Spiro Agnew
Spiro Theodore Agnew (/ˈspɪəroʊ ˈæɡnjuː/; November 9, 1918 – September 17, 1996) was the 39th vice president of the United States, serving from 1969 until his resignation in 1973. He is the second of two vice presidents to resign the position, the first being John C. Calhoun in 1832.
Spiro T. Agnew
September 17, 1996 (aged 77)
Berlin, Maryland, U.S.
4
1941–1945
Service Company, 54th Armored Infantry Battalion, 10th Armored Division
Agnew was born in Baltimore to a Greek immigrant father and an American mother. He attended Johns Hopkins University and graduated from the University of Baltimore School of Law. He was a campaign aide for U.S. Representative James Devereux in the 1950s, and was appointed to the Baltimore County Board of Zoning Appeals in 1957. In 1962, he was elected Baltimore county executive. In 1966, Agnew was elected governor of Maryland, defeating his Democratic opponent George P. Mahoney and independent candidate Hyman A. Pressman.
At the 1968 Republican National Convention, Richard Nixon asked Agnew to place his name in nomination, and named him as running mate. Agnew's centrist reputation interested Nixon; the law and order stance he had taken in the wake of civil unrest that year appealed to aides such as Pat Buchanan. Agnew made a number of gaffes during the campaign, but his rhetoric pleased many Republicans, and he may have made the difference in several key states. Nixon and Agnew defeated the Democratic ticket of incumbent vice president Hubert Humphrey and his running mate, Senator Edmund Muskie, and American Independent Party candidates George Wallace and Curtis LeMay. As vice president, Agnew was often called upon to attack the administration's enemies. In the years of his vice presidency, Agnew moved to the right, appealing to conservatives who were suspicious of moderate stances taken by Nixon. In the presidential election of 1972, Nixon and Agnew were re-elected for a second term, defeating Senator George McGovern and his running mate Sargent Shriver in one of the largest landslides in American history.
In 1973, Agnew was investigated by the United States Attorney for the District of Maryland on suspicion of criminal conspiracy, bribery, extortion, and tax fraud. Agnew took kickbacks from contractors during his time as Baltimore county executive and governor of Maryland. The payments had continued into his time as vice president, but had nothing to do with the Watergate scandal, in which he was not implicated. After months of maintaining his innocence, Agnew pleaded no contest to a single felony charge of tax evasion and resigned from office. Nixon replaced him with House Republican leader Gerald Ford. Agnew spent the remainder of his life quietly, rarely making public appearances. He wrote a novel and a memoir, both of which defended his actions. Agnew died at home in 1996 at age 77 of undiagnosed acute leukemia.
War and after
World War II (1941–1945)
By the time of the marriage, Agnew had been drafted into the United States Army. Shortly after the Attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, he began basic training at Camp Croft in South Carolina. There, he met people from a variety of backgrounds: "I had led a very sheltered life—I became unsheltered very quickly."[15] Eventually, Agnew was sent to the Officer Candidate School at Fort Knox in Kentucky, and on May 24, 1942—three days before his wedding—he was commissioned as a second lieutenant.[16]
After a two-day honeymoon, Agnew returned to Fort Knox. He served there, or at nearby Fort Campbell, for nearly two years in a variety of administrative roles, before being sent to England in March 1944 as part of the pre-D-Day build-up.[15] He remained on standby in Birmingham until late in the year, when he was posted to the 54th Armored Infantry Battalion in France as a replacement officer. After briefly serving as a rifle platoon leader, Agnew commanded the battalion's service company. The battalion became part of Combat Command "B" of the 10th Armored Division, which saw action in the Battle of the Bulge, including the Siege of Bastogne—in all, "thirty-nine days in the hole of the doughnut", as one of Agnew's men put it.[17] Thereafter, the 54th Battalion fought its way into Germany, seeing action at Mannheim, Heidelberg, and Crailsheim, before reaching Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Bavaria as the war concluded.[17] Agnew returned home for discharge in November 1945, having been awarded the Combat Infantryman Badge and the Bronze Star.[15][17]
Postwar years (1945–1956)
On return to civilian life, Agnew resumed his legal studies, and secured a job as a law clerk with the Baltimore firm of Smith and Barrett. Until that time, Agnew had been largely non-political; his nominal allegiance had been to the Democratic Party, following his father's beliefs. The firm's senior partner, Lester Barrett, advised Agnew that if he wanted a career in politics, he should become a Republican. There were already many ambitious young Democrats in Baltimore and its suburbs, whereas competent, personable Republicans were scarcer. Agnew took Barrett's advice; on moving with family to the suburb of Lutherville in 1947, Agnew registered as a Republican, though he did not immediately become involved in politics.[18][19]
In 1947, Agnew graduated with a Bachelor of Laws and passed the bar examination in Maryland. He started a law practice in downtown Baltimore, but was not successful, and took a job as an insurance investigator.[19] A year later, Agnew moved to Schreiber's, a supermarket chain, where his role was store detective.[20] He remained there for four years, a period briefly interrupted in 1951 by a recall to the Army after the outbreak of the Korean War. Agnew resigned from Schreiber's in 1952, and resumed his legal practice, specializing in labor law.[21]
In 1955, Barrett was appointed a judge in Towson, the county seat of Baltimore. Agnew moved his office there; at the same time, he moved his family from Lutherville to Loch Raven. There, he led a typical suburban lifestyle, serving as president of the local school district's Parent-Teacher Association, joining Kiwanis, and participating in a range of social and community activities.[22] Historian William Manchester summed up Agnew in those days: "His favorite musician was Lawrence Welk. His leisure interests were all midcult: watching the Baltimore Colts on television, listening to Mantovani, and reading the sort of prose the Reader's Digest liked to condense. He was a lover of order and an almost compulsive conformist."[23]
Beginnings in public life
Political awakening
In the 1950s, Agnew volunteered for the congressional campaigns of U.S. Representative James Devereux.[24] Agnew made his first bid for political office in 1956, when he sought to be a Republican candidate for Baltimore County Council. He was turned down by local party leaders, but nevertheless campaigned vigorously for the Republican ticket. The election resulted in an unexpected Republican majority on the council, and in recognition for his party work, Agnew was appointed for a one-year term to the county Zoning Board of Appeals at a salary of $3,600 per year.[25] This quasi-judicial post provided an important supplement to his legal practice, and Agnew welcomed the prestige connected with the appointment.[26] In April 1958, he was reappointed to the Board for a full three-year term and became its chairman.[20]
In the November 1960 elections, Agnew decided to seek election to the county circuit court, against the local tradition that sitting judges seeking re-election were not opposed. He was unsuccessful, finishing last of five candidates.[4] This failed attempt raised his profile, and he was regarded by his Democratic opponents as a Republican on the rise.[27] The 1960 elections saw the Democrats win control of the county council, and one of their first actions was to remove Agnew from the Zoning Appeals Board. According to Agnew's biographer, Jules Witcover, "The publicity generated by the Democrats' crude dismissal of Agnew cast him as the honest servant wronged by the machine."[28] Seeking to capitalize on this mood, Agnew asked to be nominated as the Republican candidate in the 1962 U.S. congressional elections, in Maryland's 2nd congressional district. The party chose the more experienced J. Fife Symington, but wanted to take advantage of Agnew's local support. He accepted their invitation to run for county executive, the county's chief executive officer; Democrats had held the executive's post and its predecessor, chairman of the board of county commissioners, since 1895.[4][28]
Agnew's chances in 1962 were boosted by a feud in the Democratic ranks, as the retired former county executive, Michael Birmingham, fell out with his successor and defeated him in the Democratic primary. By contrast with his elderly opponent, Agnew was able to campaign as a "White Knight" promising change; his program included an anti-discrimination bill requiring public amenities such as parks, bars and restaurants be open to all races, policies that neither Birmingham nor any Maryland Democrat could have introduced at that time without angering supporters.[29][30] In the November election, despite an intervention by Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson on Birmingham's behalf,[31] Agnew beat his opponent by 78,487 votes to 60,993.[32] When Symington lost to Democrat Clarence Long in his congressional race, Agnew became the highest-ranking Republican in Maryland.[33]
Post-vice presidency (1973–1996)
Subsequent career: 1973–1990
Soon after his resignation, Agnew moved to his summer home at Ocean City.[4] To cover urgent tax and legal bills, and living expenses, he borrowed $200,000 (~$1.4 million in 2023) from his friend Frank Sinatra.[183] He had hoped he could resume a career as a lawyer, but in 1974, the Maryland Court of Appeals disbarred him, calling him "morally obtuse".[184][185] To earn his living, he founded a business consultancy, Pathlite Inc., which in the following years attracted a widespread international clientele.[5][186] One deal concerned a contract for the supply of uniforms to the Iraqi Army, involving negotiations with Saddam Hussein and Nicolae Ceauşescu of Romania.[5]
Agnew pursued other business interests: an unsuccessful land deal in Kentucky, and an equally fruitless partnership with golfer Doug Sanders over a beer distributionship in Texas.[187] In 1976 he published a novel, The Canfield Decision, about an American vice president's troubled relationship with his president. The book received mixed reviews, but was commercially successful, with Agnew receiving $100,000 for serialization rights alone.[188] The book landed Agnew in controversy; his fictional counterpart, George Canfield, refers to "Jewish cabals and Zionist lobbies" and their hold over the American media, a charge which Agnew, while on a book tour, asserted was true in real life.[189] This brought complaints from Seymour Graubard, of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, and a rebuke from President Ford, then campaigning for re-election.[190] Agnew denied any antisemitism or bigotry: "My contention is that routinely the American news media ... favors the Israeli position and does not in a balanced way present the other equities".[191] Also in 1976, Agnew announced that he was establishing a charitable foundation "Education for Democracy", but nothing more was heard of this after B'nai B'rith accused it of being a front for Agnew's anti-Israeli views.[187]
In 1977 Agnew was wealthy enough to move to a new home at The Springs Country Club in Rancho Mirage, California, and shortly afterwards to repay the Sinatra loan.[183] That year, in a series of televised interviews with British TV host David Frost, Nixon claimed that he had had no direct role in the processes that had led to Agnew's resignation and implied that his vice president had been hounded by the liberal media: "He made mistakes ... but I do not think for one minute that Spiro Agnew consciously felt that he was violating the law".[192]
In 1980, Agnew wrote to Fahd bin Abdulaziz, at the time Crown Prince and de facto Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia, claiming that he had been bled dry by attacks on him by Zionists, whom he blamed for forcing him out of office. He requested an interest-free three-year loan of $2 million, to be deposited in a Swiss bank account, on which the interest would be available to Agnew. He stated that he would use the funds to "continue my effort to inform the American people of their (i.e., Zionists') control of the media and other influential sectors of American society." He also congratulated the crown prince on his call for jihad against Israel, whose declaration of Jerusalem as its capital he characterized as "the final provocation". A month later he thanked the crown prince for giving him "the resources to continue the battle against the Zionist community here in the U.S."[193][194]
Notes
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