Final_Judgment

[378] Final Judgment 475
Having been in the center of the political upheavals that had torn
American apart in the decade following the assassination of John F.
Kennedy (in which James Angleton too played a part) Angleton, if
anybody, was truly "the man who knew too much."
No wonder—among other reasons—that William Colby forced
Angleton out of the CIA in 1974. Angleton's ouster from the CIA was
certainly a setback for Israel and its Mossad at a critical time, but Angleton
was old and sickly (perhaps even verging on clinical madness by some less
than friendly accounts) and he would have ultimately been forced into
retirement for this alone. Angleton, in the end, was an expendable
anachronism who, in his heyday, had served his Israeli allies well.
THE PLOT TO 'GET' AGNEW
There are other indications, too, that the Israeli connection played a
significant part in Watergate (and in subsequent related events that
followed). The Israeli connection can be traced in scandals that encircled
both Vice President Spiro Agnew and former Texas Gov. John Connally,
who had joined the Nixon administration as Treasury Secretary and who
was Nixon's first choice (even over Agnew) as a successor in 1976.
Part of the Watergate conspiracy against Nixon—a critical part, in fact—
was ensuring that Agnew was first removed from the vice presidency before
Nixon was toppled. And as it so happened, ironically, as Agnew pointed out
in his memoir, Go Quietly . . . Or Else, if Nixon had stood firm and backed
Agnew when Agnew himself came under fire, Nixon himself may not have
been forced to resign. In fact, in Agnew's view, he, Agnew, was even more
hated by the powers-that-be than Nixon.
However, because President Nixon was already under siege as a
consequence of the burgeoning Watergate scandal, he refused to come to
Agnew's defense and would not undertake any efforts to quash the
investigation of Agnew that ultimately led to Agnew's resignation.
In retrospect, there's no question that the scandal that brought down
Agnew was as contrived as any in American history. In the midst of the
Watergate "crisis," Barnet Skolnik, a liberal Jewish prosecutor in the U.S.
attorney's office in Maryland brought bribery charges against Agnew that are—
as the evidence shows—suspect to this day.
Skolnik got his chance to "get" Agnew when Lester Matz, a prominent
Jewish businessman who was under investigation for paying kickbacks to
public officials in Maryland in return for county and state contracts,
dredged up his previous on-again, off-again relationship with Agnew during
the vice president's years in Maryland politics.
In a deal with Skolnik, Matz claimed that he had paid bribes to Agnew.
Then, following Matz' s lead, two other copy-cats who were also under
investigation—I. M. Hammerman and Jerome Wolff—also claimed to have
paid off the former Maryland governor.