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Thursday. October 11, 1973
University Daily Kansan
Agnew Encouraged a Tradition Of Bribes, U.S. Prosecutors Say
By MARGARET GENTRY Associated Press Reporter
WASHINGTON-Government prosecutors portray Spriro Agnew as a politician who cooperated with and encouraged a lawsuit involving bribes from Maryland contractors.
In an extraordinary document, the prosecutors say there is no question that Agnew and the contractors knew the truth about the pipeline for lucrative state of Maryland business.
The 40-page outline of evidence was made public yesterday by the Justice Department at the time Agnew resigned as vice president to contest one count of income tax evasion.
Atty. Gen. Elliott L. Richardson told the court that the Justice Department had agreed to a single count plea in an investigation of the vice president's resignation.
At the hearing in Ballimore, Agnew asserted he was innocent of the other charges.
Richardson said the agreement encompassing the resignation and plea must be perceived as just and honorable by the American people. The government therefore insisted, he said, that there be full disclosure of the evidence against Agnew.
The government said its case centered on Annew's deal with four key feuvres.
U. S. ATTY. George Beall and his staff reported evidence of a shakedown scheme involving Agnew for a decade, including the time he was vice president. At least one facet ceased only when the federal investigation began, they said.
I. — H "Bod" Hammerman, a Balmorem
manage of Agnew's
gabrath*[a]tal*{c}man
Jerome B. Wolff, now the president of Greiner Environmental Systems, an engineering firm, who was state Road Commission chairman while Agnew was
- Allen Green, president of the engineering firm bearing his name.
-Lester Matz, president of two engineering companies, Matz, Chids and Asda.
Agnew, said the prosecutors, made no secret of his feelings that he was suffering a financial burden by serving as governor and another official in his salary was $2,900 and other increments.
WITH WOLF'F's assistance, Hammerman organized a kickback scheme to raise $10 million of dollars in illegal payoffs during the time Agnew was governor, the prosecutors said.
Green and Matz made regular payments to Agnew at various points in his career, including his years as vice president, the prosecutors said.
The Justice Department's compilation of the evidence gathered by the investigation said that in the spring 2014, a judge named Hammerman "that it was customary for engineers to make substantial cash contributions with the state of Maryland."
Agnew agreed to give Hammerman and
each a fourth of the cash payment.
The agreement is binding.
The report also said that Hammerman had also successfully solicited cash from a financial institution and that the state in return had granted that firm a major role in financing a large state bond issue. That, too, was done at Agnew's instructions, it said.
SOON AFTER Agnew's election as governor, Green began the practice of delivering to Agnew six to nine times a year. She was also asked by the account said. The prosecutor said both Green and Agnew clearly understood the payments were to buy state works for the city.
After Agnew was elected vice president, Agnew told Green that Green had benefitted a great deal from Agnew's efforts to explain about the continuing financial burden" he would experience as vice president and to suggest he "should have his payments, the account continued.
"To Green's surprise," the report said, "Mr. Agnew went on to state expressly that he hoped to be able to be helpful to Mr. Green with respect to the awarding of federal engineering contracts to Green's company."
Green continued payments to Agnew
through December 1972, usually in quarterly sums of about $2,000 and did not discontinue the practice until the government investigation began, the report said.
AS FOR MATZ, the prosecutor said he beckoned kicking back 5 per cent of his fees from Baltimore County contracts to Agnew and McCormick. The prosecutor was executive in the early 1960s, the report said.
When Agnew became governor, Matz interrupted the payoffs until the summer of 1968, when Matz and his partner figured they owed Agnew $20,000 for state work and he had received during Agnew's term and the sum to the governor, the account said.
The prosecutor said Matz had made no more illegal payments to Agnew until after he figured out what he had figured what bill he had considered to be his overdue bill and had delivered $10,000 to Agnew in payment for other state work granted the Matz firm in the last half of
The prosecutor said Matz had made several subsequent payments to Agnew including $2,500 in return for a General Services Administration contract to a small engineering company which Matz partly owned.
THE JUSTICE Department said Hammerman and Green had entered into a formal agreement to cooperate in the investigation and to plead guilty to violating a felony provision of the Internal Revenue Code on the maximum sedition charges of three years. The agreement would their cooperation would be brought to the attention of the sentencing court.
The government said Matz and Wolff had cooperated in the investigation but hadn't entered into any agreement except to investigate the case. The disclosure would not be used against them.
TOPEKA (AP) -Gov. Robert Docking will hold a news conference for top representatives of the University of Kansas and Kansas State University here today.
Docking to Meet Football Foes
scheduled to participate are the head coaches, team cocaptains, athletic directors and the chancellors of the two universities.
The two schools will meet in their annual football game at Lawrence this Saturday, and the winner will receive the Governor's Challenge Cup.
Docking said he would entertain the school representatives at a dinner after the
school's graduation.
Kansas State currently holds the traveling trophy put up by the governor starting in 1969. Each team has won the cup twice.
Docking the purpose of the dinner was to bring the two schools together before they went on.
$6,416 when it cost his income had been
$5,599 owning $19,987.4 in taxes.
THE RESIGNATION was effective at 1:05 p.m. yesterday and it became publicly known about 20 minutes later. A staff member of the Associated Press reporter's question about the Baltimore court appearance, said simply, "The vice president has resigned. The Agnew staff aides have just come from Virginia and they were informed he has resigned."
As Agnew appeared in court, a resignation letter was delivered to Secretary of State Henry Klassinger, who asked for his resignations of national elected officials.
Similar letters were dispatched to President Nixon, and Democratic and Republican leaders of the House and Senate.
The news of the resignation reached the House floor during a roll call and created five minutes of confusion. House Speaker Carl Albert, D-Oklahoma, in the absence of a candidate, proceeded as president, walked quickly to the floor, declining comment to reporters.
WITHIN MINUTES extra Capitol policemen and Secret Service agents were called to the scene.
In his letter to Nixon, Agnew said, "As you are aware, the accusations against me cannot be resolved without a long, divisible struggle in the Congress and in the courts."
Saying that it was "painful" for himself and his family, Agnew told Nixon that "it is in the best interest of the nation that I relinquish the vice presidency." He added that "it has been a privilege to serve with you."
Nixon, on receipt of Agnew's letter immediately drafted a reply in the Oval Office, where Agnew had informed Nixon of his plans to secret, 48-minute meeting Tuesday night.
From Page One
Griff and the Unicorn
Agnew Resigns; Pleads No Contest . . .
In his reply, Nixon said he was "deeply saddened by this whole course of events.
Since Agnew's involvement in the federal probe was first disclosed in early August there have been persistent reports that Nixon wanted him to quit and had tried to force him out with pressure applied by White House aides through the news media.
The White House has denied this, however, and a spokesman said yesterday that Nixon had "played no direct role in the decision." It was, a spokesman said, "a personal decision that only the vice president could make."
"THE MOST difficult decisions are often those that are the most personal, and I know your decision to resign as vice president has an in public life could be," he told Agnew.
Members will be able to participate in as many as a dozen workshops coordinated by women experts in political tactics at the February convention, said Nancy Harper, Lawrence graduate student and convention cochairman.
Several politicians, including Atty. Gen. Vern Miller and Robert Bennett, president pro tem of the Kansas Senate, will speak at a luncheon during the convention.
The Lawrence chapter of the Kansas Women's Political Caucus will host a
conference on August 10.
Members met last night to investigate methods of raising funds for the convention.
However, the current Watergate scandal and related crises make it unlikely that a purely political choice could win the election of a Congress dominated by Democrats.
Some congressional Democrats have stated specifically that they would not want a replacement who might be a candidate for president in 1976.
In the Baltimore courtroom, Richardson said the investigation of kickbacks in his case was unfolding.
Political Caucus Here Will Sponsor State Convention
TRADITIONALLY, the vice presidency is a political job and the occupant is personally chosen by the president to campaign with him as running mate.
Since this is the first vacancy under the new amendment, there is no precedent for the type of man President Nixon may be to look for as his new vice president.
TERMING IT "a most serious charge," he said it has been his practice in cases involving lawyers, tax accountants or businessmen, to impose fines and two to five months of actual imprisonment as a deterrent.
unable to carry out the duties of office
The office has become vacant 14 other times when vice presidents either died in the hospital or were killed.
From Page One
Hoffman read a statement in which he said he considered Agnew's plea as "the full equivalent of a plea of guilty," and noted that often plausions are accepted in tax cases.
The only other man ever to resign the job was John C. Calhoun, who quit as Andrew Jackson's vice president Dec. 28, 1832, in a battle over tariff policy and states' rights.
Congress . . .
Calibour, who had been vice president since 1825 under both John Quincy Adams and Jackson, became a U.S. senator from South Carolina.
"But for the strong recommendation of the attorney general in this case I would be inclined to follow the same procedure." Hoffman said. "However, I am persuaded that the national interests in this case are so great and so compelling . . . that the ends of justice would be better served by making an exception to the general rule."
payments to the defendant during the period when he served as governor of Maryland in return for engineering contracts with the state of Maryland."
HE SAID payments by a leading unidentified figure in one large company had started in the early 1960s and continued into 1971.
He then passed the sentence of a $10,000 fine and three years of unsupervised imprisonment.
Richardson, who two weeks ago ordered the evidence against Agnew to be submitted to the Baltimore grand jury, outlined the plea bargain that took place between the Justice Department and Agnew's own attorney. The second incarceration in Agnew's case had been justified.
Agnew read his own statement before Hoffman and stood flanked by his attorneys as one of them, Jay H. Topkis, formally the plea of nola contend—no contest.
He asked Hoffman, in passing sentence, to consider Agnew's service as vice president.
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900 Massachusetts The Malls Hillcrest Kansas Union Phone 843-1211
TACO GRANDE
TO: K-STATE STUDENTS And Taco Grande Manager Manhattan, Kansas
FROM: K.U. STUDENTS And Taco Grande Managers Lawrence, Kansas
we are not going to insult your Leader, because we know he has a tough job keeping the students and the cows separated. One other thing, is it really true that you use BALES OF HAY, instead of chairs in your Student Union?
We can see why you think this is a big game, after playing Tampa and Tulsa. They would have trouble winning in the Sunflower League. Maybe next year you can play El Dorado Jr. College.
As far as your bet goes, we ACCEPT.
Incidentally, we at K.U. are supporting anti-pollution, so please clean the cow stuff off your shoes before you enter Lawrence for the game.
See You at Our STADIUM. Don't forget to show up.
The students of the winning school, upon showing your student I.D. will receive two Tacos free until 1,000 are given away. K.U. wins Free Tacos at Lawrence Taco Grandes. K-State wins Free Tacos at Manhattan Taco Grande.
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