Rachel Maddow’s “Bag Man”: That Other Crook in the White House

Just when I had read more than enough stories of White House malfeasance, Maddow comes along with this wonderfully readable, gripping, and stunning story of Richard Nixon’s Vice President, Spiro Agnew, whose crimes, coverup and abuse of power seem to anticipate the Trumpian term. Perhaps as a welcome tease the Trump name appears only once — on the next to the last page. He is not even an afterthought. Nonetheless, this book foreshadows the man in many ways. Psychological speaking, Nixon/Agnew indeed ran a shadow government. Venality has a nasty history. More on that later.

I was in graduate school working on a PhD when Spiro Agnew was in the news for his petty money-grubbing ways, but he always seemed to be drowned out by President Nixon whose crimes, mendacity and violation of the public trust were seen as of another order entirely. But as “Bag Man” details, Agnew was as petty and criminal as his boss in chief. But this wasn’t apparent in the early 1970’s, and in my experience, Agnew has long been on the undercard to Nixon’s Watergate antics and his anthology of crimes. I suspect Agnew stayed in Nixon’s shadow because the president, often clumsily, continued to stumble on the way to his ultimate demise. The man who insisted he wasn’t a crook, continued to act out that role in public. Nixon had his “enemies list” and, like the current White House occupant, was reluctant to let this pathology go.

Nonetheless, I still wondered early on in reading “Bag Man,” why write a book about this little man who became Nixon’s Vice-President pick in 1968 because he had a sharp tongue, went after the media and could help Nixon win a number of states bordering the deep south, therefore blunting the George Wallace threat. And Agnew took more than a page out of Joe McCarthy’s anti-Communist playbook. Still, “Bag Man” acknowledges that the Agnew story is largely forgotten today because it was overshadowed by Nixon’s more public crime. This book suggests the Agnew tale is a righteous counterpart to Watergate, completing it in a sense.

Agnew came into national prominence during the tumultuous 1968 election cycle when Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated. Given the severity and gravity of these public assassinations, it’s little wonder that America paid little attention to Agnew. The shadow of the Vietnam War hung over the 1968 election and the psyche of the country. The country was ready to move on and a chunk of the population even believed Nixon’s promise that he had a secret plan to end the war.,

By 1972 Nixon and Agnew were in the driver’s seat, winning forty-nine states and the popular tally by twenty million votes. But there was a shadow side to this triumph with the Watergate break-in occurring early on in the presidential election cycle. As “Bag Man” reminds us, though the Watergate burglars were caught red-handed, it would not be until the spring of 1973 that the break-in was tied to the Oval Office. Nixon quickly threw his closest aides under a bus and declared the stain had been removed. But the investigations continued, with clues about hush money being paid to the Watergate burglars. There would be more revelations.

A Maryland congressman had received mysterious cash from the Nixon campaign. Four days after the news of a $25,000 phantom donation to his campaign, the congressman shot himself. Here two law-enforcement story lines intersect: the Watergate scandal and the long-simmering bribery and corruption practices in Maryland, home of the dead congressman and Vice President Agnew.

In 1973, while America was focused on Watergate, a handful of young attorneys at the U.S. Attorney’s office in Baltimore were following the money and looking into old-fashioned Maryland corruption. This team quickly gained authorization from a federal grand jury to issue subpoenas throughout Baltimore County. A team of specialized IRS agents hand delivered document demands to twenty-six private firms. Investigators were looking for evidence that politicians demanded cash kickbacks from contractors for things like road and bridge engineering projects. This investigation was getting teeth about the time of Nixon and Agnew’s inauguration, January 1973.

Political pushback came early and often. When the U.S. attorney general, on behalf of Agnew, and other politicians and federal officials expressed concern about the investigator, the Baltimore team sensed they were getting warm. But Agnew was not an initial target, primarily because his time as Baltimore county executive was six years earlier. The statute of limitations had run out on any potential criminal activities during this period. But soon the investigators learned from an informer that Agnew was actually still receiving kickbacks as Vice President, in his office across from the White House in the Old Executive Building. Agnew regularly received envelopes stuffed with upwards of $10,000 in cash. The Vice President was quite transparent in his efforts to take control of federal government contracts, telling President Nixon that their “friends” were being discriminated against in the bidding process. Agnew seemed by degree more strategic, petty and vainglorious than his boss.

“Bag Man,” reads like a riveting detective story featuring fearless Baltimore prosecutors, working in the shadow of the much sexier Watergate investigation, while holding off an array of political attacks from across governments. This counterpoint is as beautiful as it is savory with investigators building a substantial case, while Agnew tries to derail their work. Versions of “fake news” and “witch hunt” conveniently filled the political echo chambers. Sometimes past is indeed prelude. “Bag Man” is worth reading as a reminder of what an honest, fearless Justice Department looked like. There are heroes aplenty. The Baltimore team did not get everything it wanted. Agnew didn’t go to jail but he resigned under a cloud and never really recovered. These were surreal times. As “Bag Man” notes: “Each day seemed to test our constitutional system in some entirely novel fashion.”

The book jacket for “Bag Man” captures the breezy tone of this serious book. It’s about “The wild crimes and spectacular downfall of a brazen crook in the White House.”

America won that round.