A President Surrounded by Corruption: Teapot Dome

 

On cross-country trips, some women sing, others do needlework, sleep or read.  My husband and I team up to enjoy the geology of an area.  We have a series of Roadside Geology books of most of the states we travel through.  I read aloud information apropos to the area we are driving through, and Tom, with his trained eye, points out the geological formations.  

We were recently traveling west on I-80 through Wyoming and talking about the oil and gas reserves that were found in that shale heavy area.  Tom asked about Teapot Dome which sent me to the atlas that sits on my lap under the Geology book.  It turns out that Teapot Dome is due north of Caspar, Wyoming, and until Watergate, it was considered the worse scandal in American history.  It involved numerous people, but the names that jump out are President Warren G. Harding and Sec. of the Interior Albert Fall. 

Warren G. Harding is frequently referred to as the worse President the United States has ever had.  That scale has been recalibrated, of course, and even Harding is looking a little better these days, but only because he actually did love his country.  But no recalibration can change the facts of Harding’s life within the Oval Office. 

Harding, a Senator from Ohio with limited political experience, good looks and a “hail, fellows, well met” attitude was a surprise winner of the Presidential election.  Harding was without Presidential timber in any part of his body.  He was lazy, ignorant and undisciplined.  His speeches were described as pompous phrases wandering over the landscape in search of an idea.  Harding was also more than willing to allow the party bosses to map out his administration. 

            Shortly after his election the “Little Green House” on K street was rented by the “Ohio Gang.”  This house became the clubhouse for Harding and his friends.  Here they met weekly to drink (it was prohibition), play poker and carouse with ladies of easy virtue.  Harding was actively engaged in each of these activities.  In fact, he lost a complete set of the White House china (dating from the administration of Benjamin Harrison) in a poker game.   

            Like begets like, and Harding also had one of the worst Presidential cabinets in history.  At the bottom of that sorry lot was Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall of New Mexico.  Fall was solidly in the pocket of the oil and gas interests.  He convinced Harding to transfer federal oil reserves from the Dept. of the Navy to his Dept. of the Interior.  Fall then leased the drilling rights in Teapot Dome, Wyoming and Elk Hills and Buena Vista Hills in California to his friends in Sinclair Oil.  Fall received favors, including $100,000 delivered in cash to the White House.

            All of this came to light when oilmen in Wyoming started seeing Sinclair Oil logos on trucks leading to Teapot Dome.  The Senate hearings were called the day after the story broke.  Harding’s case was not helped by another crook calling dibs on the oil through a previous “understanding.”  Harding himself was able to sell his Ohio newspaper for an exorbitant amount and his wife, Florence, talked about an all expense paid around the world cruise which she and the President were going to take at the end of this term. 

            Harding, of course, died in office while visiting California (probably a heart attack, though the theory that Florence poisoned him persists).  His Vice-President, Calvin Coolidge appointed a bi-partisan commission to investigate Teapot Dome.  Fall was eventually convicted of accepting a bribe and spent a year in prison.  Of even more significance was the Senate’s investigation into Sinclair Oil’s participation in the bribe.  It ended in a 1929 Supreme Court decision, Sinclair vs. United States, that upheld the right of Congress to investigate cases where the country’s laws may have been violated.

            History teaches as well as repeats.  Keep the faith.