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Tea·pot Dome (tē'pŏt')  |
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| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Teapot Dome scandal |
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| US History Companion: Teapot Dome Affair |
Teapot Dome, Wyoming, was one of two naval oil reserve sites improperly leased to private interests by Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall in 1922. The incident was one of numerous examples of corruption and malfeasance during the administration of President Warren G. Harding. Teapot Dome and Elk Hills, California, had been set aside before World War I for naval use. Soon after Harding's inauguration in 1921, Fall persuaded the secretary of the navy to turn over the administration of both sites to the Department of the Interior. Then, in the spring of 1922, he secretly leased Elk Hills to the Pan-American Petroleum Company and Teapot Dome to the Mammoth Oil Company.
Some questions were raised at the time the sites were transferred to Interior, and more arose when news of the leases leaked out. But the full story did not emerge until after Harding died in August 1923. That October, the Senate Public Lands Committee, at the urging of Thomas J. Walsh of Montana, launched an investigation. It revealed that at the time the leases were signed, Edwin Doheny, president of Pan-American, had presented Fall with a $100,000 unsecured interest-free loan, and Harry Sinclair, president of Mammoth Oil, had given him more than $300,000 in government bonds and cash. As a result of these findings, Congress agreed by joint resolution on February 8, 1924, to sue for cancelation of the leases; the suit was finally won in 1927. Meanwhile, Doheny, Sinclair, and Fall were all acquitted of conspiracy to defraud the government, but Sinclair was imprisoned for contempt of Congress and jury tampering, and Fall paid a large fine and served a year in prison for bribery.
See also Corruption.
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Teapot Dome |
Bibliography
See M. R. Werner and J. Starr, Teapot Dome (1959); B. Noggle, Teapot Dome (1962).
| US Presidents Q&A: What was the Teapot Dome scandal? |
The Teapot Dome scandal involved officials who illegally leased government-owned oil reserves in Teapot Dome, Wyoming. At the heart of the scandal was Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall, who upon his appointment to the Department of the Interior in 1921, coerced Secretary of the Navy Edwin Denby into turning control of the oil fields over to his department. Fall then secretly leased the Teapot Dome reserves to various oil companies in exchange for personal "gifts" totaling almost $400,000. The excessive development of public lands led conservationists to urge U.S. senator Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin to investigate the matter more closely. In 1923, a U.S. Senate committee, the Public Lands Committee, was charged with investigating the government's private drilling program. Led by U.S. senator Thomas J. Walsh of Montana, the committee uncovered numerous cabinet documents that implicated both Fall and drilling contractors Harry Sinclair of Mammoth Oil and Edward Doheny of Pan-American Oil.
President Warren G. Harding died just before news broke of his administration's Teapot Dome scandal. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge ordered the Justice Department to begin investigations; however, because Attorney General Harry Daugherty was friends with Fall, the president appointed a special counsel to investigate. Congress also began to pressure Coolidge to dismiss Denby because of his role in delivering the oil reserve and, under pressure, Denby resigned. In the end, both the Public Lands Committee and the courts determined that a conspiracy existed between the Interior Department and the drilling companies. In 1929, Fall was convicted of bribery, served a year of prison time, and assessed a steep fine, which he never paid (see also Presidents and the Judiciary-The Judiciary Influences the Presidency).
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| Law Encyclopedia: Teapot Dome |
The presidential administration of Warren G. Harding from 1921 to 1923 was characterized by scandal and corruption, the most controversial of which was the Teapot Dome oil scandal.
Conservation was a popular cause throughout the first quarter of the twentieth century and was encouraged by various presidents. As a result, several oil reserves for the exclusive use of the U.S. Navy were established in Wyoming and California. The oil was kept in storage places called domes, one of which, located near Casper, Wyoming, was christened Teapot Dome due to a rock formation in the area that resembled a teapot.
Although many politicians favored the establishment of the oil reserves, others believed they were superfluous. One opponent of the oil policy was Senator Albert B. Fall of New Mexico, who sought to make the reserves accessible to private industry.
In 1921, Senator Fall was selected as secretary of the interior in the Harding cabinet. Authority over the oil fields was transferred from the Department of the Navy to the Department of the Interior, with the consent of Edwin Denby, Secretary of the Navy. Fall was in a position to lease the oil reserves, without public bidding, to private parties. In 1922, Harry F. Sinclair, president of the Mammoth Oil Company, received rights to Teapot Dome, and Edward L. Doheny, a friend of Fall and prominent in the Pan-American Petroleum and Transport Company, leased the Elk Hills fields in California. Fall received approximately four hundred thousand dollars in kickbacks in exchange for his favoritism.
Senator Thomas J. Walsh of Montana initiated a Senate investigation of the oil reserve lands at the recommendation of Senator Robert M. LaFollette of Wisconsin. Eventually the U.S. Supreme Court declared the leases inoperative, and the oil fields at Teapot Dome and Elk Hills were returned to the U.S. government. Sinclair served nine months in prison for contempt of court, but both he and Doheny were found not guilty of bribery. Fall, who had left the cabinet in 1923, was found guilty in 1929 of accepting bribes; his penalty was one year in jail and a fine of $100,000. President Harding died in office in 1923, never aware of the notoriety of his administration.
| Wikipedia: Teapot Dome scandal |
The Teapot Dome Scandal was an unprecedented bribery scandal and investigation during the White House administration of United States President Warren G. Harding. Teapot Dome is on an oil field on public land in the U.S. state of Wyoming, so named for Teapot Rock, an outcrop resembling a teapot south of the field[1].43°13′59.3″N 106°18′40″W / 43.233139°N 106.31111°W
In 1921, by executive order of President Harding, control of Naval oil reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyoming and at Elk Hills and Buena Vista in California, were transferred from the Navy Department to the Department of the Interior. The oil reserves had been set aside for the Navy by President Taft. In 1922, Albert B. Fall, U.S. Secretary of the Interior, leased, without competitive bidding, the Teapot Dome fields to Harry F. Sinclair, an oil operator, and the field at Elk Hills, California, to Edward L. Doheny. In 1922 and 1923, these transactions became the subject of a sensational Senate investigation conducted by Sen. Thomas J. Walsh.
It was found that in 1921, Doheny had lent Fall $100,000, interest-free, and that upon Fall's retirement as Secretary of the Interior, in March 1923, Sinclair also lent him a large amount of money. The investigation led to criminal prosecutions.[2] Fall was indicted for conspiracy and for accepting bribes. Convicted of the latter charge, he was sentenced to a year in prison and fined $100,000. In another trial for bribery Doheny and Sinclair were acquitted, although Sinclair was subsequently sentenced to prison for contempt of the Senate and for employing detectives to shadow members of the jury in his case. The oil fields were restored to the U.S. government through a Supreme Court decision in 1927.
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Teapot Dome is geologic structural uplift and associated oil field located in Natrona County, Wyoming, about 55 miles north of Casper. The Teapot Dome area and United States Naval Oil Reserve covering most of the field are named for a formation of eroded sandstone called Teapot Rock.
The oil fields at Elk Hills and Buena Vista, both in Kern County, California, and at Teapot Dome were located on public land reserved for emergency use by the U.S. Navy only when the regular oil supplies diminished. Many politicians and private oil interests opposed the limits placed on the oil fields, claiming that the reserves were unnecessary and that American oil companies could provide for the Navy.
One of the public officials most avidly opposed to the reserves was Republican Senator Albert B. Fall of New Mexico. A political alliance ensured his appointment to the Senate in 1912, and his political allies — who later made up the infamous "Ohio Gang" — convinced President Harding to appoint Fall as United States Secretary of the Interior in March 1921.
In 1922, the reserves were still under the jurisdiction of Edwin C. Denby, the United States Secretary of the Navy. Fall convinced Denby to give jurisdiction over the reserves to the Department of the Interior. Fall then leased the rights of the oil to Harry F. Sinclair of the original Sinclair Oil, then known as Mammoth Oil, without competitive bidding. Contrary to popular belief, this manner of leasing was legal under the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920.[3] Concurrently, Fall also leased the Naval oil reserves at Elk Hills, California, to Edward L. Doheny of Pan American Petroleum in exchange for personal loans at no interest. In return for leasing these oil fields to the respective oil magnates, Fall received gifts from the oilmen totaling about $404,000 (equivalent to $4 million in the year 2000). It was this money changing hands that was illegal—not the lease itself. Fall attempted to keep his actions secret, but the sudden improvement in his standard of living prompted speculation.
On April 14, 1922, the Wall Street Journal reported a secret arrangement in which Fall had leased the petroleum reserves to a private oil company without competitive bidding. Fall denied the claims, and the leases to the oil companies seemed legal enough on the surface. However, the following day, Democratic Senator John B. Kendrick of Wyoming introduced a resolution that would set in motion one of the most significant investigations in the Senate's history. Republican Senator Robert M. La Follette, Sr. of Wisconsin, arranged for the Senate Committee on Public Lands to investigate the matter. At first, La Follette believed Fall was innocent. However, his suspicions deepened after his office was ransacked.[4] Without any proof and with more ambiguous headlines, the story faded from the public eye. However, the Senate kept investigating.
La Follette's committee allowed the investigation panel's most junior minority member, Democrat Thomas J. Walsh of Montana, to lead what most expected to be a tedious and probably futile inquiry seeking answers to many questions. For two years, Walsh pushed forward while Fall stepped backward, covering his tracks as he went. The Committee found no evidence of wrongdoing, the leases were legal enough, but records kept disappearing mysteriously. Fall had made the leases of the oil fields appear to be legitimate, but his acceptance of the money was his undoing. By 1924, the Committee had only one unanswered question: How did Fall become so rich so quickly?
Money from the bribes went to Fall's cattle ranch and investments in his business. Finally, as the investigation was winding down and preparing to declare Fall innocent, Walsh uncovered one piece of evidence Fall had forgotten to cover up: Doheny's loan to Fall in November 1921, in the amount of $100,000. (Equivalent to about $1.19 million in present day terms.[5])
The investigation led to a series of civil and criminal suits related to the scandal throughout the 1920s. Finally in 1927 the Supreme Court ruled that the oil leases had been corruptly obtained and invalidated the Elk Hills lease in February of that year and the Teapot lease in October of the same year. The Navy regained control of the Teapot Dome and Elk Hills reserves as a result of the Court's decision. Another significant outcome was the Supreme Court case McGrain v. Daugherty which, for the first time, explicitly established Congress' right to compel testimony.
Albert Fall was found guilty of bribery in 1929, fined $100,000 and sentenced to one year in prison, making him the first Presidential cabinet member to go to prison for his actions in office. Harry Sinclair, who refused to cooperate with the government investigators, was charged with contempt, fined $100,000, and received a short sentence for jury tampering. Edward Doheny was acquitted in 1930 of attempting to bribe Fall.
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Coordinates: 43°17′19″N 106°10′24″W / 43.2885808°N 106.1733516°W
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 | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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