Agnew, Spiro Theodore (1918-1996), became the only vice president of the United States to resign while under criminal investigation. In 1968 and 1972, Agnew had won election as vice president under President Richard M. Nixon. Agnew resigned in 1973 after a federal grand jury began hearing charges that he had participated in widespread graft as a Maryland officeholder.
Agnew was elected governor of Maryland in 1966. He was the first man of Greek descent to serve as governor of an American state, or as vice president. He became the second vice president to resign. In 1832, Vice President John C. Calhoun resigned after being chosen to fill a U.S. Senate seat from South Carolina.
Early life.
Agnew was born on Nov. 9, 1918, in Towson, Maryland. His father, Theodore Spiro Agnew, had come to the United States in 1897. Theodore Agnew became a leader of the city’s Greek community.
Agnew studied chemistry for three years at Johns Hopkins University and then transferred to the law school of the University of Baltimore. He served in the Army in Europe during World War II (1939-1945).
After the war, Agnew switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. He married Elinor Isabel Judefind in 1942. They had three daughters and a son. Agnew received a law degree in 1947 and began practicing in Baltimore County.
Political career.
Agnew entered politics in 1957, when he was appointed to the Baltimore County Board of Appeals. In 1962, he was elected county executive, the chief official of Baltimore County. In 1967, Agnew became the fifth Republican governor in Maryland history.
Agnew was little known outside Maryland when Nixon selected him to be his vice presidential running mate in 1968. Nixon—whose campaign stressed “law and order”—felt Agnew had taken a strong stand against the Baltimore riots that had erupted after the 1968 assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.
In the 1968 election, Nixon and Agnew defeated the Democratic candidates, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey and U.S. Senator Edmund S. Muskie. As vice president, Agnew soon became controversial. He accused newspapers and television networks of presenting news that was biased against the administration. He also harshly criticized student radicals and other dissenters. In 1972, Nixon and Agnew won a landslide victory over their Democratic opponents, George S. McGovern and Sargent Shriver.
In 1973, federal officials began to investigate charges that Agnew had accepted payments from contractors in return for helping them get state government work in Maryland. The investigation covered the period Agnew had served as Baltimore County Executive, governor, and vice president.
Agnew denied any wrongdoing. But on October 10, he resigned as vice president under an agreement with the Department of Justice. Agnew pleaded nolo contendere (no contest) to a single charge—that he had cheated the government of $13,551 on his 1967 federal income taxes. The judge declared that the plea was “the full equivalent” of a guilty plea. Agnew was fined $10,000 and sentenced to three years probation.
House Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford succeeded Agnew as vice president in December 1973. In 1974, the Maryland Court of Appeals banned Agnew from practicing law in the state because of his nolo contendere plea. In 1981, another Maryland court ordered Agnew to pay the state for the illegal payments he had accepted, plus interest. In 1983, Agnew paid Maryland $268,482. In 1980, Agnew published a memoir, Go Quietly … or Else. He died on Sept. 17, 1996.
