'Did you get it? I don't know.' The huge story that almost got away

WASHINGTON — This month marks the 51st anniversary of one of the biggest stories -- and biggest surprises -- we’ve ever covered at WUSA9.

The sudden resignation of then Vice President Spiro Agnew, the former governor of Maryland who was under investigation for alleged bribery and extortion, was a bombshell that almost got away.

For WUSA9’s 75th anniversary, we visited with the reporter and photographer who say that day in Baltimore remains a vivid memory after decades in the news business.

Former Channel 9 reporter and anchor Patrick McGrath was used to covering national news. But McGrath was floored – along with nearly everyone else -- when the sitting Vice President of the United States stood up in a courtroom in Baltimore on October 10, 1973, and announced he was stepping down.

"The only thing I truly remember is, ‘Oh my God, he what, he resigned the Vice Presidency?’" who had turned up early for a 2 p.m. hearing to make sure he got in before the judge ordered the door locked. McGrath was expecting a fairly routine argument between lawyers about leaks to the media about the grand jury investigation into government corruption in Baltimore County.

But then Vice President Agnew walked in, agreed to plead guilty to a single count of tax evasion, and to leave office, where the former Baltimore County Executive had been a rising star, with some talking about him as a future President of the United States.

“Gentlemen, I believe you all received copies of the prepared statement that I read in court,” told a big crowd of media that had scrambled to catch him walking out of the courthouse.

"We were in Prince George’s County and got a call to go to the courthouse in Baltimore," former Channel 9 photographer Tad Dukehart remembers.

Dukehart and his soundman, Carole Bush, rushed north. "And when we got to Baltimore, Carole said, ‘Oh my God, I forgot to turn the battery on the amplifier off,’ Dukehart said.

While Agnew was still upstairs, Bush had to sneak into the courthouse bathroom to recharge his battery.

“I saw what I believed to be a Secret Service car going to the back of the courthouse. And I knew where that rear door was,” Dukehart said, suspecting Agnew was trying to sneak out the back. Dukehart led a huge crowd of media back to see if the now former Vice President would talk.

The now former Vice President walked right up and faced Dukehart's camera. “I believe it would be against the national interest and have a brutalizing effect on my family to go through a long, two-year struggle concerning this matter,” he said, before ducking into the waiting Secret Service vehicle.

“I said, ‘Carole, did you get it?’" 

Bush's response? "I don’t know."

Critics called Agnew "Nixon’s Nixon." He was known for slamming the media with aggressive alliteration, attacking mainstream journalism in a way that perhaps echoes through the decades to Donald Trump’s campaigns. Agnew called the East Coast elite, "Nattering nabobs of negativism," as well as, "hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history."

“I figured he might be a candidate for President next time, and if he had been, I would have voted for him,” a tourist from Rochester, New York told a young Channel 9 reporter, Mike Buchanan, who was live at the Capitol.

Gordon Peterson and Max Robinson had broken into Channel 9 daytime programming with the news while Dukehart and McGrath raced back to the studio.  We could go live from the White House or the Capitol at the time, but we didn’t have live remote trucks that could deliver a signal from nearly anywhere.

McGrath had to jump into his car and drive about an hour back to Channel 9 to describe what he'd seen. "With this 40-page memorandum of specifics that I couldn’t read while driving," he said.

Dukehart and Bush drove separately, and after after getting to the TV station and developing the film of Agnew's statement, they ran it through a projector. They were horrified when no sound came up.

Then they stuck it in a second machine.

McGrath was on set, being debriefed by Gordon Peterson. “[Agnew] volunteered this statement. I believe we have it on film now,” McGrath said on camera. And miraculously, the film had Agnew's voice on it.

For 75 years, hard work -- and a little luck -- has helped Channel 9 serve our community.