Narrator: Imagine you are a young, ambitious federal prosecutor in 1973 Baltimore, tasked with cleaning up local political corruption. You and your team follow a trail of suspicious cash payments, thinking you’re closing in on a crooked county executive. Then, you get a phone call. It’s from the Attorney General of the United States, Richard Kleindienst. He’s calling because the Vice President, Spiro Agnew, is nervous about your investigation. In that moment, the ground shifts. You realize you haven’t just uncovered a local kickback scheme; you’ve stumbled upon a conspiracy that reaches the second-highest office in the land. You have, as one prosecutor put it, a tiger by the tail.

This is the precipice of the forgotten scandal at the heart of Bag Man: The Wild Crimes, Audacious Cover-up, and Spectacular Downfall of a Brazen Crook in the White House by Rachel Maddow and Michael Yarvitz. The book reveals that while the nation was transfixed by Watergate, a parallel and equally audacious drama of corruption, obstruction, and abuse of power was unfolding—a story with a poisonous legacy that continues to shape American politics today.

Narrator: The investigation into Spiro Agnew didn't begin with a grand plan to take down a vice president. It started small, in the notoriously corrupt political landscape of 1970s Maryland. A trio of young, determined federal prosecutors—Barney Skolnik, Tim Baker, and Ron Liebman, working under U.S. Attorney George Beall—decided to tackle the endemic bribery poisoning Baltimore County. Their strategy was simple: "follow the money."

They began subpoenaing financial records from engineering firms that were consistently winning government contracts, looking for the "pools of cash" that are the lifeblood of corruption. Their investigation quickly led them to the county executive, Dale Anderson, who was running a classic kickback scheme. But as they dug deeper, a key witness, an engineer named Lester Matz, revealed a secret that blew the case wide open. Matz confessed that he had been paying bribes for years, not just to Anderson, but to his predecessor: Spiro Agnew.

The story Matz told was stunning. The bribery scheme didn't stop when Agnew became governor, and it didn't stop when he became Vice President of the United States. Matz described walking into Agnew's office in the Executive Office Building, right next to the White House, with envelopes stuffed with thousands of dollars in cash. He would hand the envelope to the sitting Vice President, who would take it without a word and slip it into his desk drawer. The prosecutors were in shock. As Ron Liebman recalled, "We realized at that moment that we had a tiger by the tail." They were no longer investigating a local crook; they were investigating the second most powerful man in the country.

Narrator: When the Baltimore prosecutors took their explosive findings to the new Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, he was already consumed by the Watergate crisis. Upon hearing the evidence against Agnew, Richardson’s aide recalled him muttering just three words: "Oh my God." Despite the immense political risk of investigating both the President and Vice President simultaneously, Richardson gave the prosecutors the green light, telling them the allegations "must be fully investigated."

What the prosecutors didn't know was that a secret war to shut them down was already underway. White House tapes, declassified decades later, reveal the extent of the obstruction. Agnew went directly to President Nixon, pleading with him to kill the investigation. In a recorded Oval Office conversation, Nixon and Agnew plotted their strategy. Nixon asked if the U.S. Attorney, George Beall, was "a good boy," questioning his loyalty for investigating a fellow Republican. When Agnew complained about a key witness, Nixon asked coldly, "Well, can we destroy him?"

The conspiracy to obstruct justice went even further. Nixon and his chief of staff, Alexander Haig, decided the best way to pressure George Beall was through his brother, a sitting U.S. Senator. They dispatched George H. W. Bush, then Chairman of the Republican National Committee, to carry the message. Incredibly, George Beall never told his team about the immense political pressure he was under. He absorbed the threats and interference from the highest levels of government, shielding his prosecutors so they could continue their work, a quiet act of integrity that saved the case from being buried.

Narrator: Once the investigation became public, Spiro Agnew didn't just defend himself on the facts; he launched an all-out assault on the institutions holding him accountable. In doing so, he created a playbook for corrupt politicians that remains influential to this day. The strategy had five parts: first, smear the investigation as a politically motivated "witch hunt." Second, obstruct it at every turn. Third, attack the personal and professional integrity of the investigators. Fourth, discredit the Justice Department as a whole. And fifth, attack the media.

Agnew went on a national tour, delivering fiery speeches to rally his base. In a now-infamous address to the National Federation of Republican Women, he claimed the charges were "damned lies" and that he was being targeted because he was a "big trophy" for a Justice Department desperate to redeem its image after Watergate. He declared defiantly, "I will not resign if indicted!" to thunderous applause.

His legal team took the unprecedented step of subpoenaing journalists, demanding they reveal their sources in an attempt to intimidate the press and create a distracting First Amendment battle. This scorched-earth strategy, which privileged loyalty over evidence and obstruction over cooperation, was designed to muddy the waters and transform a criminal proceeding into a political war. While it failed to save Agnew, it provided a dangerous blueprint for how to fight an investigation by attacking the very foundations of the rule of law.

Narrator: By the fall of 1973, the United States was facing an unprecedented constitutional crisis. President Nixon was sinking deeper into the Watergate scandal, and the man first in line to succeed him was a crook on the verge of indictment. Attorney General Elliot Richardson recognized the danger, stating that it was "intolerable to have Agnew be in the line of succession." The stability of the country demanded Agnew's removal from office, and quickly.

This led to a series of tense, secret negotiations between the Justice Department and Agnew's lawyers. Agnew's team offered his resignation in exchange for a deal: no prison time. For the Baltimore prosecutors who had risked their careers to build the case, this was an outrage. They believed Agnew should be treated like any other criminal. As Barney Skolnik argued, "People who do this shit go to jail. So why doesn’t he? The message if he doesn’t go to jail is that if you’re big enough, if you’re powerful enough, you don’t get treated like everybody else."

In the end, Richardson made a difficult choice. He prioritized national stability over a full measure of justice. On October 10, 1973, Spiro Agnew appeared in a Baltimore courtroom, pleaded "no contest" to a single charge of tax evasion, and resigned from the vice presidency. He avoided prison, but the prosecutors insisted on submitting a forty-page document detailing his extensive crimes, ensuring the truth would not be buried with the plea deal. It was a pragmatic solution to a national emergency, but one that left a bitter taste for those who believed no one should be above the law.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from Bag Man is that the downfall of Spiro Agnew was not merely a bizarre historical footnote to Watergate. It was a foundational event that left behind two profoundly damaging legacies. The first was Agnew's political playbook for attacking the rule of law, a strategy of institutional arson that has been copied by subsequent politicians. The second was an obscure legal memo, written to justify indicting Agnew while protecting Nixon, that established the official Justice Department policy that a sitting president cannot be criminally charged. This policy, born from the Agnew crisis, has shielded presidents from accountability ever since.

Ultimately, Bag Man is a chilling reminder of how fragile democratic institutions are. It reveals that their integrity often depends on the courage of a few individuals who, in the face of immense pressure, simply choose to do their jobs. The story of the Baltimore prosecutors is a tribute to public service, but it leaves us with a haunting question: What happens when the playbook for undermining justice becomes too effective for even the most courageous individuals to overcome?