Word: agnew
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...department has no choice," a Justice official in Washington said. "At least three witnesses have told of delivering cash payoffs to Agnew. The evidence is so strong that the case must be taken to trial." A federal grand jury in Baltimore is expected to vote an indictment next month charging Agnew with, among other things, bribery and extortion...
Green and the Government's two other prime witnesses, Jerome Wolff and Lester Matz, both also engineering consultants and former Agnew associates, have told prosecutors that they delivered to Agnew personally cash kickbacks from their own firms and as many as a score of other state and federal contractors in Maryland. For example, Matz has claimed that on one occasion in 1971 he carried $2,500 right into the Vice President's private office in the Executive Office Building and handed it to Agnew, allegedly in return for Agnew's help in getting one of Matz...
Such gifts may be open to serious conflict-of-interest questions, but nothing about them necessarily involves the crimes for which Agnew has been told he is being investigated-extortion, bribery, tax evasion and conspiracy...
Thus the Government presumably has evidence that contractors' payments to Agnew were demanded in return for specific favors and were paid and collected in that spirit rather than as legitimate campaign funds. As for Agnew's offer to open his personal financial books, sources close to the case point out that cash payments used for campaign purposes probably would not find their way into Agnew's accounts...
What is puzzling to some investigators is the comparatively paltry amount of money involved. Justice Department officials have declined to provide an estimate of the total amount under investigation, but one of them says: "It's less than you'd think. Agnew wasn't greedy; he was quite cheap." Indeed, of the payments so far alleged, only a few exceeded $10,000, and many were between $2,000 and $2,500. In states where corruption thrives on a major-league scale - New Jersey, or Illinois, where a secretary of state died in 1970 with $800,000 stashed...