with, was encouraged by the in conjunction with the publication of my book, i ve taken every opportunity to speak out against the catastrophic u.s. policies regarding israel. i need desperately your financial support so that i can continue to fight. former vice president then asks the saudi crown prince to put $2 million in a secret swiss bank account for him from which agnew would live off the interest and it would all be untraceable to saudi arabia. quote, if your highness is willing to help me but this method is not suitable, i would be grateful for any idea that would give me about $200,000 a year for the next three years. i do so want to continue my fight against the zionist enemies who are destroying my once great nation. and here s my favorite part. this is the way that agnew signs off this letter to the saudi crown prince. he says, quote, my congratulations to your highness on the clear and courageous call
arabia and presidencies in trouble might be even more complicated than we previously understood because what disgraced vice president spiro agnew wanted from that desperate plea he was making to meet with the saudi crown prince that summer of 1980, what this disgraced former u.s. vice president was approaching saudi arabia about and asking for is sort of breathtaking, but we re going to show you. spiro agnew was writing to the saudi royal family to solicit their help, their financial support for him to lead a scorched earth propaganda campaign in the united states to expose the jews, to wage a political war on jews in america. no, really. the reason that spiro agnew sent that telegram asking for a meeting with the saudi crown prince is made clear in this draft of a letter that agnew wrote to the crown prince just a few weeks later. it s dated august 25th, 1980. your highness, at the request of
and the way that the history of it has been remembered since then is that that 1973 olc memo was written specifically with the richard nixon watergate problem in mind and it was a definitive look at whether a president can be indicted, and even in the context of watergate they believed that nixon really it was about agnew and specifically trying to get to an outcome where the answer would be, yeah, you can bring charges against agnew. what j.t. smith is saying here and, again, he was there when it was written, in the course of expressing the view that a vice president could be indicted, which the was the imperative of the moment, robert dixon opined on the president s ameenability. it just asserted that about the president in order to make the relevant case about the vice president. which is important about that history. it s also important in terms of how that memo became woven into what we currently understand as how the justice department works.
to jihad. the zionists have me in a most difficult position and i need help urgently without delay. with great respect and warm personal regards i am respectfully spiro t. agnew. the jihad congratulations reference appears to be a reference to the saudi crown prince publicly called for a holy war against israel. so congratulations on that from the american vice president. i mean, just to be clear, this is a former american vice president writing to a foreign government asking for their help in fighting jews in america. because the jews framed him and it s the jews who are destroying america and he ll lead the fight against the jews for the low, low price of $200,000 a year in secret funding from the saudi royal family. and on the one hand, okay, this what became of old spiro agnew after he was forced out of office. he became mired in legal battles and lawsuits and he was
because he was vice president. and that s where robert dixon came in because that fall as head of the olc it was dixon s job to figure out what exactly the justice department s policy on this, what the justice department s position on this question should be. can you indict a sitting vice president? i mean, this wasn t a theoretical concern at the time. there was a 40-count felony indictment against the vice president simmering on the proverbial stove in a u.s. attorney s office in maryland, ready to be served up at any time. was he in fact immune from such federal charges? could that indictment be filed against him? i mean legally they needed to know. also, practically. with nixon teetering because of the watergate, with the threat that the guy who would succeed nixon was a known and active criminal who had been taking bribes inside the white house, the attorney general elliot richardson needed to know if he could use at least the threat of being able to indict agnew in order to force