From my Rating the Alternate Presidents
Spiro T Agnew
Rating: Failure
Party: Republican
Time in Office: April 11, 1972 - October 10, 1973.
Two scandals dominate the legacy of President Spiro T Agnew. After the hearings of the House Judiciary Committee established the credibility of reports that as Baltimore County Executive and Governor of Maryland, Agnew had accepted kick backs and neglected to pay taxes on the bribes, Agnew was forced to resign or face certain impeachment and removal. After he left office, the White House tapes that Agnew had unsuccessfully tried to conceal, showed that he had ordered the CIA to help cover up the Watergate Break burglary. Association with Agnew doomed the political fortunes of his successor Nelson Rockefeller, whose pardon of Agnew proved unpopular.
Agnew's two felonies overshadow the foreign policies triumphs of his administration: The SALT I treaty, that Agnew signed in Moscow in june 1972 and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam. Agnew gets very little credit for either accomplishment. Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon are seen as the primary architects of the Treaty and Kissinger negotiated the cease fire in Vietnam that allowed the American forces to withdraw. Even Kissinger no longer wins praise for the false end of the Vietnam war. The cease fire did not last long and the renewed war led to the defeat of American ally South Vietnam.
There was also another notable ineffective initiative of the Agnew administration, the so called Berger Commission. This blue ribbon panel. chaired by Chief Justice Warren Berger, that investigated the assassination of President Richard Nixon found determined critics of its findings that assassin Arthur Bremer acted alone. Just as in the case of the murder of John Kennedy lack of evidence did not stop conspiracy theorists. Certain cynics have trouble with the concept that angry pathetic losers like Bremer and Lee Harvey Oswald can change history without help.