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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Ousted Vp Spiro Agnew Is Dead At 77

Associated Press

Spiro T. Agnew, who relished lashing out at the media, anti-war protesters and liberals before he was forced to resign as Richard Nixon’s vice president in a tax-evasion scandal, died Tuesday. He was 77.

Agnew was taken to Atlantic General Hospital in Berlin on Tuesday. Officials there and at the Ullrich Funeral Home in neighboring Berlin would not release any information about the cause of death.

Agnew, the little-known governor of Maryland when Nixon picked him as his running mate in 1968, made a name for himself with his die-hard conservatism and colorful phraseology.

His most famous lines came in a 1970 speech, when he attacked the media as “nattering nabobs of negativism” and “the hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.”

But five years after his election, Agnew abruptly announced his resignation, then walked into a federal courtroom in Baltimore and pleaded no contest to one count of income tax evasion.

He withdrew from political life from then on, working quietly as a businessman and nursing his anger for 20 years over his feeling that Nixon had sacrificed him in an effort to survive the Watergate scandal.

He was only the second vice president to resign the office and the first to be forced out by legal troubles. John C. Calhoun, who had been at political odds with President Andrew Jackson, resigned in December 1832 to become a senator from South Carolina.

In court, Agnew did not contest the government charge that he “willfully” evaded paying $13,551.47 in federal income taxes in 1967. Judge Walter E. Hoffman fined him $10,000 and sentenced him to three years’ unsupervised probation.

But from that day on, Agnew denied all allegations in the government case, including statements that he accepted cash kickbacks from contractors over 10 years while he was a county executive, Maryland governor and vice president.

In a national television address Oct. 15, 1973, five days after his resignation, Agnew said he resigned to restore “unimpaired confidence and implicit trust” in the vice presidency.

He described his accusers as “self-confessed bribe brokers” and said he had done no wrong.

When he was named as Nixon’s running-mate - a “bolt out of the blue,” he called it - Agnew acknowledged that his name was not a household word. But his aggressive campaigning and hard-line statements quickly changed that.

He attracted wide attention with his law-and-order line and harsh ridicule of liberals and Vietnam War protesters, who he said did not speak for the “silent majority.”

He derided opponents of the war as “an effete corps of impudent snobs” and labeled national television commentators “a tiny fraternity of privileged men elected by no one and enjoying a monopoly sanctioned and licensed by the government.”

Student protesters, he said, “have never done a productive thing in their lives. They take their tactics from Fidel Castro and their money from daddy.”

While many of his controversial comments were planned, some were not. He was criticized as insensitive and even racist after using racial epithets. And at one point in the campaign, he canceled a trip to an inner-city ghetto, saying “When you’ve seen one slum, you’ve seen them all.”

Still, his career had elements of the classic American success story.

He was born Nov. 9, 1918, in suburban Baltimore, the son of a Greek immigrant father. He became a lawyer and moved into politics, winning his first election to become executive of Baltimore County in 1962.

In 1966, he was elected governor of Maryland, only the fifth Republican in 180 years to be elected governor of the heavily Democratic state.

Agnew’s response to the April 1968 riots in Baltimore following the death of Martin Luther King proved to be a watershed in his career, almost immediately changing his image from liberal Republican to outspoken conservative.

As violence broke out, he summoned black leaders to his office and lectured them sternly for keeping silent while militants ignited crowds to action. The lecture enraged his listeners, many of whom walked out on it. But it earned him praise from conservatives and attracted the attention of Nixon and his advisers, leading to his nomination that summer.

After leaving office, Agnew divided his time between homes in Rancho Mirage, Calif., and Ocean City, Md., working as a broker or middleman in deals for an international clientele.

Agnew was later disbarred by the Maryland Court of Appeals, which described him as “morally obtuse,” and in 1981 was ordered to pay $268,482 to the state to cover the kickbacks and interest.

Only very rarely did he appear on a television show or grant an interview. He continued to press his case that he was innocent in his book, “Go Quietly … or Else,” published in 1980.

Agnew said he was railroaded out of office by Nixon, who, beset by the Watergate scandal, “naively believed that by throwing me to the wolves, he had appeased his enemies.”

When Nixon died in 1994, Agnew said he came to the funeral because “I decided after 20 years of resentment to put it all aside.” He said he hadn’t talked to Nixon since the day he resigned, refusing to take several calls from Nixon because “I felt totally abandoned.”

He is survived by his wife, Judy, and their son and three daughters.