Web Site Lands Agnew FBI Papers
By RICHARD PYLE, AP
NEW YORK (AP), Both Spiro Agnew and government lawyers investigating him were
preoccupied with leaks to the press during the months before the vice president resigned
in 1973 to escape prison for tax evasion and bribery.
Their concerns, detailed in correspondence obtained by an online news service
using the Freedom of Information Act, are just a portion of the information contained in
Agnew's FBI file. In one letter, dated Aug. 23, then-Attorney General Elliot L.
Richardson assured an angry Agnew - who was under growing suspicion - that he shared his
concern over unauthorized disclosures, but could do little to prevent them.
``There seems to be no fully effective means to stop the cynical, speculative
chain reaction of rumor and hypothesis that has been all too evident in recent weeks,''
Richardson wrote. He added that Agnew ``should and will be given an opportunity to
tell the prosecution all that you wish.''
Another document tells how U.S. marshals in Baltimore seized a CBS television
crew that was using a nearby rooftop to film the windows of a federal building where a
grand jury was discussing Agnew's fate. The crew and their film were later released.
Some 219 pages of internal Justice Department memos and other items relating to the Agnew
affair were posted on the Internet on Thursday by APB Online, a web site opened last year
and devoted to crime and justice issues.
``This is part of our continuing commitment to identifying and making public
material from all government agencies ... in a way that not only tells the story but gives
the user an opportunity to see history in its unexpurgated form,'' APB marketing director
Dick Lavinthal said.
Agnew resigned from office Oct. 10, 1973 after pleading no contest to evading
$13,500 in his 1967 taxes, becoming the only VP in the nation's history to step down.
As part of the deal, he also admitted accepting thousands of dollars in
kickbacks from contractors as Baltimore County executive and governor of Maryland in the
1960s, and later as President Nixon's hand-picked vice president.
One of the notes made public details former White House aide Ken Clawson
informing cabinet officials that Agnew had told Nixon the day before of his plans to
resign. It said Nixon ``expressed his deep sense of personal loss'' and commended Agnew
for his ``decision to put the national interest above personal considerations.''
Nixon himself resigned the following August as a result of the Watergate affair.
The file obtained by APB Online contains numerous memos on FBI attempts to
become involved in the case. The agency was rebuffed by prosecutors who insisted it was
``only a tax matter.'' When the FBI was finally called in to conduct polygraph tests on
witnesses, the results started showing up in newspaper stories - triggering a spate of
memos about leaks.
In a court statement at the plea bargain, Richardson said the government could
have charged Agnew with bribery and extortion, but any such case ``would have consumed not
simply months, but years - with potentially disastrous consequences to the vital interests
of the United States.''
Richardson also urged no jail time in view of Agnew's years of public service
and his willingness to avoid putting the country through the ``prolonged agony'' of a
trial.
The web site for APB Online is www.apbonline.com
