"On September 19, I received some welcome encouragement from an unexpected source. The Governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter, telephoned me and expressed his sympathy over the abuse I was suffering from the prosecutors and my own administration. Although he is a Democrat and I am a Republican, Carter and I had become friends through my work as a link between the White House and the governors.
I told Carter I felt as if I was "fighting a division with a platoon." He urged me to keep up the battle, and not to resign under fire. When he told the incredulous press corps in Atlanta about his call to me, the governor explained that he and I had become "very close" and he believed I was not receiving fair treatment.
"I felt," Carter said, "he needed to hear a friendly voice."
While I find myself in frequent disagreements with President Carter over both domestic and foreign policy, I still respect his attitude towards the presidency and his fairness to individuals.
When I was under heavy fire in 1976 for saying that our attitude towards Israel was affected by the preponderance of Israel's sympathisers in the big news media, the press carried reports that the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation League had written to both President Fordand candidate Carter soliciting a rebuke of me.
Both obliged, and I felt constrained to write a personal letter to each, which I hand-delivererd, explaining that my position was not anti-Semitic and I felt I had a right to comment about a foreign nation, namely Israel.
Carter sent me a warm, handwritten reply, although he disagreed on the subject at hand, but Gerald Ford has yet to give me the courtesy of any acknowledgement."
- Spiro T. Agnew,
"Go Quietly... Or Else", 1980
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