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He was brash. Politically incorrect. An “outsider” political candidate who rose to the White House, out of nowhere, with a reputation as a “counter-puncher.” But Vice President Spiro Agnew was also something else… an active criminal whose secrets were about to be exposed. What happens when a “counter-puncher” in the White House suddenly sees his political future directly threatened by investigators inside his own Justice Department?

For a list of sources and references for this episode, see here.

MUSICAL JINGLE: My kind of man, Ted Agnew is! My kind of man, Ted Agnew is!

MADDOW: When Richard Nixon tapped Spiro Agnew — Ted to his friends — to be his running mate in 1968, this was the Ted Agnew the country was introduced to…

MUSICAL JINGLE: He’s your kind of man, Ted Agnew is! Taking your stand, Ted Agnew is!

Agnew was a fresh face in national politics. He wasn’t much known at all outside of Maryland where he had just been elected Governor. Heck, he wasn’t even all that well known in Maryland!

But he was an effective politician. His quick rise out of nowhere was thanks in large part to his “my kind of man” personal image. He was the son of Greek immigrants, he was an outsider. He forged a reputation as a straight shooter: hard-work, honesty, integrity.

RADIO AD — WOMAN: Well, I like him because he’s honest, he’s really honest. MAN: One thing that I can definitely say is Ted Agnew would make a perfect administrator for the state of Maryland WOMAN: Well, I think he’s going to be our next Governor. MAN: He’s my kind of man

Agnew got elected Baltimore County Executive in 1962. Four years after that, he became the Governor of Maryland. And two years after that, he found himself being tapped by Richard Nixon to be Vice President.

A virtual unknown in national politics, a man who Nixon himself barely even knew.

Here’s a reporter asking Nixon how Agnew reacted when Nixon called him to offer him the gig.

REPORTER: Mr. Nixon, was Mr. Agnew surprised when you called him? What did the Vice Presidential nominee say?

RICHARD NIXON: Oh! I think, well I think the best indication of surprise is when a lawyer has no words. Governor Agnew, as you know, is a lawyer and is a very articulate man, as you saw in his press conference. I’d say there’s about 20 seconds before he said a word!

Nixon had had a really hard time figuring out who to pick as his running mate that year. He had considered a close friend or two. He had considered one guy who ran against him in the primaries… a guy by the name of Ronald Reagan. But ultimately, Nixon had decided on Agnew. And the process had been stressful. And actually, the initial reaction to the pick was not great.

1968 HUBERT HUMPHREY “LAUGHTER” CAMPAIGN AD

This was a TV ad that was run by the Hubert Humphrey campaign during the 1968 election.

This was it. No words. Just a man laughing hysterically as the camera slowly pulled out to reveal words on the TV screen that read: “Agnew For Vice President?”

Spiro Agnew was a literal laughing-stock when the 1968 Presidential campaign got underway.

But as much as the Democrats might have wanted to keep laughing at him, Agnew soon became sort of a rock star on the right.

He was blunt. He was politically incorrect. He loved trashing liberals. And the press. And minorities. He shot down hecklers at his events with glee. He described them as “spoiled brats who never had a good spanking.”

AGNEW: Somewhere, somebody failed you. Your churches must not have gotten through to you because you don’t even know anything about the golden rule!

(hecklers booing)

AGNEW: I’m frankly ashamed of you. And I think you ought be ashamed of yourselves.

(hecklers booing)

During that campaign, Agnew stepped in it a number of times… often on the issue of race… and on ethnic stereotypes.

CHET HUNTLEY: Spiro Agnew took a day off from campaigning following a weekend of speeches in Hawaii. In one of his Monday appearances before a racially-mixed audience on the island of Maui, he replied to criticism of his having used slang labels “Polack” and “Jap” in referring to Americans of Polish and Japanese ancestry.

Agnew’s lack of filter when it came to racially-insensitive remarks, it sometimes got him in trouble with the press. But big picture, the campaign actually saw it as a plus. Rather than hurting him, that stuff actually seemed to solidify his support on the right.

Agnew the political outsider who didn’t care who he offended, that was a feature, not a bug.

AGNEW: And if you tell me that the hippies and the yippies are going to be able to do the job, I’ll tell you this: they can’t run a bus, they can’t serve in a governmental office, they can’t run a lathe in a factory, all they can do is lay down in the park and sleep or kick policemen with razor blades.

Spiro Agnew pushed the limits. He was deliberately outrageous, he defended his over-the-top rhetoric during that campaign by saying that he never hit first, he just hit back. He told reporters, “I guess by nature I’m a counter-puncher. You can’t hit my team in the groin and expect me to stand here and smile about it.”

A counter-puncher in the White House.

How exactly does a politician who is a self-styled counter-puncher react… when his own political survival is directly threatened?

When the full weight of his own Justice Department comes crashing down on him?

This is a story that is not well known. But it really should be… especially, maybe, now.

It’s the story of a criminal occupant of the White House… whose crimes are discovered by his own Justice Department…

Who then tries to hold onto power… by obstructing the investigation into his crimes, by smearing and threatening the prosecutors who are investigating him… and by trying to convince his legion of supporters across the country… that none of the allegations are true. That it’s all just a big witch-hunt.

And if that sounds familiar… it’s because history… is here to help! I firmly believe it.

I’m your host Rachel Maddow. And this is “Bag Man”: the wild and untold story of the Presidential line of succession, impeachment, indictment… and panic in the White House.

Episode 1: “An Unsettling Secret”

AGNEW: Ultra-liberalism today translates into a whimpering isolationism in foreign policy, a mulish obstructionism in domestic policy, and a pusillanimous pussyfooting on the critical issue of law and order (applause)

Spiro Agnew doesn’t exactly loom large as a political figure in U.S. history. His name barely registers as a political trivia question these days. But when Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew won the White House in 1968…

Spiro Agnew– even though he doesn’t get the credit for it– he basically created the mold for the modern iteration of confrontational conservatism in America.

AGNEW: You know how it is with the radical liberals, you zing one of them– call his hand, cite his voting record, quote his speeches, tell America the harm he’s done– and he howls like a coyote with his tail caught in a snake hole! (eruption of applause)

Even though he was now Vice President of the United States, there had been no transformation from candidate Agnew into a less divisive public official Agnew. If anything, he got even more aggressive:

DAVID BRINKLEY: He was asked why he– more than other politicians– was accused of dividing the country. Agnew said it was because he was the foremost destroyer of liberal dogma, and that when liberals are attacked, they salivate like Pavlovian dogs.

Spiro Agnew was a flamethrower. He loved offending the press. His whole political brand was about offending liberals and Democrats and minorities. The more political norms he blew through, the stronger he got with the Republican Party’s hardline base and that was the only base and the only audience he ever tried to cultivate. Democrats were mystified. Republicans loved it.

After one comment in which Agnew publicly denigrated black leaders across the country… one of the most prominent African-American members of Congress– William Clay of Missouri– took to the floor of the House to deliver a condemnation of Agnew that was… almost Not-Safe-For-Work.

He said about the Vice President: “[He] is seriously ill. He has all the symptoms of an intellectual misfit. His recent tirade against black leadership is just part of a game played by him called mental masturbation. Apparently, Mr. Agnew is an intellectual sadist who experiences intellectual orgasms by attacking, humiliating, and kicking the oppressed.”

Imagine if there had been C-SPAN back then for that!

But the group that Agnew seemed to reserve the most venom for… his favorite target of all… was the press.

AGNEW: The purpose of my remarks tonight is to focus your attention on this little group of men who not only enjoy a right of instant rebuttal to every Presidential address, but, more importantly, wield a free hand in selecting, presenting, and interpreting the great issues in our nation.

During the first term of the Nixon Administration, Vice President Agnew took it upon himself to try to discredit the American news media. And all presidents — presumably most vice presidents, too — they all undoubtedly hate the press, they all think they’re covered in a way that isn’t fair. But Agnew set out on an overt campaign to try to turn the country against the press in a way that nobody had really done before from the White House.

In a series of speeches in 1969, with the seal of the Vice Presidency underneath him, Agnew delivered prepared attacks on the news networks, which he portrayed as a danger to the nation, as biased and untrustworthy:

AGNEW: A raised eyebrow, an inflection of the voice, a caustic remark dropped in the middle of a broadcast can raise doubts in a million minds about the veracity of a public official or the wisdom of a government policy … when a single commentator or producer, night after night, determines for millions of people how much of each side of a great issue they are going to see and hear, should he not first disclose his personal views on the issue as well? (applause)

Agnew’s assault on the press was sort of a shock to the system at the time. The President of NBC News took the rare step of appearing on NBC’s nightly newscast to push back:

JULIAN GOODMAN (NBC NEWS PRESIDENT): Evidently, he would prefer a different kind of television reporting, one that would be subservient to whatever political group happens to be in authority at the time. Those who might feel momentary agreement with his remarks should think carefully about whether that kind of television news is what they want.

The Vice President seemed to be stirring up something dangerous in the country.

The Washington Post wrote in December 1969: “One little noted and wholly unintentional result of Vice President Agnew’s speeches against the press and television is a renewed wave of public expression of anti-Semitism. It was noticeable at once in this city where local television stations were swamped for three days after Agnew’s first speech with obscene phone calls protesting ‘Jew-Commies on the air.’”

One Jewish newspaper editor in Louisville, Kentucky reported at the time that he was, “buried under an avalanche of sick [anti-Semitic] mail.”

A leading Jewish organization said Anti-Semitic groups across the country were: “using Agnew’s speeches to justify their hate campaigns and urging their followers to support him.”

And it’s not that Spiro Agnew himself ever directly espoused any of those beliefs, but something about his rhetoric seemed to give his supporters license to express these views that they hadn’t felt free to express before.

His attacks on “enemies” of the administration became so heated that Democrats– and even some Republicans– started to warn that if he didn’t tone down his rhetoric, somebody was going to get hurt.

Here’s Arkansas Democratic Senator William Fulbright:

SEN. WILLIAM FULBRIGHT (D-AR): He intimidates people, I don’t think there’s any doubt about him intimidating, he inspires other people to radical actions. I think these outbursts of threats through letters and telephone messages and so on is an outgrowth of this kind of a spirit.

That was Spiro Agnew the political figure.

He was a lightning rod. He was a demagogue. He had a devoted base inside the Republican Party that he seemed to be able to control in ways that other politicians couldn’t… in ways that seemed even dangerous at times.

And he was about to bring all of that to bear on members of his own Justice Department, who had just discovered that Agnew– in addition to all of that other stuff– also happened to be… an active criminal. Stay right there.

**************

DAVID BRINKLEY: Richard Nixon chose Governor Spiro Agnew of Maryland for his Vice President Until two years ago, he was unknown outside Maryland County politics.

When Richard Nixon tapped Spiro Agnew to become his Vice President, Agnew was on a very fast rise in Republican politics.

When Nixon picked him to be VP, Agnew had been Governor of Maryland for just a couple of years. Before that, he was a local elected official, he was Baltimore County Executive.

So, Agnew emerged onto the national scene basically out of nowhere. But his rise in Maryland… in famously corrupt Maryland… that came with some secrets that would slowly start to be revealed right at the height of the Watergate scandal.

GARRICK UTLEY: Good morning. The place: the Senate caucus room in Washington, this is Day 4 of the Senate Watergate hearings…

That Spring of 1973, as the country was in the grips of Watergate fever, a team of young, federal prosecutors based in Maryland had just launched a brand new investigation that had nothing at all to do with Watergate:

TIM BAKER (FMR. FEDERAL PROSECUTOR): It was based solely on, um, it was just kind of rumors.

That’s Tim Baker. He is one of the people at the heart of this story.

He was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Maryland in 1973. And the rumors that he’s talking about there were basically whispers that Maryland politics at the time had a real bribery-and-corruption problem.

And that Spring, Tim Baker along with two of his fellow prosecutors, they decided they were going to dig into those rumors. Ron Liebman was another prosecutor on that team:

RON LIEBMAN (FMR. FEDERAL PROSECUTOR): In essence it was: follow the money, get the documents, follow the money.

If the Watergate era had a theme song, this was it, right? The FBI and Congressional investigators and intrepid reporters from The Washington Post, they were all busy “following the money”…

GARRICK UTLEY: And that brings us to the third major element in the Watergate story: money. Cash. Cash given to the President’s re-election committee secretly and, in some cases, illegally.

Following the money led to almost all of the most interesting stuff in the Watergate scandal, but in their unrelated, contemporaneous investigation in Baltimore, these young federal prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Maryland… they, too, were following the money.

BARNEY SKOLNIK (FMR FEDERAL PROSECUTOR): Investigate! Which is like, you know, it’s like throwing catnip. I mean, you know, “Oh, okay, fine! You know, we’ll investigate!”

That’s Barney Skolnik, he was the senior prosecutor on this three-man team.

There are some people in this story you will come to know and love. Top of that list is these three young, scrappy federal prosecutors, they’re all around 30 years old at the time, they’re trying to take a bite out of political corruption in their state.

What Barney Skolnik and Tim Baker and Ron Liebman all started to find when they started following the money in Maryland… was a scheme. A bribery scheme where local elected officials took thousands of dollars in cash kickbacks from companies that got public contracts.

It was exactly the way that you imagine it: businessmen putting cash into plain envelopes… handing those envelopes full of cash to elected officials… and then walking away with a job to design that local bridge or that county building.

These three young prosecutors started lifting this rock in Maryland and what they found underneath it was an underworld of long-standing, local corruption. Basically small-time officials who were on-the-take.

That’s what this case looked like to them in early 1973.

Watergate may have been gripping the nation. President Richard Nixon looked like he might end up in deep trouble. But these guys had this local investigation going that was world’s away from all of that.

Until suddenly… it wasn’t.

AGNEW: I, Spiro Theodore Agnew solemnly swear…

Because that Spring, Richard Nixon’s Vice President Spiro Agnew– who came from this swamp of Maryland politics– he started hearing rumors of his own about this team of investigators who were now poking around in his old neck of the woods. And upon hearing that, Spiro Agnew did something that was sort of suspicious.

He went to go see the Attorney General of the United States himself. To ask the Attorney General about this local investigation that was underway in Maryland. At the time, the Attorney General didn’t even know about that investigation yet!

But that little visit from the Vice President, that sent alarm bells ringing with these three prosecutors in Baltimore. Because at that point– as far as they knew– their investigation had nothing at all to do with the sitting Vice President! Here’s Tim Baker and Ron Liebman.

BAKER: I immediately thought to myself, “Why is he so upset? He’s upset because he’s got something to hide.”

So I say in this meeting, “We’re going to get Agnew”

LIEBMAN: I remember Tim Baker telling me and Barney, in so many words, that he smelled a rat. It was way beyond our horizon. But Tim– to his eternal credit– smelled it first. He saw something

Their sleepy little investigation in Maryland… was about to change the country.

What these young prosecutors were about to discover was that the country didn’t just have a criminal President in power, but a criminal Vice President as well who, of course, was next in the line of succession.

BAKER: We have evidence that Vice President Agnew took bribes as County Executive, Governor and even as Vice President.

LIEBMAN: Not only is it Watergate, but he’s the Vice President and we have hard evidence of corruption.

BAKER: Fifteen $100 bills he gave Agnew in the basement of the White House. This was IN the White House!

SKOLNIK: It really was “We’re all in this together and we gotta figure out what to do for the country because this is, this is some heavy shit.”

This isn’t just the story of a political corruption scheme that got exposed… it is that.

But it’s also a story of how exactly a criminal occupant of the White House reacts and lashes out when his own Justice Department starts to zero in on him for his criminal behavior.

VICE PRESIDENT AGNEW: Because of these tactics which have been employed against me … I will not resign if indicted! I will not resign if indicted!

Spiro Agnew rose to national prominence as a lightning rod, as a flamethrower, as someone who wasn’t afraid to smear his opponents and roll around in the mud. He was quite willing to be dangerous to the country if it suited his own purposes.

And ultimately, he employed all of that for this fight.

To fight back against an investigation and a small team of investigators who were not-only threatening to remove him from the White House, they were threatening to throw him in jail:

MARTIN LONDON (VICE PRESIDENT AGNEW’S DEFENSE ATTORNEY): And that’s really, to use a legal expression, that’s when the shit hit the fan.

That’s Marty London, he was Spiro Agnew’s defense lawyer – we will spend a little more time with him later in this story – you’re gonna love him.

This scandal has somehow gotten itself forgotten. It barely registers, but it’s wild: a sitting White House occupant, under criminal investigation from his own government, pulling out every stop to survive, including obstructing that investigation and trying very hard to shut it down.

SKOLNIK: I mean, it was, it was, you know, that’s why I get sort of emotional about it.

BAKER: The pressure– and it was big pressure– the pressure was: get the guy out of the line of succession.

LIEBMAN: We were determined. You know, we’re kids, but we were determined to follow this case through.

Part of the reason we wanted to make this podcast now is because this is a story that I think is worth hearing for the first time… particularly right now!

But it’s also because now there’s new stuff to know about it.

The prosecutors themselves haven’t even been aware of the full story all these years. They’re going to hear it all… right here for the first time:

BAKER: Good night! No, I didn’t know this!

SKOLNIK: Oh my Lord!

LIEBMAN: 45 years later, and my blood still boils when I read stuff like that.

For the last several months, ace producer Mike Yarvitz and I have been digging back into this story, going through the archives, and interviewing the people who were involved in it.

What we learned, is that when law enforcement gets on a collision course with the White House… specifically with a criminal in the White House who is a self-styled counter-puncher… who seems to be able to command-at-will an entire base of supporters across the country… when that kind of collision happens, what we learned is that things get pretty thoroughly insane pretty quickly.

I’m Rachel Maddow, and that’s all ahead… on “Bag Man.”

“Bag Man” is a production of MSNBC and NBC Universal. This series is executive produced by Mike Yarvitz. It was written by myself and Mike Yarvitz. Editorial and production support from Jonathan Hirsch and Marissa Schneiderman from Neon Hum Media. And you can find much more about this story on our website, which is: msnbc.com/bagman

The post Transcript – Episode 1: An Unsettling Secret appeared first on MS NOW.

From MS Now.

These are the source references for Episode 2 of Rachel Maddow’s Bag Man podcast, which you can listen to here, or through your preferred podcasting service.

Books:

Witcover, Jules. “Very Strange Bedfellows: The Short and Unhappy Marriage of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew”, PublicAffairs, 2008

Cohen, Richard and Witcover, Jules. “A Heartbeat Away”, Viking Press, 1974

Agnew, Spiro T. “Go Quietly … Or Else”, William Morrow, 1980

London, Martin. “The Client Decides: A Litigator’s Life: Jackie Onassis, Vice President Spiro Agnew, Donald Trump, Roy Cohn, and More”, Eastlake Press, 2017

Coffey, Justin. “Spiro Agnew and The Rise of the Republican Right”, Praeger, 2015

Ehrlichman, John. “Witness to Power: The Nixon Years”, Simon & Schuster Publishing, 1982

Richardson, Elliot. “The Creative Balance: Government, Politics, and The Individual in America’s Third Century.” Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 1976

Articles:

“Agnew Successor In Baltimore Job Indicted In Bribes”, The New York Times (August 24, 1973)

“Texts of Charge Against Vice President and of Grand Jury Criminal Information”, The New York Times (October 11, 1973)

“G.S.A. Says Agnew Office Made Overtures on Pacts”, The New York Times (October 11, 1973)

“Head of the G.S.A. Says Agnew’s Office Recommended Companies For Contracts”, The New York Times, October 11, 1973 (Courtesy of The Weisberg Collection. Hood College. Frederick, MD, USA)

“Nixon Takes Blame As 4 Aides Quit Over Watergate Bugging”, The Atlanta Constitution Newspaper (May 1, 1973)

“Federal Grand Jury Indicts 7 Nixon Aides on Charges of Conspiracy on Watergate; Haldeman Ehrlichman, Mitchell On List”, The New York Times (March 2, 1974)

“Closing In on Agnew: The Prosecutors’ Story” by Aaron Latham. “New York Magazine” (November 26, 1973)

Archival Material:

NBC News Special Report/1973 Presidential Inauguration (January 20, 1973)

NBC Nightly News (August 23, 1973)

NBC News Archives (April 30, 1973)

NBC Nightly News (May 7, 1973)

Spiro T. Agnew 1966 Gubernatorial campaign radio ads (courtesy of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library)

H.R. Haldeman Audio Diaries, March 31, 1970 (Courtesy: Richard Nixon Presidential Library)

NBC Nightly News (June 14, 1973)

NBC News Special Report, Vice President Agnew Speech in Los Angeles (September 29, 1973)

NBC Nightly News (September 19, 1973)

The post Bag Man Episode 2 Sources appeared first on MS NOW.

From MS Now.

From The Hill

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Thursday said he spoke with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman about an agent at the company breaching the commonwealth’s health department website in June. Albanese told reporters in New York City, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, that the agent gained access to the Medicare Statistics Reporting…

Sen. John Curtis of Utah went out on a lonely limb last week when he became the first and only Republican member of Congress to take an interest in the controversy surrounding the Russian oligarch who paid for Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding party. “It’s corruption,” Curtis said in a video posted to social media on Friday, adding: “This is a big deal.”

Earlier this week, the Utahn followed through, sending a letter to the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee, calling for an investigation and recommending a subpoena for the president’s oldest son.

“A toaster is a wedding gift,” Curtis added in an online statement. “A private-island party paid for by a Putin-connected oligarch is something else. Republicans nearly wore out the subpoena machine investigating Hunter Biden’s foreign relationships. We should not unplug it now. ‘Trust us’ was not enough then, and it is not enough now.”

To my great surprise, the senator actually picked up some support from within his own party in the days that followed. HuffPost reported:

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who is retiring, described Donald Trump Jr.’s acceptance of [gifts from Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch close to Vladimir Putin] as “colossally bad judgment at best,” per The Associated Press. In a separate interview with The Hill, he added: “If the House flips next year, you know there’s going to be an investigation one way or the other.”

Echoing those sentiments was Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who told The Hill: “I’m with Sen. Curtis. I would support Sen. Curtis’s request.”

What’s more, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told the AP, in reference to Curtis, “I’m glad he said what he said.” Earlier this week, Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana also conceded during an appearance on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that the circumstances surrounding the wedding controversy looked “really bad.”

I’m not suggesting that five GOP senators taking the matter seriously represents a dramatic shift in Republican politics, but after years of partisan indifference to Trump-related scandals, it’s heartening to see any GOP senators care.

For his part, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer scrambled to carry the White House’s water again, publishing an item via social media chiding “some senators” for wanting to “waste time creating a new Russia hoax and attacking Don Jr.”

The Minnesota congressman added that the president’s son “is a private citizen … so this unwarranted attack will go nowhere.”

There are a handful of important problems with Emmer’s pitiful defense. For one thing, the original Trump/Russia scandal was not a “hoax,” no matter how many times Republicans pretend otherwise. For another, private citizens receive congressional subpoenas all the time — as Emmer ought to know, given his celebration of subpoenas for Hunter Biden in the recent past.

But perhaps most important is the fact that the underlying allegations are hardly an “unwarranted attack.”

ProPublica reported last week that Kremlev had “secretly bankrolled” part of Trump Jr.’s recent wedding, footing the bill for “hundreds of thousands of dollars of wedding expenses” and even helping to plan the gathering.

“It’s not clear why Kremlev helped pay for Trump Jr.’s wedding,” ProPublica added. “The men appear to have met only recently.”

It was a tough story to shrug off for reasons that should have been obvious: A Putin-aligned Russian oligarch paid for the wedding party of the sitting American president’s oldest son, and it was an open question as to why that happened and what the Russian might want or expect in return.

If partisans such as Emmer want to present an argument as to why this is unworthy of scrutiny, I’d love to hear it. But so far, GOP leaders haven’t even tried to present such a case.

As for the groom’s father, President Donald Trump addressed the story for the first time on Friday, insisting that the arrangement was “totally allowed.”

As part of the same exchange, Trump said of his oldest son, “As I understand it, he paid him back.” He then hedged a bit on the timing, adding: “I understand that Don’s paying them back.”

There are not yet any details as to whether that has happened, whether it will happen, how much Trump Jr. intends to repay the Russian oligarch or why he would even bother if all of this was “totally allowed.”

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

The post GOP support grows for subpoenaing Donald Trump Jr. over wedding party controversy appeared first on MS NOW.

From MS Now.

Dr. Heidi Overton is appearing before a Senate committee on Thursday for her confirmation hearing as the next commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.

Source: ABC News

Former “Teen Mom” star Mackenzie Edwards has been granted temporary custody of her two kids, whom she shares with ex-husband Ryan Edwards … and a judge ruled that he can only see them at his parents’ house after she claimed he relapsed on drugs.…

From TMZ.

In “Delirium” and “The Cherry Orchard,” experimental directors smash up and rebuild classic plays.

From The New Yorker 

With the Watergate scandal gripping the nation, and President Richard Nixon on the verge of going down, a small team of federal prosecutors in Baltimore discover a bombshell that will rock a nation already on the edge. The Vice President of the United States— right at the height of Watergate—has been conducting a secret bribery and extortion operation… from inside the White House itself. And only they know it.

For a list of sources and references for this episode, see here.

MADDOW: Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew were officially sworn-into office for a second term on January 20th, 1973.

JOHN CHANCELLOR: And welcome to the 47th Inaugural of an American President. David Brinkley and I here to cover that, something the United States has been doing since 1789…

The festivities that day were a celebration of what had just been a political annihilation.

Nixon got 520 electoral votes that year… George McGovern got 17.

The Nixon/Agnew ticket won every state in the country, except Massachusetts.

Newly re-elected Vice President Agnew celebrated that night with his wife Judy at a party that was thrown in their honor at the Smithsonian:

JUDY AGNEW: This time, I know more or less what to expect!

NBC REPORTER: What do you expect, Mrs. Agnew?

JUDY AGNEW: Oh, what do I expect!

VICE PRESIDENT AGNEW: She expects to have fun!

JUDY AGNEW: Fun! Right! I expect to be much more relaxed this time! (laughing)

Spiro Agnew was in triumphant good spirits that night… blissfully unaware of the danger that was unfurling for him just a short drive up the Baltimore Washington Parkway.

In Baltimore, Maryland, just days before that inauguration, a team of three young, federal prosecutors were preparing to unleash a blizzard of federal subpoenas, with no warning.

TIM BAKER (FMR. FEDERAL PROSECUTOR): And we put together a team of IRS agents and we had all 50 subpoenas served on a Monday morning.

That’s Tim Baker. One of the federal prosecutors who worked up these subpoenas, out of the US Attorney’s office in Maryland.

These prosecutors were hoping to bust open a political bribery scheme in local Maryland politics.

In terms of who exactly they thought they would nab though, the expectations– at least early-on– were relatively low:

RON LIEBMAN (FMR. FEDERAL PROSECUTOR): And I think the general thinking was maybe we’d be able to find a corrupt Congressmen, maybe a State Legislator. I think that’s what, the level of expectation.

That’s Ron Liebman, he was the second prosecutor on the team. And you can hear from him there that this was a little bit of a fishing expedition.

But these prosecutors did have one particular fish in mind: they were after the head of the County government. The Baltimore County Executive at the time, who was a Democrat named Dale Anderson.

BARNEY SKOLNIK (FMR. FEDERAL PROSECUTOR): The word is, you know, the word on the street, the rumor, the Scuttlebutt is that Dale Anderson is corrupt and is taking bribes.

That’s Barney Skolnik, the lead prosecutor on the team.

What he and Tim Baker and Ron Liebman started to uncover evidence of was that corruption scheme that they’d been hearing all these rumors about: that County Executive Dale Anderson was taking cash payoffs as bribes-and-kickbacks for handing out County contracts.

NBC REPORTER: Anderson was cited on 39 counts involving more than $46,000 in contracting kickbacks.

This local official Dale Anderson was their big fish and these prosecutors were now getting the goods on him and on this big bribery scheme in that specific County government.

But here’s the thing…

The man who had Dale Anderson’s job right before he did… was just then being sworn-in for his second term as Vice President of the United States.

NBC REPORTER: Off behind out of camera range, Vice President Agnew has just gotten into his limousine with Mrs. Agnew. The Presidential motorcade is lining up here on the south lawn of the White House.

Spiro Agnew– before he ever got to the White House– began his political career in that County. He had been Baltimore County Executive for four years, and now the guy who had that job right after him was being busted for taking bribes, in what was starting to look like a pretty slick, well-established, smooth-running bribery kickback and corruption criminal enterprise.

Had Vice President Agnew taken part in running that same criminal scheme while he was in that job?

What prosecutors didn’t know at that moment, but what Spiro Agnew very much knew that night while he was celebrating his re-election at the Smithsonian…

Is that not-only had he taken part in that same criminal scheme back then… in fact, he had just accepted an envelope stuffed with cash.

I’m your host Rachel Maddow. And this is “Bag Man”: the wild and untold story of the presidential line of succession, impeachment, indictment, and panic in the White House.

Episode 2: “Crawling In”

PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: As the new Attorney General, I have today named Elliot Richardson, a man of unimpeachable integrity and rigorously high principle.

Elliot Richardson had just become the new Attorney General of the United States in the Spring of 1973.

He had been Nixon’s Secretary of Defense. He was Health Secretary before that.

But from the moment that he became the Attorney General, Elliot Richardson’s life was consumed by the Watergate scandal.

ELLIOT RICHARDSON: I have decided that I will, if confirmed, appoint a special prosecutor and give him all the independence, authority, and staff support needed to carry out the tasks entrusted to him.

One of Richardson’s closest aides at the time was a young lawyer named JT Smith:

JT SMITH (EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TO AG ELLIOT RICHARDSON): He knew that Nixon was under a cloud. He didn’t know what was in the tapes, but the White House didn’t seem eager for the tapes to see the light of day. He knew that the mood in the White House on the part of the President and his staff was quite bleak.

That Summer though, Attorney General Elliot Richardson also knew something else. He held a secret that only a handful of people in the entire government knew.

In the middle of that summer– right in the middle of Watergate– Elliot Richardson got a visit from his U.S. Attorney in Maryland George Beall and Beall’s team of three assistant U.S. Attorneys.

What those prosecutors brought to him that day was hard evidence that the sitting Vice President Spiro Agnew… was actively engaged in criminal activity.

These prosecutors had not set out to discover that, but they had launched an investigation into local corruption in Maryland and where that investigation ultimately led them… was inside the office of the Vice President.

SPIRO AGNEW: Ladies and gentlemen, I’m Ted Agnew.

To the extent that Spiro Agnew is remembered in history, it’s for this sort of vague sense that he went down over tax evasion or something sort of benign. What he actually did though was way worse than that, to the point of being sort of bonkers.

When he was Baltimore County Executive, Agnew had had the power to award local contracts. What prosecutors discovered… is that he was awarding those contracts almost exclusively to local businessmen who were paying him off. Who were delivering him cash bribes, literally stacks of bills stuffed into envelopes.

Here’s Barney Skolnik, one of these federal prosecutors in Baltimore who helped crack the case:

SKOLNIK: The scheme, it doesn’t even deserve the, you know, the appellation “scheme”. It wasn’t a scheme, it was just a payoff.

When Agnew left that County Executive job and became Governor of Maryland, prosecutors learned that he took the payoff system with him. But then, of course, it wasn’t just small-time local contracts he was controlling anymore. As Governor, of course he moved up to big state contracts.

And that required him to scale-up his criminal efforts. Here’s Ron Liebman, another one of the prosecutors on the team:

LIEBMAN: When Agnew became Governor, it was explained to him you want a “Bag Man”, you don’t want to take directly, you want to insulate yourself. Because then it’s just you against another person. And Agnew had at least one Bag Man, I think two, but he also took directly. He was greedy, absolutely greedy.

Agnew– as Governor– enlisted his State Roads Commissioner to start awarding state contracts to the firms that would pay Agnew off.

And — as advised — he also got himself a Bag Man: a longtime friend named Bud Hammerman. Bud’s job was to personally go collect the money from the companies that just got the contracts.

LIEBMAN: The deal was the contractor would pay Hammerman. He’s holding the money and paying the money directly to Agnew because he’s one of the Bag Men.

What Agnew put in place as Governor was a slick well-run extortion ring.

Agnew himself would keep 50-percent of the cash.

His Roads Commissioner, who picked the contractors, and his Bag Man who leaned on them for the cash… they would each get to keep 25-percent. So, half for the two of them, half for the Governor. Here’s Barney Skolnik:

SKOLNIK: I mean, taking large sums of cash in a succession of white envelopes– over and over and over again– is about as crass as it can be, you know, if you’re a public official.

What prosecutors discovered that Spring was that this wasn’t just some old scheme that Agnew had been running back in Maryland, which he then stopped when he became Vice President. What they discovered was that this was a scheme Agnew was still actively carrying out as Vice President of the United States… on the grounds of the White House itself!

The prosecutors discovered a local Baltimore businessman named Lester Matz. Matz told them that he’d been making regular trips to the White House to secretly deliver cash to Agnew since Agnew had been in office as Vice President… in fact, starting pretty much immediately after Agnew was elected Vice President. Here’s Ron Liebman explaining how it worked:

LIEBMAN: After the election, the Vice President’s office, temporary office was in the, in the basement I think of the Old Executive Office Building. And Lester Matz went to see the Vice President-elect with an envelope stuffed with cash in his suit jacket pocket. And he walked in to see Agnew– as he told us the story and as I recall it– and one of them, I think maybe Agnew, pointed to the ceiling like, “Don’t say anything because we could be overheard or taped or something.” And Lester Matz took out this envelope with $10,000 in cash, as I recall, stuffed envelope, and handed it to Agnew. Agnew took it, put it in the center drawer of his desk and closed his desk. And (laughs) when we heard that, we were just, couldn’t believe it! I mean, I believed it, but I was just shocked, just shocked. And we all were, that kind of crass bribery.

These young prosecutors had discovered– at the height of the Watergate scandal– that the Vice President of the United States was committing his own crimes, on an ongoing basis, inside the White House.

SKOLNIK: I mean cash in white envelopes, I mean, that’s crazy, to a Vice President.

LIEBMAN: I think we realized at that moment that we had a tiger by the tail.

It turned out that Agnew was also getting paid off by a Maryland engineering executive named Allen Green.

Green would make regular trips to the Executive Office Building right next to the White House. He would go into Agnew’s office and hand Agnew plain envelopes stuffed with $2,000 in cash.

Allen Green told prosecutors he went to the White House three or four times a year, during the whole first term of the Nixon Administration! On each trip, he delivered Agnew thousands of dollars. Always in envelopes. Always in cash.

And prosecutors soon discovered that Agnew was secretly accepting illegal deliveries of cash inside his Vice Presidential residence, as well as in the White House.

And if you’re wondering what all these businessmen were paying for when they were paying off Agnew, these prosecutors soon figured out that– where he could– Agnew was actually steering federal contracts to the businessmen who were now streaming into his office– and his apartment– with big wads of cash for him.

So it wasn’t just a one-sided shakedown operation, it was a true quid-pro-quo, it was government– federal government– for sale.

These young guys from Baltimore had not set out to find this, but what they soon realized they had rock-solid evidence of was that the Vice President was running an ongoing bribery-and-extortion scheme from inside the White House:

LIEBMAN: It was shocking. I mean, all of a sudden, you know, this case involving perhaps payoffs in Baltimore County, Maryland, or maybe in Annapolis was going to become not only more significant, keep in mind Watergate’s going on! So the President of United States, to put it mildly, is under a cloud. And here we three Baltimore federal prosecutors are being told that the next guy in line, the guy a heartbeat away, he’s also under a cloud! So, it was shocking.

It was shocking and it was now time for them to do something about it. They realized they needed to tell the Attorney General about what they’d uncovered.

Here’s Barney Skolnik again, with producer with Mike Yarvitz.

SKOLNIK: I had in fact no doubt at all that we had a prosecutable case. The issue was: who the defendant was. If the defendant was “John Smith”, I had no doubt. I mean, I was a good enough prosecutor and an experienced enough prosecutor to know that when you have what we had, that’s a case

MIKE YARVITZ: If it’s “John Smith”, you’ve got it locked up–

SKOLNIK: You just indict.

YARVITZ: In this case, it was not “John Smith.”

SKOLNIK: In this case, you say to the Attorney General, “what do you want us to do?”

This wasn’t just posing that question to any Attorney General. This was going to see Richard Nixon’s Attorney General.

Which meant giving a Presidential administration that was famous for covering-up political scandals… the chance to cover-up one more. That’s next.

********************************

Richard Nixon didn’t exactly have a stellar track record when it came to the job of Attorney General.

By the Summer of 1973, Nixon had already lost two different Attorneys General in connection with Watergate.

JOHN CHANCELLOR: A witness at the Senate Watergate hearings today directly implicated former Attorney General John Mitchell in the Watergate bugging and cover-up…

That Summer of ‘73, as Watergate was full-on boiling, a little team of federal prosecutors in Baltimore was facing the prospect of going to Washington to tell Richard Nixon’s newest Attorney General Elliot Richardson some news that they knew would be an absolute disaster for the Nixon White House.

They were coming to Washington to tell him that– at the height of Watergate– the Vice President Spiro Agnew was conducting an active criminal scheme of his own from inside the White House.

These prosecutors were going to take that news to Nixon’s Attorney General, knowing full well that he could do whatever he wanted with it. Here’s prosecutor Barney Skolnik:

SKOLNIK: I had a very conscious, not just realization that it was possible, but that under all the circumstances, it was highly likely that he was going to say– perhaps for the most honorable of reasons– I mean, he probably wouldn’t say “Shut it down”, but he could say words that would amount to “shut it down.”

These three young Baltimore prosecutors and their boss, the U.S. Attorney George Beall… they all drove to DC and they went to go see the new Attorney General Elliot Richardson.

Not sure what to expect. Fearing the worst.

But they knew they could no longer keep to themselves this criminal secret about the Vice President.

LIEBMAN: We all drove in one car up the Baltimore Washington Parkway, July 3, 1973 game-planning how we’re going to do this. “George is going to introduce us and then we’re going to do this, and when we do this, we’re going to do that. And when we do that, we’re going to do this.” So we get there, we’re ushered up to the Attorney General’s office, which to say “impressive” is to understate it. And we wait and we wait.

BAKER: And then Richardson comes in and he’s annoyed. You know, “What’s so important that I have to, you’re interrupting my day and you won’t even tell my secretary what it’s about. What’s so important?” He’s sitting there starting to take notes, but then more doodling and more and more impatient and just at the point where we’re sure he’s– the secretary comes in and gives him a note! He just up and leaves, no explanation, just gets up and leaves and he’s gone for it seems like hours, probably 20 minutes.

LIEBMAN: The minute he leaves, of course we’re saying, “George say this, say that!” Then Richardson would come back in and George would begin. “Well, we started in Baltimore County. We’re thinking about corruption, none of this, the Attorney General needs or wants to hear! And when George gets a little closer to the Vice President, another note comes in, Elliot Richardson gets up and he leaves, doesn’t say “excuse me”, comes back. Richardson is clearly under pressure. And George says, “Okay, now we’re going to tell you why we’re here.”

BAKER: “We have evidence that Vice President Agnew took bribes as County Executive, Governor and even as Vice President.” Now we have Richardson’s attention (laughs)! And my job at that point, it was my job now to layout the evidence that we had. And he’s very interested in the evidence. What he, of course, wants to know is: how good a case is this? And it’s a good case. I mean, we’ve got good stuff and we know it. I just start banging away on the “so and so will testify and he’s got documents and he’s backed up by his vice presidents.” Nail after nail after nail after nail.

LIEBMAN: I read his expression as saying, “I need this right now, like I need another hole in the head.” That was his expression like, “Jesus”, you know, “Jesus, sweet Jesus.”

Put yourself in Elliot Richardson’s shoes for a minute. He had just become Attorney General weeks earlier. He was overseeing the most sensitive investigation maybe in the history of the Justice Department, an ongoing, serious criminal probe of the President.

And here were these barely-out-of-law-school Baltimore prosecutors– who he’s never met– telling him “we know you’re investigating the President of the United States, but we need you to investigate the Vice President, as well.”

If you were the Attorney General, would you take on that burden?

Here’s JT Smith, Elliot Richardson’s top aide:

SMITH: I remember Richardson after that meeting saying to me, you know, “oh my God.”

SKOLNIK: You really were talking about a ship that’s in bad shape and, you know, the captain’s having a heart attack. And now the first mate, you’re going to throw the first mate overboard. I mean, what’s going to happen to the ship? It made the whole thing very heavy. You know, “what’s the right thing to do?”

The Baltimore prosecutors raced to DC, they dropped that bombshell on Elliot Richardson during that meeting. And then they waited… and watched… to see how he would respond:

LIEBMAN: I remember watching Mr. Richardson– Elliot– very, very closely thinking, “Alright, is this where he’s going to say good work guys? Really, really good work. Thanks for coming in. Leave the files here. We’ll see you later”? And what he did was, he started crawling into the case. He just crawled into the case, “So, what about this? What are you going to do about that? Like he was a collaborator with us, which he was. He immediately crawled into the case with us. It was extraordinary.

In that meeting, without flinching, Elliot Richardson took on the unimaginable burden– think of this!– of overseeing an active criminal investigation of the President… and the Vice President… at the same time. Two different cases.

There is no telling what any other Attorney General might have done in that situation.

You could almost understand an Attorney General saying, “I’ve got this investigation that might bring down the President, I can’t wipe out the Vice President, too. The country can’t survive that.”

But Elliot Richardson’s response to these young prosecutors who cracked this case was… keep going… keep digging… he told them that he would now directly oversee their investigation. It would be conducted in-secret with the knowledge of only the people in that room.

The stakes were potentially taking out the President and the Vice President, which would effectively overturn an entire national election, which had been a landslide win for Nixon and Agnew. But Elliot Richardson– who had just gotten on the job– decided that he had to take on that burden. He had to.

Here’s how Barney Skolnik, one of the prosecutors remembers that meeting with Elliot Richardson even today… 45 years later. The first voice you’ll hear is producer Mike Yarvitz:

MIKE YARVITZ: What are your memories from that meeting, that first meeting with Richardson? What are you feeling going into that meeting?

SKOLNIK: This is something about which I can get very emotional. I went to that meeting as I think most people in my position would have. Um, we don’t know him. I mean, I’ve heard good things about him, but we don’t know him and it’s like very much with a, with a great sense of anxiety that we are going to say to him, “Here, what do you want us to do?” And then, you know, figuratively speaking, hold our breath until he tells us what he’s going to tell us. Within um, the first few minutes of being with him, I knew, I think we all knew that we were in the presence of a very special human being. To me it is the single most, it’s the key to this whole saga: If Elliot Richardson had not been the Attorney General at that particular time, Spiro Agnew would have become President in August of ‘74. I mean, I’m certain of that.

These Baltimore prosecutors happened to draw as an Attorney General a figure in American political life who was equal to the moment. When how could you expect that of anyone?

Elliot Richardson was a Republican, decorated military veteran — he went ashore on D-Day — he was an ex-federal prosecutor himself. Unimpeachable integrity.

What began at that moment, in that meeting, with Elliot Richardson’s decision… was an unprecedented emergency mission inside the Justice Department to oust the Vice President of the United States before it was too late. Before he ascended to the Presidency himself.

SKOLNIK: You know, we’re talking about the Summer of ‘73, I mean Watergate hearings are going on. Everybody was conscious that Nixon– aside from being, you know, a “crook” in his memorable word– might not last.

Watergate was beginning to reach a boil. The President might go down at any moment, either by resignation, or removal from office. And on top of that teetering drama, it was now on the Attorney General and this small team of federal prosecutors to somehow make sure that an active criminal wasn’t next in line to replace him.

They had the criminal scheme in their sites. They had the evidence, by then pouring in. They had leadership that — almost unbelievably — proved to be unafraid of the stakes, and willing to see this through.

The only problem was: the man that they were about to take on… was not going to take any of it lying down.

VICE PRESIDENT AGNEW: I want to say at this point, clearly and unequivocally: I am innocent of the charges against me! (cheers/applause)

Spiro Agnew was gearing up to wage war on this band of prosecutors.

And he knew that his real power base was the legion of supporters he had both in the public and in Congress, who loved what a hard-liner he was, who loved what a bomb-thrower he was, and who were willing to angrily support him basically through anything. No matter what Agnew got charged with.

They were ready to go to war with him.

SEN. CARL CURTIS (R-NE): Will you inform me what he’s done? No one has! Now, that’s not American justice … I don’t think he should resign or he will resign!

That part of the story is next time.

“Bag Man” is a production of MSNBC and NBC Universal. This series is executive produced by Mike Yarvitz. It was written by myself and Mike Yarvitz. Editorial and production support from Jonathan Hirsch and Marissa Schneiderman for Neon Hum Media. And you can find much more about this story on our website: msnbc.com/bagman

The post Transcript – Episode 2: Crawling In appeared first on MS NOW.

From MS Now.

These are the source references for Episode 3 of Rachel Maddow’s Bag Man podcast, the transcript of which you can find here.

Subscribe through your preferred podcasting service.

Books:

Witcover, Jules. “Very Strange Bedfellows: The Short and Unhappy Marriage of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew”, PublicAffairs, 2008

Cohen, Richard and Witcover, Jules. “A Heartbeat Away”, Viking Press, 1974

Agnew, Spiro T. “Go Quietly … Or Else”, William Morrow, 1980

Nixon, Richard. “RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon”, Simon & Schuster, 1990

London, Martin. “The Client Decides: A Litigator’s Life: Jackie Onassis, Vice President Spiro Agnew, Donald Trump, Roy Cohn, and More”, Eastlake Press, 2017

Coffey, Justin. “Spiro Agnew and The Rise of the Republican Right”, Praeger, 2015

Ehrlichman, John. “Witness to Power: The Nixon Years”, Simon & Schuster Publishing, 1982

Richardson, Elliot. “The Creative Balance: Government, Politics, and The Individual in America’s Third Century.” Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 1976

Articles:

“Closing In on Agnew: The Prosecutors’ Story” by Aaron Latham. “New York Magazine” (November 26, 1973)

“GOP Women Still Resent Press”, The Times Record Newspaper (Troy, New York), October 2, 1973

“Reporters’ Counsel Meet on Strategy For Agnew Inquiry”, The New York Times (October 8, 1973)

“How Agnew Bartered His Office To Keep From Going to Prison”, The New York Times (October 23, 1973)

“Spiro Agnew Receives A Support Card And Photo From Congressmen”, UPI News Agency (September 21, 1973)

Archival Material:

NBC Nightly News (July 10, 1973)

NBC Nightly News (August 7, 1973)

NBC Nightly News (August 21, 1973)

“Nixon Now” 1972 Presidential Campaign Song (Courtesy: Richard Nixon Presidential Library)

NBC Nightly News (August 19, 1973)

NBC News Special Report (September 29, 1973)

Letter to Vice President Agnew #1, Spiro T. Agnew papers, Special Collections, University of Maryland Libraries

Letter to Vice President Agnew #2, Spiro T. Agnew papers, Special Collections, University of Maryland Libraries

Letter to Vice President Agnew #3, Spiro T. Agnew papers, Special Collections, University of Maryland Libraries

Response to Letter from Vice President Agnew, Spiro T. Agnew papers, Special Collections, University of Maryland Libraries

Letter to Attorney General Richardson #1, Elliot L. Richardson Papers, Manuscript Division, Library

of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Letter to Attorney General Richardson #2, Elliot L. Richardson Papers, Manuscript Division, Library

of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Letter to Attorney General Richardson #3, Elliot L. Richardson Papers, Manuscript Division, Library

of Congress, Washington, D.C.

NBC Nightly News (September 25, 1973)

NBC Nightly News (October 5, 1973)

NBC Nightly News (September 19, 1973)

NBC News Archives (September 1973)

April 10, 1973, H. R. Haldeman Diaries Collection. Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, Yorba Linda, CA.

June 20, 1973, Richard Nixon White House Tapes, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, Yorba Linda, CA.

The post Bag Man Episode 3 Sources appeared first on MS NOW.

From MS Now.

With the criminal investigation of him now public, Vice President Spiro Agnew launches a bold counter-attack to survive. An unprecedented assault… on his own Justice Department that’s investigating him. And the reporters now covering his case. And Agnew gets back-up in that effort from his legion of hardcore supporters across the country and in Congress.

For a list of sources and references for this episode, see here.

MARTIN LONDON (VICE PRESIDENT AGNEW’S DEFENSE ATTORNEY): My name is Marty London. And in 1973, I was part of the defense team for our client Spiro T. Agnew who was Vice President of the United States.

MADDOW: Martin London was an attorney at a prestigious, white-shoe, New York City law firm called Paul Weiss.

London had recently wrapped up a high-profile case representing Jackie Kennedy, the former First Lady of the United States.

But in the Summer of 1973… along with the rest of the country… Marty London was busy following every development of the rapidly unfolding Watergate saga…

JOHN CHANCELLOR: Good evening, it was John Mitchell’s turn at the Senate Watergate Committee today, he spent the whole day in the witness chair…

One afternoon that frantic summer of Watergate, Marty London’s law partner got a phone call from an unknown number in Washington, DC.

LONDON: He says to me, “Marty, I just got the strangest call. A fella calls me and he says, he introduces himself, he’s from Chuck Colson’s firm in Washington, DC. And he asks me if I can come to Washington DC tomorrow morning to meet a new client.”

That caller presented Marty London and his law partner Jay Topkis with a cryptic offer about a mystery client who needed representation fast:

LONDON: “Well, that’s very interesting, who’s the client?” And he says, “Well, I can’t mention his name on the phone, it’s so secure, it’s so confidential, I’m not allowed to mention his name.” So Jay says, “Well, what is he?” He says, “He’s a very high government official.” And Topkis says, “Oh, is he a Congressman?” The caller says, “Higher!” He says, “Is he a Senator?” He says, “Higher!” He says, “Oh my goodness, is he a Cabinet official?” He says, “Higher!” He says, “Oh my God, you’re talking about the President of the United States?” He says, “Welllll, not quite so high!”

It was early August.

Marty London and his law partner hopped on a flight from New York City… down to Washington, DC… to sit down with their new client… the Vice President.

LONDON: I found the Vice President to be everything I did not expect him to be. He was charming, he was soft spoken, he was gracious, he was a nice guy! You would meet him and you would like him!

The reason Vice President Spiro Agnew needed to beef up his legal team — and on very short notice! — is because that night… the federal criminal investigation targeting him was about to go public.

NBC ANNOUNCER: This is NBC Nightly News. Tuesday, August 7th. Reported tonight from Washington by John Chancellor.

JOHN CHANCELLOR: Good evening. Washington was stunned today by the disclosure that Vice President Agnew is under criminal investigation by federal authorities in his home state of Maryland. Involved are possible charges of bribery, extortion, and tax evasion … Agnew says he is innocent, a member of his staff said today “you are probably going to hear more that is terribly serious.”

The President of the United States was already under investigation in Watergate.

And now the Vice President was the subject of a criminal bribery-and-extortion investigation of his own.

He’d been secretly accepting envelopes of cash inside the White House and inside his own Vice Presidential residence.

That investigation had been such a well-kept secret that the day it broke publicly, Agnew’s own staff– including top aides like David Keene– they had no idea it had been going on:

DAVID KEENE (SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO VICE PRESIDENT AGNEW): I was in Hilton Head taking a few days off. And Johnny Damgard called me and he said, “Dave, you have to get back here because the Vice President is thinking about canceling his schedule and there’s nothing I–” and he was the scheduler. And I said, “What?!”, and he said, “Yeah, there’s an investigation going on.” And it broke with an article in The Wall Street Journal.

The press– which had been working the Watergate story all Summer long– they now had this giant new scandal and they were instantly all over it.

RON LIEBMAN (FMR. FEDERAL PROSECUTOR): And it took about three seconds for the American press to, you know, to attack the federal courthouse.

That’s Ron Liebman, one of the prosecutors who had been quietly pursuing the case:

LIEBMAN: I remember the FBI came in and talked to us about how we had to secure our files and we had to put them in lead file cabinets and I had to take my name out of the directory assistance– the phone books in those days– none of which we did. We told them, “Yeah, okay.” You know, we’re (laughing) we really don’t have the time for that right now! “Okay, fine. We’ll take care of it.” “You sure?” “Yup, Yup, Yup. We will.“ I mean, the press was, there was a frenzy.

All of this press attention that was now being paid to this team of Baltimore investigators… it was partly because this was a giant case they had broken open– a bribery scandal involving the sitting Vice President.

But the other reason they were the focus of so much attention at the time is because the target of that investigation– the Vice President– had decided that his defense, would be about them.

His defense would be that there was this biased and partisan group of investigators who were unfairly persecuting him from inside his own Justice Department… for their own treacherous reasons.

AGNEW: Some Justice Department officials have decided to indict me in the press, whether or not the evidence supports their position. This is a clear and outrageous effort to influence the outcome of possible grand jury deliberations … I will fight! I will fight to prove my innocence and that I intend to remain in the high office to which I have been twice elected.

Spiro Agnew– with his back against the wall, with the investigation of him now public– he started attacking that investigation as a witch-hunt… as a witch hunt led by politically-motivated biased bad actors inside the Justice Department.

This was something new in American politics.

A sitting occupant of the White House… under criminal investigation… trying to save himself… by declaring war on his own Justice Department.

You’re listening to “Bag Man.” I’m your host Rachel Maddow.

*****

Episode 3: “Hang In There, Baby”

1972 NIXON CAMPAIGN SONG: Nixon now! Nixon now! He’s made the difference, he’s showed us how! Nixon now!

The 1970s Republican Party was a big-tent political party:

It was the Barry Goldwater libertarian Republicans of the 60s.

It was right-wing conservatives who would later make up the Reagan Revolution.

There were moderate and liberal Republicans.

But none of those ideological slivers of the party had a monopoly on the energy and the legwork that it takes to really get stuff done in politics. Inside the Republican Party, everybody knew who the real activists were, the real soldiers who really got stuff done. Republican women.

KEENE: I mean, the two arms of the Republican Party that were important were the Young Republican Federation and the Women’s Federation because that’s where the ground troops came from. The Democrats had the Unions, we had the women.

That’s David Keene again. He was the top political aide for Vice President Agnew in 1973.

And that Fall, when Agnew was looking for a place to mount his big, public defense against the investigation into him– when he was looking for friendly territory– David Keene knew there was no better place than an event that was about to pop up on the political calendar:

The annual convention… of the National Federation of Republican Women.

KEENE: That’s the place to do it. That’s your army.

The National Federation of Republican Women held their convention in Los Angeles that fall of 1973.

In the Fall of ‘73, Spiro Agnew was fighting for his political life.

GARRICK UTLEY: TIME Magazine today quotes officials in the Department of Justice as saying that the case against Vice President Agnew is growing steadily stronger and that an indictment appears inevitable…

Agnew now had lawyers like Marty London who were fighting his battles in court, but Agnew himself had devised a very specific PR strategy for his own survival: a full-frontal assault on the Justice Department that was investigating him.

Attack the investigators in order to discredit the investigation.

And that gathering of Republican Women in Los Angeles… that would his venue for launching that public attack.

NBC ANNOUNCER: We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you this NBC News Special Report. Vice President Spiro Agnew is about to speak in Los Angeles.

If you want to get a sense for how the hardcore Republican base felt about Spiro Agnew even when he was in the worst legal trouble of his life, just listen to the reception he got from that crowd of Republican women in Los Angeles that day…

REPUBLICAN WOMEN: Fight Agnew, fight! Fight Agnew, fight! Fight Agnew, fight! Fight Agnew, fight! Fight Agnew, fight!

Even before he showed up, the hall was electric. These Republican women activists were holding homemade signs that said “Spiro is My Hero.” One newspaper reporter in the hall said the enthusiasm these Republican women had for Agnew was maybe surpassed only by the hostility they had for the press that was there to cover him.

That reporter wrote: “Some women approached newsmen ready for a fight. Several women took notes or tape-recorded [Agnew’s] speech [themselves] so they could report on it when they returned [home] — a precaution in case the papers did not tell the entire story.”

This was a crowd that was angry at the press. And they had full-faith in the man they were there to see.

And what Spiro Agnew unleashed in that packed convention hall… was an all-out attack on the Justice Department the likes of which nobody had really seen before in U.S. politics.

AGNEW: Irrespective of the claims of certain individuals in the Department of Justice, it was not through my fault that this became a non-secret procedure, but through deliberately contrived actions of individuals in the prosecutorial system of the United States, and I regard those as outrageous and malicious (cheers/applause) … And if we find in fact that in Baltimore or in Washington individuals employed by the Department of Justice have abused their sacred trust and forsaken their professional standards, then I will ask the President of the United States to summarily discharge those individuals! (cheers/applause)

The Vice President there was calling his own Justice Department malicious and out of control.

And with that crowd of Republican women hanging on his every word, he then started targeting specific officials inside the Justice Department, including the head of the Criminal Division who was directly involved in his case:

AGNEW: I say this to you: the conduct of high individuals in the Department of Justice– particularly the conduct of the Chief of the Criminal Investigation Division of that department– is unprofessional and malicious and outrageous, if I am to believe what has been printed in the news magazines and said on the television networks of this country, and I have had no denial that that is the case … People will say to me “Why? You don’t make sense. Why should a Republican Department of Justice and a Republican prosecutor attempt to get you?” Well, I don’t know all the answers, but I would say this: that individuals in the upper professional echelons of the Department of Justice have been severely stung by their ineptness in the prosecution of the Watergate case … and they are trying to recoup their reputation at my expense, I’m a big trophy! (cheers/applause)

Now, keep in mind, Richard Nixon– who at this point was neck-deep in Watergate trouble– he had not even taken the pretty extraordinary step of attacking his Justice Department, at least not in public — not like this.

But here was the Vice President at a Republican rally:

Accusing officials in the Justice Department of professional misconduct.

Accusing the investigators of leaking information about him to the press.

Pledging to seek out bad actors participating in the investigation, to have them purged from the Department.

AGNEW: I want to make another thing so clear that it cannot be mistaken in the future: because of these tactics which have been employed against me, because small and fearful men have been frightened into furnishing evidence against me, they have perjured themselves in many cases it’s my understanding, I will not resign if indicted, I will not resign if indicted! (cheers/applause)

The strategy here wasn’t to challenge the specific and credible allegations of wrongdoing that were now public This was a strategy to smear the investigators who were looking into him, to smear them as biased and corrupt, to accuse them of leading a witch-hunt against him.

This was a strategy, specifically, to convince the Republican base– the party activists in that crowd and Republicans watching at home– that the corrupt Justice Department and the biased press were out to get him and his supporters shouldn’t believe either of them.

This was a deliberate strategy… and it worked. At least in the short run, it worked.

After that speech, Agnew started receiving hundreds of letters from supporters all across the country. There are boxes and boxes of these letters that you can see in Agnew’s files at the University of Maryland to this day, the letters he received and even the replies that he sent.

One couple from Kansas City wrote: “Dear Mr. Vice President — We believe in your innocence. Give them hell — the press and the liberals are out to get you and all conservatives.”

One school-teacher from Colorado wrote to him: “I’m sick of what the media and the Democrats are doing. They lost and [they] can’t take it.”

A man named Joe Taylor from Missouri wrote: “Dear Veep: Give the God damned sons-of-bitches hell. It’s a good thing somebody in Washington has guts enough to say something, and fight back.”

Agnew actually responded to that one… he wrote back, “Dear Mr. Taylor: Thank you for your very kind letter — and for your excellent advice! Warm regards.”

Again, the allegations that were public at that point were that Agnew had been illegally extorting people throughout his time in public office, up to and including accepting cash payoffs throughout his time in the White House. But Republicans across the country… really didn’t seem to mind!

And they didn’t just write letters to Spiro Agnew about it…

The Attorney General Elliot Richardson also started getting these letters. But his were just bins and bins and bins full of hate mail.

“I hope you and all your smart Justice Department lawyers are pleased”, one woman wrote to him, “I feel you have done a great wrong to this nation and one day you are going to have to pay.”

One woman from Lubbock, Texas wrote: “Are you a Democrat, or has this been done by the Democrat Party? If so, that explains it, for it looks like they can’t bear for the Republicans to get any glory or praise for anything.”

One man wrote: “I believe there is deliberate malice — from the liberal news media and also from politicians who fear Mr. Agnew’s appeal to the average American.”

Agnew was defending himself not by attacking the actual case against him, but by attacking the institution of the Department of Justice and the specific people bringing the case against him.

These three young prosecutors who had led the case against Agnew — Tim Baker, Ron Liebman, Barney Skolnik– they were all now fair game. Here’s Tim Baker:

TIM BAKER (FMR. FEDERAL PROSECUTOR): I remember Agnew saying that Skolnik was a Muskie volunteer and I– horror!– had been, to show what a complete Pinko I was, I had been a Peace Corps volunteer!

Discredit the investigation by going after the investigators. That was the first part of Agnew’s strategy.

Agnew’s legal team had something else up their sleeves. That’s next.

**************

JOHN CHANCELLOR: Good evening. In the matter of possible criminal charges against Vice President Agnew, it was a dizzying, bewildering, and historic day.

Once the investigation of Spiro Agnew went public in the Summer of 1973, something started happening in the coverage of the scandal that the Vice President’s lawyers quickly tried to turn to their advantage.

They noticed that some articles about the investigation seemed to contain lots and lots of very specific details about the case; details that were supplied to reporters by anonymous sources. Here’s Agnew’s defense lawyer Marty London:

LONDON: We were made aware of great varieties of newspapers who had always begun their articles with “high sources in the Justice Department have told us that…” Or “High government officials report to us that…” But there was no question, this was a very leaky investigation.

Agnew’s public defense at that point was to portray the Justice Department as corrupt, portray the media as out to get him… all of these leaks to the press… this was a golden opportunity for Agnew’s lawyers to nail both of those targets at once: the Justice Department for leaking and the horrible press for publishing those leaks without named sources.

With that two-birds-one-stone idea as their basic strategy, Agnew’s legal team decided they would pursue the leaks-about-the-case… in court. They came up with a fairly radical plan to try to prove that the Justice Department was the source of those leaks to the press. Their plan was to put individual news reporters under oath and try to force them to testify about their sources.

Agnew already had a well-earned reputation for being hostile to the press. Well, now his lawyers would try to turn that into legal strategy, too.

The question was… would the court go along with it? Marty London’s request to the judge — his demand to the judge — was pretty extraordinary:

LONDON: I reached into my briefcase and pulled out an order that I had written the day before and I said “Here’s an order, all you gotta do is sign it.” What the order does is gives us the opportunity to put these reporters under oath. If you want to know if they’re telling the truth, let’s put them under oath. And while we’re at it taking their depositions, let’s take the depositions of the government’s officials, too. The judge said, “Well that seems like a pretty sensible idea to me.” George Beall, I think he almost had a coronary! He was a young fella, I was afraid for his health. They got red in the face, they said “this is outrageous”, they said, “this has never been done before, there’s no rule permitting this, there’s no precedent for this, it’s just not right.” And the judge said, “Where do I sign?” And that’s really, to use a legal expression, that’s when the shit hit the fan.

Agnew’s legal team was trying to change the story, so it was no longer about the alleged criminal activity of the Vice President, it was instead about criminal misconduct on the part of these investigators.

LONDON: I was a lawyer here! I’m not a judge, and I’m not a philosopher king. In this case, it was in my interest to get as much information from that journalist as I could.

Marty London got that judge to sign-off on this order to haul in news reporters and put them under oath. And then he sent out a raft of subpoenas to reporters from The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, TIME Magazine, Newsweek Magazine, nine reporters in all from the biggest news outlets in the country, demanding their testimony:

LONDON: The press was up in arms, and they had fashioned lapel buttons, you know, it said “Free The Agnew Nine” because they all swore they would go to jail before they would testify. And I get a call from a reporter from a local New York newspaper who says, “Marty, I’m in deep shit here, you killed me.” I said, “What did I do?” He said, “I didn’t get a subpoena!” We had at that time what was known as “subpoena envy”, everybody wanted a subpoena. I said, “Well, look I really, I apologize, no hard feelings, I only served subpoenas on people who wrote stories that said they had sources.” And he said, “I did that! I did that!” I said, “Send me your article, and I’ll send you a subpoena.” So he sent me the article and I sent him a subpoena, and the “Free The Agnew Nine” became “Free The Agnew Ten.”

This strategy from the Agnew legal team turned into a bit of a circus, but that was by design.

It put all sorts of pressure on the Justice Department about these supposed leaks.

And the American press corps– which had been covering the actual allegations against the Vice President up until that point — they got completely sideways defending themselves over these subpoenas:

DAVID BRINKLEY: So, they are showering subpoenas all over town and ordering reporters to come to Baltimore and tell where they got their news. Those responding so far say they will tell nothing. Whether or not these lawyers learn much about that, they will have succeeded, to some extent, in turning the public’s attention away from their client and turning the attention and some abuse on the press.

So, the American press corps was now under attack by the Vice President and his lawyers. Rather gleefully.

And the Justice Department, too. The Baltimore prosecutors– who were still assembling their case– they were not-only being attacked publicly by the Vice President, they were now also being threatened by Agnew’s lawyers as potential criminals themselves. Here’s Barney Skolnik:

BARNEY SKOLNIK (FMR FEDERAL PROSECUTOR): I mean it was, it really was ludicrous. I mean, we’re investigating the case and suddenly people are coming from Washington to present us with, you know, strangers are coming from the Department of Justice Public Integrity Section or something and saying, “Here, this is an affidavit about, you know, whether or not you have leaked and you must fill it out and you must sign it.” Everybody! I mean, it wasn’t just– it was the secretaries. I mean, it was…

This was a maximum pressure campaign that Agnew’s lawyers launched against the Justice Department and these individual prosecutors… all to try to put them on the defensive. And to this day, Agnew’s lawyers believe, Marty London believes, that this pressure worked. The prosecutors themselves like Tim Baker they still bristle at that idea. The first voice you’ll hear is producer Mike Yarvitz.

MIKE YARVITZ (PRODUCER): He thinks that the pressure that they were able to put on the Justice Department about this issue of leaks–

BAKER: Phooey.

YARVITZ: Was–

BAKER: Bullshit.

YARVITZ: What ultimately–

BAKER: Phooey. There wasn’t any pressure about leaks, we weren’t leaking anything, we knew it. And they weren’t going to be able to prove that we had leaked anything because we hadn’t. The pressure was: get the guy out of the Vice Presidency. That was always the pressure.

Whether they had leaked anything or not… this was a strategy. The Vice President was trying to save himself by targeting the press and by targeting these prosecutors and dragging them through the mud.

And the prosecutors couldn’t publicly defend themselves. Instead, they reacted to that strategy from Agnew… by doubling down on what they could do, by doubling down on their case.

LIEBMAN: That was, that was noise, noise to be pushed aside. We knew that. That’s all designed to distract you. “Don’t let it distract you.” We were too good for that. Kids that we were, we were too good for that.

For all of that noise and distraction that Agnew brought to bear on this investigation… and against the prosecutors, it didn’t just come from him and his lawyers. He had political back-up.

A whole army of Republicans in Congress who were about to rush to his defense.

NBC REPORTER: At the Capitol, the Vice President got some welcome support from fellow Republicans. GOP Senators of all shades rose to his defense, suggesting he may be the victim of politically-inspired rumors.

Republicans in Congress knew in 1973– when their own Vice President got in serious trouble– that it was in their own best interest to try to save him. And that may, in part, just have been raw partisan instinct, but they also knew that Spiro Agnew still had the Republican base wrapped around his finger, regardless of the allegations against him:

KEENE: It was easy to rally support for Ted Agnew. I mean, people loved him.

It was David Keene’s job to rally Republican support for Agnew in Congress.

KEENE: The Republicans were hearing from their constituents that “this is our guy!” But they liked him as well.

When the criminal allegations against Agnew came to light, rather than turning against him or waiting for the investigation to play out, Republicans in Congress rushed to give him as much cover as they could. They adopted his line that he was the victim of a “witch hunt.”

SEN. JAMES BUCKLEY (R-NY): Well, I believe that the man has been put under incredible pressure because of the habit we’ve gone into of trial by print, based on third-hand leaks of information that may or may not be sound.

SEN. CARL CURTIS (R-NE): To condemn someone, to have innuendos, to raise questions– “When is he going to retire? Will he be impeached?”– when no one has made a specific charge against him, damages him all across the country. And, furthermore, it’s damaging our country.

Even the discussion that Agnew might need to go– even talking about that possibility– in the words of that Republican Senator, that was “damaging” to the country.

Republicans in Congress went after alleged leaks in the case. They went after the news media for reporting the leaks.

This was not “let’s allow the investigation to run its course.” Republicans instantly circled the wagons around their man in the White House who was in legal trouble, but still as popular as ever in their party.

SEN. BARRY GOLDWATER (R-AZ): He’s innocent until somebody has proven him guilty. And if we’ve reached a point in this country where we’re guilty just because some newspaper or some lesser member of the Attorney General’s office hints that we are, then we’ve come to the end of justice in this country.

That was Republican Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona talking about a lesser member of the Attorney General’s office. He’d later say, “I don’t give a damn if Agnew is as guilty as John Dillinger.” In his view, Agnew was getting railroaded… railroaded by the press and by the Justice Department.

That was the way Republicans talked about this case. This was Republican Senator Carl Curtis from Nebraska:

SEN. CARL CURTIS (R-NE): Will you inform me what he’s done? No one has! Now, that’s not American justice. That may be a certain brand of American newscasting, but it’s not what prevails in the courtroom, we lawyers have a better record than that.

NBC REPORTER: Do you feel there’s some kind of plot against the Vice President?

SEN. CURTIS: I think there’s a scheme on to destroy the President and, if they can drag down his Vice President, that helps. Somebody got John F. Kennedy! … I believe that same sadistic element– it’s very tiny– but you add to that the professional Nixon haters … you’ve got a bad combination … here Mr. Agnew hasn’t been accused of a specific single transaction, and for me to say iffy things about what would happen if he resigned, I don’t think he should resign or he will resign!

Spiro Agnew– in his public campaign to beat back the allegations against him– he had back-up. Elected Republicans coming to his defense… publicly casting doubt on the investigation, attacking and disparaging the investigators.

Two House Republicans even traveled over to the White House one afternoon that Fall to personally deliver to Agnew a giant physical display of support from his fellow Republicans.

It was a larger-than life card signed by 100 Republicans in Congress.

The image on the front of the card was a cat barely clinging to a tree branch by its claws. The caption underneath said, “Hang In There, Baby.”

Republicans in Congress had taken sides. They were firmly behind their Vice President even though he was under criminal investigation.

What those Republicans didn’t know at the time though– what only a handful of people inside the White House knew– was that Spiro Agnew wasn’t just counting on vocal support from the Republican base and vocal support from Republicans in Congress.

He also had a private plan. He was undertaking an elaborate, behind the scenes effort to obstruct the investigation, to try to shut the investigation down.

It was an effort to use his political power from his position inside the White House to make the investigation go away.

It involved enlisting the help of Richard Nixon’s inner circle, people like White House Chief of Staff HR Haldeman..

HR HALDEMAN (NIXON WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF): The Vice President called me over today and said he had a real problem…

It also included the assistance of President Richard Nixon himself…

PRESIDENT NIXON: It’s amazing, isn’t it? By golly, the way they start to go after everybody, don’t they?

ALEXANDER HAIG (NIXON WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF): Yeah, they’re after everybody. And the Vice President has been very nervous…

This part of the story has never really been told in-depth before.

The investigators themselves… had no idea that any of this was going on at the time. They’re about to hear it here for the first time.

BAKER: (Laughing) I never knew this!

SKOLNIK: “Ways they can pressure George.” Wow.

YARVITZ: I mean, what does– you’re a lawyer– what does that look like?

LIEBMAN: (laughs) Clearly obstruction of justice or attempt to obstruct justice. Clearly

That part of the story… is next time.

I’m Rachel Maddow, and this is “Bag Man.”

“Bag Man” is a production of MSNBC and NBC Universal. This series is executive produced by Mike Yarvitz. It was written by myself and Mike Yarvitz. Editorial and production support from Jonathan Hirsch and Marissa Schneiderman from Neon Hum Media. And you can find much more about this story on our website which is: msnbc.com/bagman.

The post Transcript – Episode 3: Hang In There, Baby appeared first on MS NOW.

From MS Now.

The suspect is alleged to have been an accessory to murder at the Stalag 326 camp, where tens of thousands of Soviet PoWs died.

Source: BBC.

The suspect is alleged to have been an accessory to murder at the Stalag 326 camp, where tens of thousands of Soviet PoWs died.

Source: BBC.