speech. and it was a speech that he knew he would be giving to some of his most die-hard fans, people who would follow him to the end of the earth, and that was crucial at that moment in his political life because just a few weeks earlier the wall street journal had been first to report that that same vice president he was under federal criminal investigation on potential felony corruption charges, bribery, extortion, tax evasion, a whole bunch of stuff. this was very shocking front page news at the time. it was very damaging news for obvious reasons to the vice president, and he was completely enraged about it. so he flew out to california to give a talk to his most rabid supporters. it was the national conference of republican women. and these women were hard core activists, as a group generally speaking they were quite right-wing, and a group generally speaking they were quote devoted to superhero agnew. this has been forgotten in history but agnew was seen as being much