Introduction

A few weeks earlier, the Wall Street Journal had been first to report that that same vice president, Spiro Agnew, he was under federal criminal investigation on potential felony corruption charges. This was very damaging news for obvious reasons to the vice president. So he flew out to California, September 29th, 1973, to give a talk to his most rabid supporters. And what he told them at that speech started off blunt, but kind of normal. He said, I am innocent of the charges against me. But then, like what he was winding up to, his big sort of climax of his speech, actually got the Republican women in that room up on their chairs, standing, applauding