In the Secret Service

by Jerry Parr

  By the end of Election Day, November 5, Humphrey knew it was over. He had made a valiant effort. He had only 19 percent of the popular vote when the convention ended, but, always positive, he had believed he could win. Although Nixon won decisively in the electoral college, 301 to 191, the popular vote was much closer: 43.4 percent for Nixon to Humphrey’s 42.7 percent. Wallace received forty-six electoral votes, all in the Deep South.

  I was with Humphrey in 1964 when he won the vice presidency, and four years later I saw his pain at losing to Nixon. As we left the Minneapolis hotel to helicopter to Waverly, Muriel Humphrey was weeping. The vice president put his arm around her. “I gave it my all,” he said. “The American people have spoken. We don’t need to talk about it anymore.”

  Mrs. Humphrey whispered to Hal Thomas, perhaps thinking of Bobby Kennedy, “Well, at least now he’ll live.”

  I had observed the full gamut of emotions in a man who won, who suffered by winning (because he had to support a war he really opposed), and who suffered by losing. I would see the pain of losing again, with Vice President Spiro Agnew as he resigned and with President Jimmy Carter when he lost to Reagan. Regardless of my own political views, I couldn’t help absorbing some of the pain of those who lost.

  Humphrey wanted to go to Waverly to meet a friendly hometown press and lick his wounds. But when we disembarked the helicopter, nobody was there. Instead sat five hundred empty seats where media would have been. The cheering had turned to silence. Humphrey was suddenly as interesting as yesterday’s breakfast. He had become the invisible man.

  But then a wonderful thing happened. A little blonde girl with Down syndrome came running toward him, arms wide. “Papa! Papa!” With a huge smile Humphrey picked up Vicky, his beloved granddaughter, swung her around, and hugged her tight. He was home.

  CHAPTER 6

  TWO DEATHS

  The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

  HENRY DAVID THOREAU, Walden

  [44]1968–1973

  The vice president’s limousine sped toward Baltimore on a sunny October afternoon, bound on a sad mission, each of the occupants lost in his own thoughts. Spiro T. Agnew and his chief of staff, Art Sohmer, rode in the rear; I sat in the front passenger seat next to Agent Billy “Grits” Williams, the driver. We were headed toward a secret destination, the United States District Courthouse in Baltimore, Maryland, where Agnew would make history, but not in the way he’d have wished.[45]

  Only a handful of people—Sohmer; President Nixon; my boss, Sam Sulliman; Agnew’s lawyer; and I—knew this day, October 10, 1973, would be the vice president’s last day in office.[46] Not even Mrs. Agnew knew. When Sulliman confided in me around eight o’clock that morning, I could hardly believe the news.

  “Jerry, the vice president is going to resign today.” Sam’s voice broke. “He’s going to plead no contest to one charge of income tax evasion. He begged us not to tell anyone, not even our own headquarters, until it’s all over. I said I’d keep the secret. Will you?” In shock, I agreed.

  As soon as the votes were counted in 1968, I had moved over to the new vice president, Spiro T. Agnew. The transfer became permanent on January 20, when he was sworn in. The reduction in stress from the Humphrey days was dramatic, like surfacing after a long deep-sea dive. We now had forty-eight agents to do what twenty-seven had previously been doing. Except for some continuing foreign trips, my overtime dropped way down. And, though I would make three more trips to Vietnam, peace talks were ongoing and the war appeared to be winding down. The violence at home seemed to have spent itself at the Democratic Convention, and the demonstrators we now met were usually peaceful, though protest activity did pick up after April 30, 1970, when Nixon extended the war into Cambodia. But it was nothing like the Humphrey years had been. And when the Agnews wanted to leave Washington, they traveled three hours away by car to their condo in Ocean City, Maryland, not to Minnesota.

  Although I continued to work shifts, in April 1969 I was promoted to shift leader (assistant to the special agent in charge, or ATSAIC), a management position. I was in terrific company: the other leaders were Clint Hill, Sam Sulliman, and John Simpson. Clint had been SAIC of PPD for Johnson, Simpson would become director of the Secret Service, and Sam would take over as SAIC of the Agnew detail when I was deputy. I learned from each of them.

  Now I was able to enjoy family time again. I enjoyed it so much that, on October 3, 1970, our third daughter, Trish, was born. In fact, eleven agents who moved from Humphrey to Agnew had babies in the fall of 1970. I was proud to say that Trish was the first!

  From November 30, 1970, to December 9, 1972, I served as a leader of the brand-new Foreign Dignitary Protective Division, where I would serve two terms. I went there as Assistant SAIC. After the Nixon-Agnew reelection in 1972 I returned to Agnew and rose to Deputy SAIC of VPPD on July 22, 1973, second in command under SAIC Sam Sulliman.

  When the Watergate break-in of Democratic headquarters surfaced during the ’72 election, it seemed like a minor burglary by minor criminals, a blip on the election scene. Nixon defeated Senator George McGovern by a wide margin, and Agnew stayed on.

  During Agnew’s first four years, the VPPD agents’ time had been relatively uneventful. On January 23, 1973, Nixon announced a cease-fire between North Vietnam and the United States, and we visited Southeast Asia for the last time: Singapore, Saigon, Manila. South Vietnam had not yet surrendered, but the writing was on the wall. As far as the United States was concerned, the war was over. No more protesters to fight.

  But a new stew of domestic dissent was brewing. The Watergate scandal had not gone away—it was growing in intensity. On May 17, 1973, the Senate began to hold televised hearings that ran until August 7. The public was mesmerized at first, then infuriated as more and more “dirty tricks” designed to subvert the election were revealed. Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein wrote stories tying funding for the break-in to Republican campaign funds—and the trail led to US Attorney General John Mitchell, who would eventually serve nineteen months in prison. The president and his inner staff were spending all their time doing damage control. President Nixon himself was not yet implicated but was under constant and increasing pressure.

  Then, beginning August 9, 1973, the curtain began to descend on Spiro “Ted” Agnew. Unrelated to Watergate, reports surfaced that the Justice Department was investigating corruption in Maryland that might involve the vice president’s prior tenure as governor. News stories hinted at kickbacks from state contractors, which Agnew vehemently denied. Like the other guys on the detail, I believed him. But a steady stream of leaks continued to wound his image like death by a thousand cuts. There was no indictment, no talk of impeachment, just daily damaging leaks. Cries for Agnew’s political hide grew more strident day after day.

  The staff suspected the leaks came from a White House eager to distract attention from Watergate. Agnew refused to resign and denied everything.

  Conservatives including Senator Goldwater rushed to Agnew’s defense, but he had a lot of enemies.[47] He loved to play with words and relished inventing comical names for groups he deemed too liberal. He called the press “nattering nabobs of negativism.” Supporters of women’s liberation were “radiclibs.” Academics were “pointy-headed intellectuals.” Democrats he deemed soft on demonstrators were “pusillanimous pussyfooters.”

  Now the tables were turned. The press was staking out a deathwatch across from Agnew’s home in Kenwood. Mrs. Agnew couldn’t open the door to pick up the morning paper without seeing them. When I asked a female television news reporter why she was there every day, she said matter-of-factly, “We want to be first with the story when he either resigns or commits suicide.” Everywhere he went, he was hounded with shouted questions.

  Suffering showed on his now-haggard face. Already trim, we could see he was losing weight. As summer passed into autumn, I frequently heard sighs and groans coming from the backseat of the car; sometimes the soft sound
was Mrs. Agnew weeping as her husband tried to comfort her.

  We agents liked the Agnews personally. To a unique degree the vice president and his wife, Judy (whom we called “Mrs. A”), recognized our humanity and appreciated our service. They asked about our families and looked at photos of our kids. In late October 1970 the vice president took a vacation to Hawaii, and seeing the Air Force plane would essentially be empty, he and Mrs. A invited the agents to bring their wives along. That would be unheard of now, but it didn’t cost the government any extra money—we paid our wives’ expenses except for the flight—and seemed to all of us an incredibly generous gesture. Carolyn couldn’t leave our two-week-old baby behind, so she didn’t go, but she was disappointed.

  Mrs. A was completely unpretentious: she cooked the family’s meals, packed the vice president’s suitcase, did needlepoint. She called the agents “my boys,” and none of us seemed to mind. If it started to rain and one of us was standing post outside, she’d ask Sulliman to let us move into the carport. If we looked hungry, someone from the house would offer us a sandwich. She also reached out to our wives in a special way. She attended their luncheons. She visited women with new babies. If someone was in the hospital, she’d be there.

  One Christmas the Agnews even came to our home in Silver Spring. Carolyn and I hosted a party for the detail agents and their wives. Worried that the shift who would be working the vice president would have to miss the party, the Agnews asked if they could come as guests. Mrs. A held Trish; the vice president played the old piano in our still-unfinished basement, challenged the guys to a game of Ping-Pong, and admired “big sisters” Kim and Jennifer. The Agnews stayed until well after midnight. No reporters were in sight.

  To them we were people and not furniture that came with the job. So the other agents and I unconsciously did something I’d always warned against: we moved from professional, detached concern to personal affection for our protectees.

  Because we cared about their feelings, we also personally absorbed a lot of the family’s pain. One day in late summer Jack Kippenberger and I were driving the vice president from his home in Kenwood to the White House. Noting the press camped out across from the house as we started the car, Agnew said something like, “They want to put me in jail.”

  I thought a little humor might lighten the mood and suggested we agents could accompany him to prison. I joked, “Well, Mr. Vice President, we’ll find someone to smuggle us a hacksaw blade in a lemon meringue pie so we can get out.”

  He leaned forward on the seat so Jack and I both could clearly hear him. He swore and said, “That wasn’t funny!”

  But Jack, who was driving, couldn’t stifle his laughter. Then the vice president began to laugh. Then I burst into guffaws. We passed the reporters in a state of uproarious hilarity. I think it made Agnew’s day. He knew, even though we still did not believe, that jail was a real possibility.

  But in the car speeding toward Annapolis on October 10, 1973, there was no laughter. Desperate to stop the stories, Agnew’s lawyers had subpoenaed certain reporters and newspapers to force them to reveal their sources, and the subpoenaed parties moved to quash. The judge set a hearing in Baltimore on October 10 for lawyers’ oral argument on the motion. No one expected the vice president to attend.

  Agnew asked to be taken first to his office in the Executive Office Building, where I later learned he had arranged for letters of resignation to be hand delivered to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and to President Nixon.[48] Then we climbed into the car for the forty-mile drive from Washington to the Federal District Court in Baltimore.

  As we entered the courthouse, a handful of reporters, there to hear the subpoena arguments, turned in surprise when Agnew walked in. The wood-paneled, high-ceiling courtroom was only half full. Agnew joined his lawyers at the table on the defendant’s side. On the opposite side was the team of prosecutors from the Department of Justice, headed by Attorney General Elliot Richardson himself.

  “All rise,” said the clerk. We all stood as a black-robed, distinguished older gentleman entered and took his place behind the bench. Judge Walter E. Hoffman, sixty-six, was not familiar to the Baltimore crowd. Appointed by Eisenhower, he was finishing up a twelve-year term as Chief Judge of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. He had been brought in to prevent any appearance of a conflict of interest with the Maryland lawyers and potential witnesses involved.

  That’s when I learned the details. After months of flat denial, Agnew and the prosecutors had reached a plea agreement the night before, and the vice president had informed President Nixon around six o’clock in the evening that he would admit to one incident of failing to report income tax in 1967 while he was governor. However, Agnew would not plead guilty; the plea would be nolo contendere (no contest). He would deny everything else, and all the other charges would be dropped. Prosecutors would recommend probation without prison and a $10,000 fine. But Agnew would have to resign as vice president.

  There was a risk. Regardless of what the US Attorney recommended, the final sentence would be up to the judge.

  In the courtroom Attorney General Richardson alleged that if the vice president was indicted and brought to trial, the evidence would establish “a pattern of substantial cash payments [to Agnew] during the period when he served as governor and in return for engineering contracts with the state of Maryland.” However, Richardson indicated that with Agnew’s plea the Justice Department did not intend to press further charges.

  Hands trembling, Agnew then read from a prepared statement.[49] He began, “My decision to resign and enter a plea of nolo contendere rests on my firm belief that the public interest requires swift disposition of the problems which are facing me. . . . I am aware that witnesses are prepared to testify that I and my agents received payments from consulting engineers doing business with the state of Maryland during the period I was governor.”

  He then denied, with one exception, any assertions of illegal acts that might be made by government witnesses. His language was carefully crafted. Agnew did not deny receiving the payments; he denied that it was illegal to do so. He admitted that the persons who made the payments did receive state contracts and that he was aware of such awards. But he stressed that no contracts were awarded to incompetent contractors, and in most instances state contracts were awarded without any arrangement for a payment. He said, “I deny that the payments in any way influenced my official actions” and averred that he never enriched himself at the expense of the public trust.

  There was a sole exception: he admitted he received payments of $29,500 during 1967, “which were not expended for political purposes and . . . were income taxable to me in that year, and that I so knew.” To this count he pleaded nolo contendere.

  Agnew also mentioned what he felt was his real justification: “My acceptance of contributions was part of a long-established pattern of political fund-raising in the state.”[50] Agnew never apologized.

  Though “everybody does it” is a dubious ground for accepting bribes and kickbacks, subsequent reports proved Agnew’s “established pattern” language to be true. The Maryland governor’s salary in 1967 was $25,000, up from only $15,000 the year before. But the governor and his family were expected to live a lifestyle far above what would have been possible on that income. In setting the salary, the state legislators expected governors to augment their income from grateful citizens. In an interview with Ben Bradlee for the Center for the Study of Democracy published in fall 2006, award-winning Washington Post reporter Richard Cohen named eleven Maryland political officials who were convicted on corruption charges while he was covering Annapolis.[51]

  Judge Hoffman reluctantly accepted the agreed sentence; he said in open court that he would have imposed a prison sentence were it not for Attorney General Richardson’s personal intercession on Agnew’s behalf.

  Riding away from the courthouse, in the silence of the car, Agnew began to recite softly the speech from As You Like It,
by William Shakespeare:

  All the world’s a stage,

  And all the men and women merely players;

  They have their exits and their entrances;

  And one man in his time plays many parts. . . .[52]

  Agnew’s sad day was not over. The body of Roy Pollard, Agnew’s half brother, lay in a Baltimore funeral home waiting for Agnew to make arrangements. When the four-to-midnight shift showed up to relieve us, I was more than ready for my day to end.

  I felt shocked and disappointed. But, as had been the case with other wrongdoers in my life—my stepfather Jack, check forger Myrtle S. giving birth—my heart went out to Mr. Agnew. I reflected that life is paradoxical. Good people sometimes do bad things. That doesn’t make it okay. But the Bible tells us that God loved David, an adulterer and a murderer. Jesus loved prostitutes, Roman soldiers, even tax collectors who cheated the people. I’m not sure what Jesus meant when he warned, “Judge not, that ye be not judged,”[53] but as I get older I realize that life is not lived out in black and white but in the complexity of the gray.

  I learned that three people telephoned Agnew that evening: his longtime friend Frank Sinatra, who offered money to pay the fine; Billy Graham; and Governor Jimmy Carter, who knew Agnew from the Governors’ Conference. I don’t know what Graham and Carter said, but I can guess it was something about forgiveness, redemption, and second chances.

  The minute the news of Agnew’s resignation broke, Deputy Assistant Director Paul Rundle called me on the radio, furious. “Why didn’t you let Headquarters know what was going on?” he demanded. “We had to hear it on the news! Now we’re scrambling to get a team over to Carl Albert! Something could have happened!”