Download PDF of this full issue: v3n9.pdf (8.9 MB)

'Crook' Resigns: Agnew Admits Guilt

By VVAW

"I want to say clearly and unequivocally that I am innocent of the charges against me."

- Spiro Agnew - September 29, 1973

"I admit that I did receive payments during the year 1967 which were not expended for political purposes and that therefore, these payments were income taxable to me in that year and that I so knew."

- Spiro Agnew - October 10, 1973

With this, Spiro T. Agnew resigned as Vice President of the United States. The depths of his corruption extended to receiving more than $100,000 in cash payments from the time he was Governor of Maryland up until December of 1972, where he received payments in the Office of the Vice President. He was sentenced to three years probation and received a fine of $10,000; a light sentence in view of the serious charges against him.

For five years, Agnew - the loyal hatchet man for Richard Nixon traveled the length and width of the country attacking the press, supporting the criminal policies of the government, denouncing concerned Americans who protested those policies and screaming for law and order - turns out to be a liar, and a common criminal. His deceitful actions indicate a total disrespect for the American people; a disrespect that extends throughout all levels of the American political system.

President Nixon has name Gerald Ford of Michigan to succeed Agnew. The appointment of Ford to follow Agnew is another in a long line of Nixon nominations in which those named have shady pasts. It was reported in the Chicago Tribune that in February of 1971, Ford failed to report $11,500 in campaign contributions from stock brokers, an oilman, bankers, doctors and a union group. The taint of illegality again will settle on the Vice Presidency.

Oddly, the resignation of Agnew and the naming of Ford comes at the same time that the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the lower Federal Court decision stating that Nixon must submit the White House Tapes to Judge John Sirica. The entire exposure of Agnew's financial dealings has occured at a time when Nixon's own participation in the Watergate affair and the shady dealings involving the purchase of his homes in Florida and California are still under scrutiny.

U.S. District Attorney, James Thompson, said of Agnew, "He's a crook, and the country is well rid of him." Professor John Morton Blum called the resignation, "the best news since V-J Day." In a recent poll, more Americans were shown to have trust in used car salesmen than in politicians. The American people appear to have lost faith in the political system as well as the unfair judicial system. They have lost faith in the unending parade of Nixon appointees: John Mitchell, H.R. Haldeman, L. Patrick Gray and Spiro Agnew. It seems more and more that Americans are looking for an alternative to the bankrupt politics of the United States today.