Mr. Agnew challenges the widely held beliefs about his alleged involvement in bribery and extortion while in office. His testimony provides a detailed, well-documented, week-by-week account of the whirlwind of events leading to his resignation and unsnarles the tangle of distorted and willfully contrived evidence that has burdened his life for the past six years. The Freedom of Information Act has made available to Mr. Agnew the heavily censored files of the prosecutors, documenting Justice Department efforts to fabricate a case. Far more startling and significant, however, are the revelations concerning the tactics of high officials of the Nixon administration to force Mr. Agnew to resign immediately.
Spiro Theodore Agnew served as governor of Maryland from 1966 to 1968 and as vice president of the United States from 1969 to 1973 under Richard Milhous Nixon and resigned amid charges of illegal financial dealings during his governorship.
* 55th governor of Maryland from 1967 to 1969 * 39th vice president of the United States from 1969 to 1973
Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, several years after his resignation and fall from grace, explains his side of the story. Well-written, believeble, humble and apologetic at times -- in short, a very human work.
I didn't finish the book and I really didn't even get that far into it.
I felt that the book was better suited to people that lived through the Watergate/Vietnam era, or scholars of that period of time. Mr. Agnew's book really doesn't delve into Watergate at all, and focuses instead on his resignation as Vice President due to accusations that he took bribes while he was Governor of Maryland.
Personally, I found the most interesting parts of the book to be his thoughts on the media, the anti-war movement and Richard Nixon. In a nutshell, he didn't care for any of them and the feeling was seemingly mutual. Agnew is unapologetic about his conservative politics and seems to feel that he was isolated by everyone around him because of it.
He claimed that the Vietnam War was a humanitarian mission and advocated short term deaths of thousands to prevent the suffering of millions later. Destroying the dikes in North Vietnam was a plan he advocated to end the war by ending the North's ability to fight. He blames the doves in the Nixon Administration for ending the idea, claiming they feared media backlash and the deaths of Vietnamese due to famine. He is very critical of doves in all forms.
He also is scornful of the news media, claiming that they were all against him and targeted him and his family to get to President Nixon. He does have a point on one thing, the media did go too far when they crowded around his family at the funeral of his brother.
Mr. Agnew seemed to stay loyal to President Nixon until the very end, while feeling marginalized by him. He admits that he was never really part of Nixon's inner circle and his staff didn't get along with Nixon's staff. The bigger problem was his tendency to speak his mind honestly during staff meetings, which rubbed the president the wrong way. He was told at one point that if he disagreed with the president, he should keep it to himself.
Once Agnew starts talking about his personal legal problems, the book became a "he said/he said" account. He claimed that two men that were arrested claimed to have evidence against him that he underwent illegal activities as governor and even before that time. He claimed that the charges were merely attempts to blackmail him to get them out of jail. Also, he says the Maryland prosecutors were out to get him.
Maybe they were and maybe they weren't. I wont say that politicians don't have enemies that carry grudges but it seems that if the prosecution was able to make a case against him, then there must have been reliable evidence. No prosecutor wants to loose such a high profile case and go into trial with flimsy evidence. The backlash of failing to convict a sitting Vice President would be too much.
Of course, I never knew Agnew and have no idea what he was like as a person. So when it comes to his denial of any wrong doing, I cant judge one way or the other. The book does feel somewhat self serving and Agnew is clearly trying to restore a damaged reputation. It's up to the reader to decide how much is truth and how much is self flattery.