Bag Man: The Wild Crimes, Audacious Cover-Up, and Spectacular Downfall of a Brazen Crook in the White House

“Funny thing, this, old habits die hard. And when the exercise of those habits has delivered fame and glory and raucous applause, they are unlikely to die at all.”

Agnew’s “political brand” is built around his willingness to say anything, regardless of its offensiveness. He views it as an asset to be cultivated rather than a fault to be corrected or hidden away. To his supporters, his insults and racial slurs are simply part of his “straight talk.” When that brash and aggressive style earn him a place on the Republican ticket, Agnew sees it as validation to continue doing what he has always done: counterpunch. In 2004, Howard Dean was the leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination. His front-runner status came largely from the unscripted tone of his rhetoric. After the infamous “Dean scream” following the Iowa caucuses, his campaign tried to tone down his boisterous persona; he appeared on morning talk shows in knit sweaters rather than the loose tie and rolled-up sleeves of a fighter. The strategy fooled no one, and Dean was relegated to the sidelines of political history. While Dean and Agnew are vastly different characters, the lesson remains: Voters dislike disingenuity.

“If saving yourself means undermining the institutions of democracy—the Department of Justice and the free press, for starters—well, fire up the backhoe.”

The legacy left behind by the Agnew scandal has become standard fare in the political playbook: obstruct the investigation, indict the press, investigate the investigators, and play the victim. No amount of institutional damage is too much when self-preservation is on the line. Ironically, the strategy may prolong a political life, but ultimately, it appears to be a doomed strategy. It failed for Agnew, it failed for Nixon, and, depending on whether indictments are handed down, it may fail for Trump. It is a very short-sighted strategy, but history, the marker by which all politicians are remembered, takes the long view.

“If people are telling me 25 good reasons for doing A, and yet there’s still a feeling have that I should do B, I go with my feeling…. It’s a subliminal type of intelligence.”

Agnew is governed by his instincts. Unfortunately, those instincts often fly in the face of the facts. When Jewish groups warn that Agnew’s rhetoric may be fueling anti-Semitism, his reaction is to dismiss those complaints as “overblown.” While the benefit of listening to one’s gut is valued in some circles, when empirical evidence suggests otherwise, a reevaluation of those instincts may be in order. This is part of a phenomenon known as “confirmation bias,” a tendency to seek out information that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs; the flip side of that equation is to dismiss information that runs counter to those beliefs. While social media today may exacerbate confirmation bias, Agnew is emblematic of the tendency long before Twitter or Facebook.

“How on God’s green earth could a national figure, a man second in line to the most powerful office on the planet, a sitting vice president of the United States of America, be so dumb, or so venal, to still be pocketing bribes? It couldn’t be.”

When Skolnik, Baker, and Liebman realize the Baltimore Country extortion scheme has moved beyond Baltimore to the White House, they are dumbfounded. Local corruption is not uncommon, but the idea that a man now serving in the second highest office in the country is continuing to extort money—indeed, has even expanded his territory—is unfathomable. Agnew’s bag man delivering cash in white envelopes to the White House is, to Skolnik, “crazy” on a petty gangster level completely unbefitting the dignity of the office. Because Agnew has gotten away with it for so long, he becomes careless as well as “dumb” and “venal.”

“‘We realized at that moment,’ Liebman remembers, almost fifty years after the fact, ‘that we had a tiger by the tail.’”

When the Baltimore prosecutors discover—with the help of Skolnik’s superb interrogation skills—that payments are still being made to Agnew inside the White House, they are all acutely aware of the gravity of the situation. On one hand, they have clear evidence of a crime. On the other hand, the evidence implicates the vice president: the second highest ranking politician in the country and an infamous retaliator. To pursue the case and lose could mean the end of their collective careers. To their credit, however, they never flinch but wisely proceed with caution, methodically building an airtight case before bringing it before the Attorney General.

“‘The president of the United States, to put it mildly, is under a cloud,’ says Liebman, ‘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!’”

As the stakes in their investigation take on Constitutional proportions, Skolnik, Baker, and Liebman encounter a new problem: time. With Nixon also in trouble and potentially on the verge of being removed from office, Agnew is poised to take over as president, and the legal consensus is clear: Sitting presidents cannot be indicted while in office. So begins the complex legal maneuvering to indict Agnew before the Watergate investigation reaches its conclusion. In the end, the prosecutors are forced by political realities to swallow a bitter pill: They settle for a single charge of tax evasion with no jail time for a man who has run an extortion scheme for years.

“The clear mission, while never explicitly voiced, was to pry the vice president of the United States from office before it was too late.”

Attorney General Richardson supports the Baltimore prosecutors’ investigation—even though his department is simultaneously investigating the president on a totally separate matter—but he impresses upon them the importance of secrecy. They must be able to present the strongest possible case to a grand jury before Agnew can take his case to the public and before he can ascend to the presidency. With time of the essence, the narrative takes on the adrenaline rush of a Hollywood political thriller.

“Why give up a percentage to the bag man, even if Bud was a friend? ‘He was greedy,’ Liebman says of Agnew, ‘absolutely greedy.’”

Part of Agnew’s sloppiness can be traced to greed. Rather than use an intermediary bag man—his friend, “Bud” Hammerman—Agnew begins to take payments directly from the firms he is extorting, forgoing Hammerman’s percentage and keeping everything for himself. Like a character in a play, Agnew is doomed by his tragic flaw, getting careless and leaving a trail of evidence that even he cannot sweep under the rug.

“Agnew was already signaling that he was willing to employ a scorched-earth survival strategy The allegations against him were ‘fabrications’ the witnesses against him were ‘crazy,’ and the prosecutors were ‘zealous’ and out to get him. It was a witch hunt.”

In characteristic Agnew fashion, the charges against him are met with countercharges and smokescreens. Research has shown that wrongly accused people tend to react to their accusations more angrily than guilty people (Kelly, Jane, “New Research Finds Angry Denials of Wrongdoing Leave Strong Impressions of Guilt.” University of Virginia. January 6, 2022), and therefore an angry rebuttal makes good rhetorical and political sense. The strategy appeals to Agnew’s supporters who already believe the press and the liberal Democrats are out to get him. Trump is a master of the strategy, employing it against Democrats, the FBI, the news media, and various judges who have ruled against him.

“Bribery, extortion, cash payoffs in the White House—these accusations were all now public. But Republicans across the country really didn’t seem to mind! In fact, they seemed to regard it as a badge of honor, won by Sir Spiro for his willingness to joust with those radic-libs.”

Much of Bag Man—the political rhetoric, the glimpse into power and privilege, and the polarization—is eerily prescient. The tribal instincts, encouraged by social media, are nothing new. An angrily divided electorate is willing to forgive the sins of one of their own as long as those sins are in service to destroying the other side. “Owning the libs” is a point of pride among many conservatives, a gleeful defense of their often-polarizing rhetoric.

“Forget Agnew’s crimes and the ever-growing mountain of admissible evidence proving them; to hear him tell it, it was these dirty prosecutors who were corrupting the justice system.”

One prong of Agnew’s defense strategy is to cast doubt on the investigation and to actively accuse the prosecutors of corruption because of details leaked to the press. While leaks are troublesome, they are not on the same scale as extortion and bribery, and to equate the two is a classic fallacy of logic. It is also an odd psychological projection on Agnew’s part, to accuse the investigators of the same crime he has committed. History and popular culture are full of stories of government corruption—including Tammany Hall and Iran-Contra—so accusations of corruption inside the DOJ are easy to convince people of.

“The efforts of Agnew, Nixon, Haldeman, Haig, George Bush, and others—

 they failed because Beall had an investigation to pursue, and he had

 independent public servants to protect and stand up for, and he never once

 blinked.”

A recurring theme of Bag Man is the unheralded heroism of working-class civil servants standing up to enormous pressure and doing their jobs. George Beall, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland, is one such hero. When Agnew and his legal team apply pressure and question not only the investigation but the motives and credentials of the prosecutors, Beall never reveals to his team the pressure he feels. He is pushed by Agnew as well as his own brother, Senator Glenn Beall, to drop the investigation, but his single-minded focus on his duty precludes him from doing so.

“We took the position that you couldn’t indict Agnew because he was a sitting vice president.”

Agnew’s defense team takes a legal gamble by arguing that Agnew is immune from prosecution because of his position. The argument, which results in a meandering legal memo drafted by Solicitor General Robert Bork, plumbs the Constitution and 200 years of legal precedent for an answer, and in the process, it asserts the largely ceremonial role of the vice president. The president, Bork argues, is immune from prosecution because his duties are too vital to the functioning of the nation to remove him from office; the vice president, however, enjoys no such immunity. The Bork memo established a DOJ policy that stands to this day and is responsible for Robert Mueller’s refusal to indict Donald Trump on obstruction of justice charges.

“Even if a member of your pack had strayed or got himself in trouble, he was still a member of your pack and, as such, deserved unconditional support.”

A key to understanding Agnew’s—and his close friend, Frank Sinatra’s—character, the authors argue, is to understand his personal code of ethics. Both men place loyalty above all else. When Agnew is facing criminal charges, Nixon cuts him loose, but Sinatra, who remains loyal, offers financial and legal support. His personal feelings about Agnew’s alleged crimes are beside the point; a friend is in need, and his code demands that he stand by him. Loyalty is a trait also highly valued among crime families, and to betray that loyalty, no matter the circumstances, can have deadly consequences.

“I will not resign if indicted!”

When Agnew speaks before a convention of Republican women, he staunchly defends himself and refuses to concede defeat—even if he is indicted. The crowd cheers, acknowledging what Agnew implies: The charges are bogus, and any indictment is based on partisanship and lies. The boldness of Agnew’s statement, however, flies in the face of all respect for law and order, a pillar of his own political philosophy.

“‘It is because I have learned over a period of twenty years as a judge and an additional twenty-three years as an attorney that the news media frequently are wholly or partially inaccurate,’ he told them, ‘that I must warn you to disregard totally any comment you have seen or heard from any source [in the press].”

The news media are a frequent target of Agnew, and in Judge Walter Hoffman, his attorneys find a kindred spirit. Hoffman, who “had developed a significant measure of disdain for the American press corps” (192), agrees to allow Agnew’s attorneys to turn the investigation back on the press, to use the grand jury as an investigative tool, and to subpoena reporters, a slippery slope tactic that veers dangerously close to First Amendment infringement. Hoffman’s rhetoric alone reveals disrespect for one of the basic pillars of a healthy democracy. It is a sign that judges, despite their status as presumably objective arbiters of justice, are equally subject to bias as any layperson.

“Henry Petersen finally blew. ‘This man is the goddamn vice president of the United States,’ he told the prosecutors. ‘What do you want to do? Make him crawl on his belly?’”

The impasse between the Baltimore prosecutors and the Attorney General’s office—over whether to accept resignation with no jail time or push for a guilty verdict and a prison sentence—finally reaches a boiling point. Petersen, the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, argues for expediency and practicality. He believes that, with time no longer on their side, they must put aside their noble ideals and take the best offer. Petersen also reveals a grudging respect for the office of vice president; he is therefore more willing to cut Agnew some slack because of his position. While Skolnik, Baker, and Liebman see the issue as a simple matter of crime and punishment, Petersen’s view is more nuanced. Humiliating a vice president in public for the sake of justice is a line he refuses to cross.

“It had been rushed to D.C. with a sirens-wailing police escort as if it were the holy grail—which for these prosecutors, it sort of was.”

The narrative occasionally takes dramatic turns, as on the night before Agnew’s appearance in court. The prosecutors rush to draft a legal memo, detailing every one of Agnew’s crimes, that must be entered into the public record by eight a.m. Richardson even drives to Baltimore at two in the morning to oversee their work. With the draft completed, though not entirely proofread, the document is rushed to federal court in a scene that could have come from a Hollywood political thriller. Life imitates art in a down-to-the-wire race against time.

“And even though he had just pleaded no contest to a felony in open court his supporters had been told to believe in his innocence no matter what facts were reported and to resent everything about this unfair prosecution.”

This is a stunning display of denial and confirmation bias. Agnew’s supporters continue to see him as the victim of a witch hunt even after his nolo contendere plea—effectively an admission of guilt. Facts, it seems, are a poor substitute for political allegiance, and admission of a mistake—in this case, believing Agnew’s lies—is unthinkable in an atmosphere of political tribalism.

“Lightning kept striking this guy who never had a machine, an organization or a record. He was a little hustler out of Baltimore County who made it to the White House, with no anchor, no mooring, no core. Gives politics a bad name.”

Reflecting on the Agnew scandal, the authors speculate on his motives for resigning, a sign of surrender unthinkable for the man who touts himself as a never-say-die political warrior. After Agnew’s death, a Baltimore politician succinctly summarizes Agnew’s character in an attempt to understand why a man would take his extortion racket all the way to the White House, while leaving such an easily traceable trail of evidence and witnesses behind. His analysis suggests that a person’s core character traits—in Agnew’s case, his sense of entitlement and greed—remain firmly in place regardless of circumstances, and that a person without a moral anchor will not suddenly develop one simply because their profession or environment demands it.

“Part of the trouble is you people.”

In a final address to the nation—after his plea in court and tacit admission of guilt—Agnew continues to claim his innocence, even suggesting that “future prosecutors be ‘restricted’ from targeting other politicians the way he had just been brought down” (228). His supporters are all too willing to believe him, and when a New York Times reporter questions one of Agnew’s supporters after the speech, the man never considers Agnew’s culpability or responsibility for his crimes, instead blaming the reporter himself. Americans have always had a fraught relationship with the press that is easily poisoned by a political rhetoric steeped in anger and fear.

“There’s no pancake so thin that it doesn’t have two sides.”

When an international businessman, Frank Jameson, offers the now-unemployed Agnew a job in his new business venture, he is asked if he has any qualms about employing a man with such a dubious public reputation. Using a bit of folksy wisdom, Jameson implies that, despite all the evidence against him, there is another side to the Agnew story. While viewing an issue from all sides is admirable and necessary, in this scenario the “other side” has been thoroughly explored, investigated, and documented before a court of law.

“A legitimate investigation, it turns out, can be smeared and muddied up with s simple but aggressive counteroffensive—one that privileges feelings over facts, base loyalty over evidence, and obstruction over cooperation.”

The authors neatly sum up both Agnew’s legal strategy and the damaging legacy that strategy left behind. While the full scope of Agnew’s crimes eventually come to light and he is forced to resign, all his legal wrangling, diversions, and political martyrdom buy him time, keep him out of jail, and preserve his reputation—temporarily at least. It is a deeply cynical ploy that relies on fear, partisanship, and a profound distrust of anyone who dares challenge one’s personal belief system.