Word: agnew
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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That, of course, is precisely what Agnew seems convinced the Justice Department is trying to do. At the same time that his attorneys asked Judge Hoffman to stop the grand jury proceedings, they also asked him to forbid Richardson, Beall and "all officials of the U.S. Department of Justice" from giving out any information on the case. If the Justice officials denied leaking material, the lawyers asked for a full hearing to "determine the truth." The rationale of Agnew's attorneys was that the department was involved in a plot "to drive the Vice President from office...
Until those harsh accusations were filed with the judge, Richardson had kept his own counsel on charges from Agnew's office that he was out to get the Vice President. The situation had its private delicacies as well as formal proprieties, since Agnew and Richard son are old antagonists. Agnew followers have never forgiven Richardson for using his voice in the Massachusetts delegation at the 1968 Republican Convention in order to prevent the Vice President's unanimous nomination. But with the Agnew attack a matter of record, Richardson lashed back. Agnew's charges, he said, were "patently ridiculous...
...publicly assailing Henry E. Petersen as the key figure in a plot to ruin him, Spiro Agnew is taking on a formidable opponent. A savvy bureaucratic infighter who has risen higher in the Justice Department than any other civil service employee, Petersen has many influential defenders in Washington. He is the plain speaking, rugged Chief of the Criminal Division, whose engagingly blunt testimony before the Senate Watergate committee won the respect of millions of television viewers...
There are, nevertheless, serious flaws in Petersen's record, which lend substance to some of Agnew's complaints against him. He was indeed, as Agnew said, a key figure in the Justice Department's mishandling of wiretap authorizations that has jeopardized more than 300 cases against organized crime, involving possibly 1,000 defendants (TIME, March 27, 1972). As an aide to Will Wilson, then Chief...
...Agnew is also at least partly right in his contention that Petersen mishandled Watergate. He apparently did work closely with ousted Presidential Counsel John W. Dean on the case, and Dean later admitted being part of the coverup. The original investigation failed to turn up evidence of who had authorized the wiretapping and how it was financed, partly because Petersen refused to pursue leads involving $89,000 in suspect Nixon campaign funds. Petersen relied on the testimony of the Nixon re-election committee's Jeb Stuart Magruder at the trial of the original defendants, even though the committee treasurer...