to warn them that they were being taped. They’d slide him the envelope full of cash, he’d open a desk drawer, and slip the cash into the drawer. Tony Soprano couldn’t have been smoother.

Just to reiterate, people were passing around large amounts of cash in anonymous white envelopes in the White House to the Vice President. That sentence just kind of blows my mind.

The Maryland federal attorney’s office got wind and launched an investigation. Fairly quickly they had Agnew dead to rights. The IRS was able to trace the cash payments. The people making the payoffs kept detailed records. All of their visits to the White House were logged. All flipped and were willing to testify against Agnew. These were not exactly master criminals. 

Keep in mind that at the same time that prosecutors were actively gathering evidence that could send Agnew to prison for years, a whole different part of the Department of Justice was investigating Watergate. These two investigations could (and eventually did) bring down both the President and Vice President.

At the same time, President Nixon was beginning to show signs of the stress that he was under. At one point, he ended up spending a week in the hospital with a severe case of pneumonia. He was suffering from fits of depression. It was unknown how long he would hold on.

It became vital to get Agnew out of the succession to the presidency. The Attorney General, Elliott Richardson, already under tremendous pressure because of his support of the Watergate special prosecutor, had to work hard and fast to get Agnew to resign. Because of this urgency, Agnew’s lawyers was able to drive a hard bargain. Instead of going to jail for multiple years for the many overt acts of bribery for which the prosecutors had him dead to rights on, Agnew’s lawyers were able to negotiate it down to a single tax evasion charge, a plea of nolo contendere, a relatively small fine, and resigning from the office of Vice President. This was actually done under such secrecy that the press was shocked when Agnew quickly strode into a court house one day to plead to the charge.

This was done in the nick of time. Only ten days later, Nixon ordered Richardson to fire Archibald Cox, the Watergate Special Prosecutor. Richardson refused and resigned. His deputy refused and resigned. The Solicitor General, Robert Bork (infamous if you’re up on your Supreme Court history), took over as Attorney General and fired Cox. This was the Saturday Night Massacre. 

What would have happened to Agnew’s case if the principled Richardson was no longer around to support the Maryland prosecutors? That is a great unknown. Could Agnew have hung on and succeeded Nixon instead of Ford?

If so, how big would those envelopes have been if they’d been delivered President Spiro Agnew in the Oval Office?