Bag Man: The Wild Crimes, Audacious Cover-Up, and Spectacular Downfall of a Brazen Crook in the White House

In 1971, as Nixon begins his reelection campaign, he sends Agnew on an 11-country “goodwill tour” meant to burnish the V.P.’s foreign policy credentials. Nixon, however, is horrified when sees television images of Agnew spending much of his time golfing. His annoyance over the golfing crystallizes all of his previous resentment of his vice president: “The laziness. The entitlement […]. If [Nixon] had behaved that way, he once said, ‘Ike [Dwight Eisenhower under whom Nixon served as V.P.] would have fired my ass’” (138). Even before the end of his first term, Nixon tries to find a plausible excuse to dump Agnew from the ticket. He and Haldeman run through a variety of options. They could find Agnew a cushy corporate job: “get somebody to buy CBS and let Agnew run it’” (139); or, they could appoint him to the Supreme Court. But these ideas are all nonstarters. Eventually, Nixon decides to freeze Agnew out of the inner circle, isolating him and minimizing the damage he can inflict. Still, despite his overwhelming election victory less than a year earlier, Watergate threatens to derail one of the most powerful presidencies in history.

Meanwhile, special prosecutor Archibald Cox closes in, suing in court to obtain all audio recordings pertaining to the Watergate investigation; and Martha Mitchell, wife of Nixon’s first Attorney General John Mitchell, tells the press that Nixon, despite his assertions to the contrary, “was aware of the whole goddamned thing” (144).