George Beall, Prosecutor Who Brought Down Agnew, Dies at 79

[DonViejo]

Source: New York Times

George Beall, the United States attorney for Maryland, right, with Attorney General Elliot Richardson in October 1973, when his graft investigation of Vice President Spiro Agnew came to a head.

George Beall, a son and brother of United States senators from Maryland whose prosecution of Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, a former governor of the state, for bribery led to Mr. Agnew’s resignation in 1973, died on Sunday in Naples, Fla. He was 79.

The cause was cancer, said his wife, Carolyn Campbell.

Mr. Beall (pronounced bell) had been the United States attorney for Maryland for two years when he opened an investigation into systemic corruption in Baltimore County, specifically between public officials and those seeking architectural, engineering, and paving contracts.

The inquiry took an unexpected turn when an engineer, Lester Matz, admitted that he had been paying Mr. Agnew kickbacks in exchange for contracts for years — first when Mr. Agnew was the Baltimore county executive, then when he was governor of Maryland and vice president.

“I was absolutely stunned,” Mr. Beall said in a speech in 2003. “I, like everyone else in the country, thought the vice president was the pillar of rectitude. He was an imposing, handsome, well spoken, strong individual who spoke not just passionately but eloquently about principles and morality.”

Mr. Agnew was more than that. A biting speaker, he zealously played the hatchet man for Richard M. Nixon, whose presidency was becoming imperiled by the widening Watergate scandal that would lead to his resignation in 1974.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/us/george-beall-dead-prosecuted-agnew.html?emc=edit_th_20170119&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=57435284

[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. I hope I'm not coming across as a nattering nabob of negativism, but

I feel certain that Beallsville, in far western Montgomery County, is named after the family.

[burrowowl]

2. RIP