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One thing was certain: the President and the Vice President of the U.S. were dealing with one another in a spirit of high wariness. In response to repeated questioning from newsmen, White House officials declined to issue an unequivocal statement of presidential support for Agnew—the sort that Agnew has recently been asked to make, and has made, on behalf of Nixon. The most that Deputy White House Press Secretary Gerald Warren could produce was a lame assurance that there was "no reason for the President to change his attitude about the Vice President." Agnew claimed that he had received private reassurances from Nixon in a 1¾-hour session with the President —their first one-to-one meeting in more than three months. But he stressed that "the office of Vice President is an important enough one that the man has to stand on his own feet."
Both men are in tricky legal territory. Agnew has been "invited" to turn over his financial records from 1967 to the present (in addition, authorities subpoenaed his records as Governor of Maryland). Agnew said that he was willing to submit personal material—as well as "my own body, for interrogation" —"at the appropriate time, in the appropriate way, to the appropriate parties." However, he said, his attorneys had not yet decided on precisely what would be appropriate.
Agnew was accorded a delay (at least until late this week) on the deadline originally specified for his submission of evidence, and it is possible that the White House is trying to keep him from making any legal move that would undercut Nixon's extensive claims of Executive privilege.
Agnew said that he first became aware of his involvement in the probe last February, when he heard rumors on "the cocktail circuit" that his name had been mentioned by Marylanders being questioned by George Beall, the tough young (35) Republican serving as U.S. Attorney in the Vice President's home state.
After hearing further feedback suggesting that he was trying to put an end to the investigation, Agnew said, he hired Washington Lawyer Judah Best, ordering him to make contact with Beall and assure him that the Vice President had no intention of interfering in the case. On Aug. 1, Beall formally notified the Vice President, with the approval of Attorney General Elliot Richardson, that he was under investigation by the grand jury.
The investigation was started by Beall in January. The brother of Maryland Senator J. Glenn Beall Jr. and a member of a distinguished political family, the prosecutor had pursued an activist course since his appointment by President Nixon in 1970. He vigorously harried owners of clip joints along "the Block," Baltimore's notorious bar district, and helped prepare the case against Arthur Bremer, now serving a 63-year sentence for the attempted assassination of George Wallace.
Maryland's always prodigious political yarn spinners, who gather over piquant crab imperial at Baltimore's Chesapeake Inn or Karson's, have come up with any number of secret motives behind Beall's latest probe. For one thing, Agnew kept Beall on a string for some time before finally acquiescing in his appointment, apparently in retaliation for Beall's refusal to give Agnew carte blanche with his 1968 G.O.P. Convention vote.