Bag Man by Rachel Maddow and Michael Yarvitz: book review

Bag Man: The Wild Crimes, Audacious Cover-Up, and Spectacular Downfall of a Brazen Crook in the White House (2020) is an expose of Spiro Agnew (1918-1996), Richard Nixon’s Vice President from 1969-1973. Ninety percent of the book is about the events that culminated in the year 1973.

Amid the Watergate Scandal in American politics, there was another hidden scandal – the alleged corruption of the Vice President during his time in the White House: bribery and extortion.

Three young federal prosectors discovered Agnew’s crimes and set about to expose him before he got the chance to become president, if something happened to the ailing Nixon. The three assistant US Attorneys were: Barney Skolnik, Tim Baker, and Ron Liebman.

The Bag Man of the book’s title is not Agnew, but William E. Fornoff (1917-1988), a Baltimore County official, the middleman in funneling bribes from private contractors to Dale Anderson (1916-1996), a Maryland politician. Fornoff admitted that Agnew had accepted payoffs – kickbacks – in the process. In 1974, Anderson was convicted of 32 counts of extortion, tax evasion, and conspiracy.

Spiro Theodore Agnew (1918-1996) tried to cover up the investigation and entered into negotiations for a plea bargain.

The Bag Man is a well-written, easy-to-read book that gives a blow-by-blow account of the spectacular downfall of Spiro Agnew.

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MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, foreign aid audits and evaluations, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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