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county administrative officer, mho-later testified that he was the bagman for the indicted—and convicted—Dale Anderson, ‘who succeeded Mr. Agnew as county exec- utive. And it had led finally to the investi- gation of Mr. Agnew himself. The case reached its climax—with Mr. Agnew thundering denunciations of the presecutors, once it became known that «he, too, was under investigation, and pro- claiming his determination to fight to the end~—as the Watergate scandal was begin- ning to engulf President Nixon, for whom _ » Mr. Agnew had spent more than four years as an alliterative hatchet man, de- - nouncing the many Nixon-Agnew “ene- mies.” When the fateful moment arrived, El- -liot L. Richardson, then U.S. Attorney General, appeared in court for the govern- ment in the Agnew case, He had opposed the demands by the Maryland prosecutors i that Mr. Agnew be jailed as an example to other public officiais in favor of an expe- « dient resolution that would most rapidly ‘get the man out of his place “a heartbeat away” from thé presidency. « Inhis statement to Judge Hoffman ask- ‘ing that Mr. Agnew not be imprisoned, Mr. ' Richardson said the goveruitent' migit . ’ have insisted on pressing forward with an , indictment charging Mr. Agnew with brib- ery and extortion. “To have done this, however, would have been likely to inflict upon the nation serious and permanent scars,” he said. . ” Mr. Agnew, on the other hand, despite agreeing to accept the felony conviction and the public disclosure of the govern- ment's evidence against him, has since _ proclaimed that it was all lies and that he was innocent of any wrongdoing, (The government’s evidence was detailed by four men who were part of the kickback , Scheme, either sharing in the proceeds or . j baying.) 2 04 The men who provided the information were Mr. Wolff, the former chairman- director of the State Roads Commission, cand Mr, Hammerman, a Baltimore mort- * gage banker, who said they collected and .Shared in the pay-offs, along with two en- gineers, Lester Matz and Allen Green, who said they paid off Mr. Agnew, including in ; the vice presidential office. i Mr. Agnew made a major disclaiming ’* effort recently during a round of televi- Sion appearances to promote his book, “The Canfield Decision,” a novel of politi- > cal intrigue and romance involving a vice _ president. "He said he wrote the novel because he was “too bitter” at the time to write his - Memoirs, on which he now says he hopes _ tobegin work this year. vw, . Mr. Agnew has continued to blame “ a maostobbis treubles on the press,ang.oe., nounced what he termed “Zionist influ- ences” in the media. One network host fell ~right inte the trap when he asked, appar- ently seriously, “Where did they (the press] go wrong, Mr. Agnew?” He also said that he would “probably ‘ not” choose a political career if he had the opportunity to relive his life, and that he, would not advise young people to go into politics. 4 Again he blamed the media for it, say- ing “it’s just open season on politicians.” In a subsequent interview, with George Baumann, of WJZ-TV, Baltimore, howev- er, Mr. Agnew said “the system”—which he was accused of exploiting—{is “cor- rupt,” and that big campaign contribu- tions are often given with strings at- tached, to give the contributors leverage later over the officials they help to elect. “T think I did something wrong because the whole system is wrong,” he conceded. Soon after his resignation, Mr. Agnew ~ - sold his mansion in Kenwood, a Washing- ton suburb, reportedly at a substantial profit because of improvements made at: government expense, and moved to a ‘large new housedustoutside Annapolis. He also founded, in a building off the Village Green in Crofton, a firm called Pathlite, Inc., which is apparently some type of consultant operation, because Mr. - Agnew scon reappeared on the interna- tional scene, primarily in dealings with Arab leaders he had met during his vice presidency, - ; Another reported immediate post-res- ignation venture was with a promoter, Walter J. Dilbeck, Jr., in a real estate ven- ture involving a Kentucky coal mine sale to Japanese interests and an attempt to in- terest Middle Eastern oif barons in invest _ ing in a large recreational community at Lake Barkley, in Kentucky. ae Mr. Dilbeck said in an interview in De- cember, 1974, with the Louisville Cour- ier-Journal that he expected Mr. Agnew . ‘to “make millions” from their parfuer- ships and that he was paying the former _ vice president $100,000 a year for four years. . However, two months later, in Febru- ary, 1975; the whole thing fell through in a welter of charges and counter-charges as Mr. Agnew announced that he was termi- nating the deal and that Mr. Dilbeck had defaulted on a final $25,000 installment of, his year’s salary. . __. Mr. Dilbeck, who pleaded innocent in May in Indianapolis to charges of filing false income tax returns, declared that fr. Agnew had exploited him. “I haven't eceived a dime from him and he’s taken 5,060-f2om me. I gave him ianerem “verybody knew he was broke When pe aunatehadmateeenaanemenetee . tal pullthnishdnencenabeennanudiderte | hiced him He got a lot of reatconnecuons out of this deal and I got the problems.” If Mr. Agnew was “broke,” as Mr. Dil- beck claimed, it did not show in the ‘former vice president’s living style, which remained as high as before his conviction. He continued to hob-nob with many of the friends he had made during his politica? hey-day, particularly Mr. Sinatra... - __ Last summer, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B'rith accused Mr. Agnew | of using for political purposes Education for Democracy, a tax-exempt educational foundation he took over in November,- 2, - . Mr. Agnew denied that the foundation Was a political organization, but Larence . Peirez, the league’s civil rights chairman, declared, “What Agnew continues to spew _ out are his usual twisted half-truths—pro- Arab, anti-Israeli, anti-news media.” There have been reports lately, howev- er, that Mr. Agnew has been making over- .tures to American Jewish leaders in an ef- fort to placate them and somehow ‘con- vince them that, once again, it was all a - Mistake, | wee ~ Other threads of the Agnew case are still hanging on, three years after the ex. plosive moment of conviction: . ¢ Mr. Hammerman, the wealthy mort- gage banker who admitted to acting as° Mr. Agnew’s bagman during his governor- { ship, is still awaiting court action on his guilty plea to a tax charge. A federal ape peals court overturned his 18-month sen- tence on grounds that it violated Mr. Ham- | merman’s plea bargain, but the plea itself Still remains to be acted upon. Mr. Green‘ did not appeal and served- | part of his one-year sentence. ¢ Mr. Wolff and Mr. Matz lost their at- tempts to use the federal grants of im- munity from prosecution they received— in exchange for their testimony against Anderson—to prevent the State Board of Registration for Professiona} Engineers and Land Surveyors from disciplining them. That discipline, which could include evocation of their licenses, is still pend- ~ ing, . \ © On November 8, J. Walter Jones, the wealthy Baltimore and Annapolis real es- tate developer and banker who was de- scribed in court by a prosecutor as “Age new’s bagman,” is scheduled to £0 on trial before Judge-R. Dorsey Watkins, in U.S, District Court, on charges that he con-- Spired and extorted a $10,000 campaign contribution from the Singer Company on a promise that the firm would receive government contracts through Mr. Ag Sreamanecammeven- ae? new's influence,