The Teapot Dome Scandal: How Big Oil Bought the Harding White House and Tried to Steal the...

The Teapot Dome Scandal: How Big Oil Bought the Harding White House and Tried to Steal the Country | Laton Mccartney | The Last Of The American Robber Barons

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The Teapot Dome Sc...

	The Teapot Dome Scandal: How Big Oil Bought the Harding White House and Tried to Steal the Country Laton Mccartney Random House, 2008 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 15 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Mix hundreds of millions of dollars in petroleum reserves; rapacious oil barons and crooked politicians; under-the-table payoffs; murder, suicide, and blackmail; White House cronyism; and the excesses of the Jazz Age. The result: the granddaddy of all American political scandals, Teapot Dome.

In The Teapot Dome Scandal, acclaimed author Laton McCartney tells the amazing, complex, and at times ribald story of how Big Oil handpicked Warren G. Harding, an obscure Ohio senator, to serve as our twenty-third president. Harding and his so-called ?oil cabinet? made it possible for the oilmen to secure vast oil reserves that had been set aside for use by the U.S. Navy. In exchange, the oilmen paid off senior government officials, bribed newspaper publishers, and covered the GOP campaign debt.

When news of the scandal finally emerged, the consequences were disastrous for the nation and for the principles in the plot to bilk the taxpayers: Harding?s administration was hamstrung; Americans? confidence in their government plummeted; Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall was indicted, convicted, and incarcerated; and others implicated in the affair suffered similarly dire fates. Stonewalling by members of Harding?s circle kept a lid on the story?witnesses developed ?faulty? memories or fled the country, and important documents went missing?but contemporary records newly made available to McCartney reveal a shocking, revelatory picture of just how far-reaching the affair was, how high the stakes, and how powerful the conspirators.

In giving us a gimlet-eyed but endlessly entertaining portrait of the men and women who made a tempest of Teapot Dome, Laton McCartney again displays his gift for faithfully rendering history with the narrative touch of an accomplished novelist.

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Time Loop of Greed

This excellent work shows how the names change, but the greed and corruption never do. A very entertaining account of an episode not well enough remembered, with many contemporary parallels.

The Last Of The American Robber Barons

This reads like a fast paced mystery novel, which in many ways is what it is. One of the US' most massive thefts in the early 20th century is matched by the most corrupt national government we've had thus far. The actions of president Harding and his close associates bring to mind Pope Leo X's remark about taking full advantage of the opportunity. Unlike Leo, the people behind the Teapot Dome scandal were from very humble backgrounds, with failure dogging them into their middle years. The corruption, greed and avarice of the Ohio Gang are in sharp contrast to the best in public service exhibited by the US Senate, when politicians were often noted for their honesty and probity. The scandal added new phrases and words to the American vocabulary that became widespread, which don't seem connected today as they were in their time. A tale where the bad guys were really bad, the good guys few and often starving, and where justice ultimately prevails in large part due to the long tireless efforts of an individual. Highly recommended.

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"In the history of lovers, there was, I am sure, none to compare with Warren Gamaliel Harding"

This fine history by Laton Mccartney starts out with a different kind of extramarital relationship. Jake Hamon, the "Oil King of Oklahoma", was famous for saying "All I want to do is make money, and I don't care much how I make it." Hamon's money helped win Harding the 1920 Republican presidential nomination. Hamon renounced adultery in hopes of becoming Secretary of the Interior. Mccartney's book opens with Clara, Hamon's mistress, killing Hamon for dumping her. New Mexico's Senator Albert Fall was appointed instead.

Teapot Dome consisted of a Wyoming and two California oil fields, "a bonanza so rich that it was almost beyond comprehension." The three sites were part of the Naval Petroleum Reserve located government-owned land.

Senator Fall decided to transfer the sites to the Interior Department, open them to commercial drilling, and lease them to Edward Doheny and Harry Sinclair. Fall received hundreds of thousands of dollars in "loans" and Liberty Bonds. The Interior Department called the leases a federal "partnership with private capital," but Wisconsin Senator Robert La Follette demanded an investigation. Other oilmen demanded open competitive bidding.

Fall played the national-defense card: the leases were "a military matter." He then played the "too ill to testify" card. Arkansas Senator T.H. Caraway: "I have known more robust constitutions to be ruined by criminal courts than all the plagues put together."

The scandal is twisty and complex, and one can easily get lost and bored in the details. Mccartney writes the story simply and clearly, and sprinkles the text with clever insights. For example, Denver Post owner H.H. Tammen "accumulated a little capital the old-fashioned way -- filching from the till."

Senator Thomas Walsh (D., Montana) is the boring hero of Mccartney's book; he diligently investigated the Teapot Dome Scandal. The bad guys are more interesting. Harry Sinclair, a Kansas pharmacist "accidentally blew off a toe with a shotgun, got a $5,000 check from the insurance company, and used the stake to get into the oil business." In 1923, Sinclair won the Kentucky Derby with his horse Zev, but four years before he had lost $90,000 betting on the Black Sox in the World Series. Sinclair was a great poker player, but often lost large sums to politicians whose favors he desired.

Albert Fall "had once disarmed the quick-triggered [outlaw] John Wesley Hardin in an El Paso saloon." Fall defended Jesse Wayne Brazel, the man accused of murdering Billy the Kid's killer, Pat Garrett, a onetime lawman.

Sinclair spent seven months in prison, smoking Cuban cigars and wearing silk pajamas. He told a worried fellow inmate: "Don't worry about that, young fellow! We all get bad breaks. My colors will still be flying when this thing is over." He was right. Sinclair lived a long pleasant life after serving his jail sentence.

Fall spent nine months in the New Mexico State Prison and thereafter lived in poverty and chronic illness.

Clara was acquitted of murder and married a Hollywood director. ("The New York Times" headline: "Clara Smith Hamon today was acquitted of a charge of having murdered Jake L. Hamon, Republican National Committeeman from Oklahoma and millionaire railroad and oil promoter.")

Mccartney describes Harding as indolent and a rogue, active primarily as a lover. Harding died in office after returning the country to "normalcy", basically untouched by the Teapot Dome Scandal. Nan Britton wrote a kiss-and-tell book THE PRESIDENTS DAUGHTER about her relationship with Harding and lived to her nineties.

Mccartney tells the story of Teapot Dome very well indeed, in a very interesting and informative manner.

Robert C. Ross 2008

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Some Things Never Change

McCartney writes with considerable skill and quite comprehensively of the domination of the oil industry of the American economy in the first third of the 20th century. Crimes were committed that went virtually unpunished, while oil executives thumbed their noses at feeble efforts of Congress to address the problem. It makes you wonder what else is new.

What we need now in this nation is a clone of Senator Thomas James Walsh (D-Mont) who might be willing to take on the military-industrial, oil dominated oligarchy that now controls our economy and our lives. Perhaps another Walsh could get the current Congress off its dying rear end and on its dying feet, but it would probably be met with the same indifference and/or impotence that was demonstrated in the 1920's.

I would be delighted to see Laton McCartney, with his research and analytical skills undertake such a project, in the hope that he might produce yet another articulate and fascinating analysis of the forces that continue to control our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

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Not bad, but not enough...

Like many new books I've read lately, I found many of the "connections" established here to be tenuous at best. National political conventions were what they were, I'm not 100% that 1920 was significantly more corrupt than any previous undertaking, with the possible exception of the visible money flow. I'm also a bit perplexed about how Albert Fall shot into his position as best available replacement nominee as Secretary of the Interior, as his personal connection to the oil guys wasn't demonstrated to my satisfaction.
There's no doubt the money flowed, there's no doubt that this was a case of monumental corruption... but I was hoping to read something new, and all I found was a good re-telling of a story I already knew.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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