Bag Man

<b><i>NEW YORK TIMES </i>BESTSELLER &#149; The knockdown drag-out untold story of the <i>other</i> scandal that rocked Nixon&#146;s White House&#160;and reset the rules for crooked presidents to come&#151;with new reporting that expands on Rachel Maddow&#146;s Peabody Award&#150;nominated podcast</b><br><b><br>&#147;Both a thriller and a history book <i>Bag Man</i> is a triumph of storytelling.&#148;&#151;Preet Bharara <i>New York Times</i> bestselling author of</b> <b><i>Doing Justice</i></b> <b>and host of the&#160;podcast <i>Stay Tuned with Preet</i></b> <br><br> Is it possible for a sitting vice president to direct a vast criminal enterprise within the halls of the White House? To have one of the most brazen corruption scandals in American history play out while nobody&#146;s paying attention? And for that scandal to be all but forgotten decades later?<br><br> The year was 1973 and Spiro T. Agnew the former governor of Maryland was Richard Nixon&#146;s second-in-command. Long on firebrand rhetoric and short on political experience Agnew had carried out a bribery and extortion ring in office for years when&#151;at the height of Watergate&#151;three young federal prosecutors discovered his crimes and launched a mission to take him down before it was too late before Nixon&#146;s impending downfall elevated Agnew to the presidency. The self-described &#147;counterpuncher&#148; vice president did everything he could to bury their investigation: dismissing it as a &#147;witch hunt&#148; riling up his partisan base making the press the enemy and with a crumbling circle of loyalists scheming to obstruct justice in order to survive.<br><br> In this blockbuster account Rachel Maddow and Michael Yarvitz detail the investigation that exposed Agnew&#146;s crimes the attempts at a cover-up&#151;which involved future president George H. W. Bush&#151;and the backroom bargain that forced Agnew&#146;s resignation but also spared him years in federal prison. Based on the award-winning hit podcast <i>Bag Man</i> expands and deepens the story of Spiro Agnew&#146;s scandal and its lasting influence on our politics our media and our understanding of what it takes to confront a criminal in the White House.