What I Am Reading: "Bag Man" by Rachel Maddow and Michael Yarvitz

I know, I know. You’re shocked that I would read a book by a pundit. By one of the TV hosts who has turned politics into entertainment! Doesn’t their eco-chamber ego-stroking lead us to division, and further away from understanding of complicated issues? Yes, don’t worry, it still does. I went for this book in spite of its authorship, not because of it. Rest assured that I won’t be adding Bill O’Reilly’s next adventure in assassination porn, Killing Galba or Killing Hammarskjöld or whatever it may be.

Despite her career at the soundbite factory, Rachel Maddow does have an intellectual background, with a PhD from Oxford. This book is the byproduct of a podcast that she did on the subject of Vice President Spiro Agnew’s scandal and resignation; her co-author, a journalist, is the executive producer and co-writer of that podcast. I started that podcast at one point, but in my post-car life (or auto interregnum, at least) I am not much of a listener, and decided to wait for the book instead.

The book shows its podcast roots at some points, but weren’t crippled by them. The whole thing moves along quickly. Once any given chapter got rolling, everything was perfectly fine: thorough and serious, but appropriately dramatic and entertaining, funny at points. However, each chapter was bookended by a bit of podcasting: some punditry to instruct one how to appropriately react to the situation, with glib rhetoric and staccato, punchy delivery. They even call someone a “noob,” for Christ’s sake (p. 43). You just have to grit your teeth and get through it, because this is the first book in a long time about Spiro Agnew, and it brings a lot of new material to the table.

Spiro Agnew, the only Vice President to resign the office in disgrace, was the running mate to the only President to resign the office in disgrace. The two facts were legally unrelated. Agnew was the Governor of Maryland for two years prior to being picked by Nixon to be his running mate in 1968; before that, he had served just one term as Baltimore County Executive. Each win was really a fluke, with victory in the 1966 gubernatorial race because a Democratic machine division had accidentally led to a fringe candidate’s nomination. He made the most of his position, however, such as by bringing in Black leaders for a personal, televised scapegoating when riots broke out in Baltimore after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s death. This combative culture-war instinct is why Nixon brought him on board, on the assumption that he could bring to the table some white, southern conservative votes and fend off George Wallace’s vote-splitting.

In office, Agnew cut a colorful profile, opening fire on liberals and intellectuals and students and hippies and whatnot. Some of his alliterative lines are still famous today, like “nattering nabobs of negativism.” He was the sort of culture warrior that Republicans produced an ever-increasing number of in subsequent decades. The conservative base ate it up, and Nixon basically got what he bargained for on the political front. Personally, Nixon did not like Agnew: he thought he was dumb, resented his quick rise (despite having facilitated it), was embarrassed by his lack of seriousness, and sought to keep him as far away from the Oval Office as possible.

Agnew became a liability shortly after the ticket’s overwhelming re-election in 1972. In October of that year, the U.S. Attorney in Maryland, George Beall, opened corruption investigations against various local and county-level elected officials, including Agnew’s successor as Baltimore County Executive, N. Dale Anderson (Democrat). The investigation was dramatic, with two dozen subpoenas delivered simultaneously to local electeds and others. At hand were kickbacks from construction, architecture, and engineering firms for public works contracts. The investigations were led by three prosecutors only in their thirties at the time: Barney Skolnik, a grizzled, irascible lead with a few wins against politicians already; Tim Baker, the high-performer with a Harvard pedigree and Supreme Court clerkship; and Ron Liebman, recently of the local defense attorney establishment.

Clearly, the extent of the corruption implied some level of systematization, and it wasn’t long before the Assistant U.S. Attorneys learned why. One of the engineering executives told them that, not only had a similar system of bribery existed under Agnew’s administration, but the kickbacks-for-contracts arrangement had continued into Agnew’s governorship, and even into his Vice Presidential term as he demanded and received payouts from long-running contacts, and did his best to steer federal contracts as well. Both schemes had a “bag man,” who was responsible for transferring the money.

Skolnik, Baker, Liebman, and their boss Beall realized the significance of investigating the Vice President, and spent the first half of 1973 gathering evidence, dotting their I’s and crossing their T’s. Despite the ever-widening circle of witnesses and attorneys who knew or could have guessed the nature of their investigation, they played things close to the vest until they were sure things were suitable to go up the chain of command. The Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, was new and very busy. He was a Massachusetts Republican who had plugged several gaps in the Nixon cabinet, and had only been appointed Attorney General in May. After several scheduled meetings had been cancelled, Beall, Skolnik, Baker, and Liebman made an unannounced appearance at his office and demanded to speak to the annoyed AG that day. Despite several abrupt interruptions while Richardson had to take angry phone calls from the Oval Office about Archibald Cox, the Maryland team laid out their case against Agnew, and immediately received Richardson’s full support for their investigation and eventual prosecution.

Agnew had to be informed of this, and the meathead Vice President immediately started in on the “crazy” witnesses, the “zealous” prosecutors, and others out to get him. He was especially aggrieved by the leaks that appeared in the news, and was sure that they were coming from the Justice Department. He continuously complained and arranged to have the FBI investigate the investigation. He did more than that though, as both he and Nixon arguably obstructed justice by leaning on Maryland’s Republican Senator, Glenn Beall, to lean on the U.S. Attorney, who was his brother (both sons of another Maryland Republican Senator). They even roped RNC Chairman George H.W. Bush into the action, though Beall did not take any action to contain the investigation.

By August of 1973, the administration was deep into the Watergate crisis. For context, this is about the time that the existence of Nixon’s tapes was revealed, and the first court orders came down for him to hand them over. The bad press from the impending investigation, plus Agnew’s belligerence in the face of it, meant that Nixon wanted Agnew gone, and his Chief of Staff Al Haig started looking into ways to make that possible. As things developed and Agnew hired defense counsel, his legal strategy became a threat to the President’s own: both advanced the argument that the President and the Vice President could not be indicted while in office. If Agnew’s case, out of Nixon’s control, went first and established a bad precedent, he would drag Nixon down with him. Nixon made it clear to Agnew that he would not receive any administration support, and that he was advised to resign. Agnew still, however, had not been indicted.

Richardson, meanwhile, feared a situation whereby Nixon had to leave (as was looking increasingly likely) and the new President was already under criminal investigation. Despite the strong preferences of Skolnik, Baker, and Liebman that Agnew face the same penalties, including the possibility of jail time, that anyone else would face, Richardson made a deal with Agnew’s defense counsel that arranged for him to leave the Vice Presidency, plead nolo contendere to a charge of tax evasion (not bribery), and not serve any jail time. The deal was struck in late September of 1973, but Agnew reneged over the weekend when the press, that conservative boogeyman, got wind of it. Agnew decided that he needed to appear innocent.

At this point, the Justice Department produced a memo, tortured and incongruous, that stated that though the President could not be indicted while in office, the Vice President, who pretty much just sat around all day instead of having actual responsibilities, could be. As his case headed for a grand jury, Agnew opened fire again on the legal front (contesting the ability to indict), a legislative front (asking the Speaker to open an impeachment trial to possibly supersede the indictment; Carl Albert declined) and on a political front (claiming his innocence and attacking his enemies at a televised speech to Republican women). Agnew claimed that he would not resign if indicted; and, as a distraction, launched a legal effort to compel journalists to reveal the sources of their “leaks.”

However, the wind was taken out of his sails when the first memo was locked down by a second memo, from constitutional law expert and Solicitor General Robert Bork, stating that the Vice President could definitely been indicted. After all, Aaron Burr, our second-best Vice President, had been indicted by two states while in office! This brought Agnew and his lawyers back to the negotiating table. A deal was reached on October 9th, despite the continued desire of the three young Assistant U.S. Attorneys that Agnew face the possibility of jail time. Richardson agreed to take the heat and appear as the lead prosecutor in the case.

There was a dramatic scene in the court house on the appointed day, as everyone sweated out the possibility of Agnew changing his mind again and declining to show. The prosecutors rushed their own statement of evidence to enter, so that there would be a paper trail indicating the depth of Agnew’s guilt. Despite public knowledge of the case and deliberations, the deal had flown under the radar. An Agnew-related hearing was announced, and a gaggle of journalists and their lawyers showed up, thinking that the hearing was about the leak issue. However, they were all sent to the gallery, and were stunned to see Agnew himself show up and, in a brief ceremony, accept the guilty plea to the single charge of tax evasion. At the same time, his resignation letter was transmitted to the appropriate channel, the Secretary of State’s office.

Agnew left loudly, decrying his innocence, and went on to have a quiet, embarrassing career as a shameless huckster (more about that below); though a case on behalf of the taxpayers of Maryland required him to repay his bribes and another libel case led to a secondhand admission of guilt. The prosecutors went on to have fairly normal, non-dramatic careers. Elliot Richardson resigned as Attorney General less than two weeks after Agnew’s guilty plea, after he refused Nixon’s demand to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox. In an early sign of the state party’s decline, he lost the Republican primary for Senate in Massachusetts in 1984.

The book went fast, partially because the whole scandal went pretty fast, in only a year, and was buried under the entire Watergate situation. Nixon, even at his nadir, gives you reason to root for him so that he can at least outlast Agnew, who has all of the conservative bitterness but none of the policy chops or knowledge. Watergate stuff always reads as a thriller, but I have tried to restrain my glee over its retelling ever since I read a family memoir while I was in high school called Blood of the Liberals, by George Packer. In that book, the author traces three generations of his family: his Populist Party ancestors, his Silent Generation, Hubert Humphrey liberal parents, and his baby boomer self. He recounts and deplores his own gleeful, nihilistic teenage crossing out of names on a Watergate poster while the administration crumbled. Watergate was one of the darkest moments in our country’s political history, and should be a somber affair.

Being a big name in media comes in handy in getting sources, and the book contains quotes from extensive interviews with Skolnik, Baker, and Liebman, who are very proud of their accomplishments. Some of these interview quotes serve mainly to dramatize the action, but that’s welcome. The book’s podcast roots also come out when transcripts of the Watergate tapes are printed, which at least cuts right to the chase.

The book also does bring new documents to light, the most sensational of which dates from Agnew’s post-political business career. Hurting for money in the ‘80s even as he jetted around on undignified business schemes, he pitched the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia for funding in exchange for his continued efforts to fight the “Zionists” that ruled the American media. This bombshell documentation of such an offer (partially funded) to act as a kind of consultant or agent of anti-Semitism comports with Agnew’s long history of political attacks on “elites,” “intellectuals,” and those who ran the news media, and put the dog whistle right there on paper for all to see. I am glad that the book brought this to light.

The book sought to replace Agnew’s forgetting with his condemnation. It of course also has things to say about Trump, and has a sort of #resistance undertone that only specifically comes out in the introduction and conclusion, but is present throughout. The book strikes a tone that some of the more desperate Trump opponents (and my viewer friends tell me Maddow herself) adopted, a righteous faith in the inevitable integrity of institutions. This comes largely in the form of praise of Richardson and Beall for doing their job in the face of political pressure. I don’t disagree with this assessment, and I think that both men come out well. The book, however, takes the sort of preachy, corny tone of an Aaron Sorkin monologue, and it is at moments like this when I most feel that the pundits are coming on to tell me what to think.

In terms of direct connections, the book stresses the importance of the “playbook” Agnew created in response to scandal of turning the guns on the investigators and the media, though that playbook is only briefly executed and isn’t linked by the authors to any subsequent political scandal strategies, such as through direct rhetoric, explicit information, or the involvement of the same personnel. Obviously, however, it is a reference to Trump’s obfuscation and the use of his own aggrieved base. The other connection is that the Justice Department memos produced in response to the Agnew issue (and to Watergate) continue to guide thinking such as Robert Mueller’s declining to indict Trump, despite not having actually been tested in a court of law. These are important connections, if a bit overstated. Overall, however, despite such allusions, the book was about Agnew, not Trump, and I was pleasantly surprised by its high quality. All podcasts should be made into books.