Word: agnew
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Chin up, eyes level, voice resonant with righteous indignation, Spiro Agnew sent his tormentors a message last week: "I am innocent of the charges against me. I will not resign if indicted, I will not resign if indicted!" His audience, a national convention of Republican women in Los Angeles, erupted in wild applause, cheering and cries of "Right on!," and some even danced on tables. The message, carried nationwide on TV, got across: any reports that the Vice President of the U.S. was about to quit under fire were greatly exaggerated...
Fire Target. Far from quitting, Agnew was attacking more vigorously than ever, and his target was no less than the Justice Department of his own Administration and, by implication, Republican Attorney General Elliot Richardson and even Republican President Richard Nixon. The specific target of his fire was Henry Petersen, chief of the Justice Department's criminal division, who is supervising the investigation of Agnew's conduct while a Maryland official (see box following page). But Agnew, as part of the Nixon Administration, knows better than most that Petersen is hardly a sovereign agent, that Richardson by his own admission...
...past several months," said Agnew, "I've been living in purgatory. I have found myself the recipient of undefined, unclear, unattributed accusations that have surfaced in the largest and most widely circulated organs in our communications media." The sources of those leaks, said the Vice President, were in the Justice Department and, specifically, in the person of Petersen: "The conduct of high individuals in the Department of Justice, particularly the conduct of the chief of the criminal-investigations division, is unprofessional and malicious and outrageous...
...should a Republican Department of Justice and Republican prosecutors be out to get him? Agnew gave this answer: "Individuals in the upper echelons of the Department of Justice have been severely stung by their ineptness in their prosecution of the Watergate case. They have been severely stung that the President and the Attorney General have found it necessary to appoint a special prosecutor, and they are trying to recoup their reputations at my expense. I'm a big trophy. Well, I'm not going to fall down and be his [Petersen's] victim, I can assure you." He added that...
...press conference yesterday, President Nixon said that he has been briefed on the investigation of the vice president and that the allegations against Agnew "are serious and not frivolous...