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Teapot Dome Scandal, in American history, scandal of the early 1920s surrounding the secret leasing of federal oil reserves by the secretary of the interior, Albert Bacon Fall. As a result, ‘Teapot Dome’ entered the American political vocabulary as a synonym for governmental corruption.
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Sep 17, 2020 · His departure from office marked the first peaceful transfer of power between political opponents in the United States, now viewed as a hallmark of the nation’s democracy.
- Sarah Pruitt
- Teapot Dome: For Emergency Use only
- Albert Fall
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- Paying Off The Press
- The Ohio Gang
- ‘A Great Scandal’
- A Black Bag of Cash
- Greystone Murder-Suicide
- Teapot Dome Finally Sold–Legally
- Sources
At the heart of the scandal was Albert Fall, a former Secretary of the Interior, who was charged with accepting bribes from oil companies in exchange for exclusive rights to drill for oil on federal land. The sites included land near a teapot-shaped outcrop in Wyoming known as Teapot Dome, and two other government-owned sites in Californianamed Elk...
Despite making backroom deals with oil interests, Harding—a notorious womanizer who fathered a child with at least one of his mistresses—campaigned on a platform of balancing the interests of conservation and development. There was much debate at the time between the merits of conserving natural resources and permitting industry to tap into the nat...
Combined, the three sites were estimated to contain hundreds of millions of dollars worth of high-grade oil. In return, the oilmen were to fulfill only minor obligations to the federal government, such as constructing an oil storage facility at the naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and building a pipeline from Wyoming to Kansas City. By April 192...
At the same time, Fall was contending with another oilman and Harding supporter, Col. James G. Darden, who claimed he had first dibs on the Teapot Dome site before Fall leased it to Sinclair. In a desperate move, Fall convinced a reluctant President Harding to dispatch the U.S. Marines to halt Darden’s efforts to drill at the site. But when the pub...
By January 1923—less than two years after taking office—Fall stepped down as Interior Secretary to enjoy time on his newly purchased ranch in New Mexico, as well as take part in lucrative oil deals in Mexico and the Soviet Unionfor both Doheny and Sinclair. But the Senate investigations into Teapot Dome continued. President Harding, at the time, wa...
In June 1923, Harding set off on a cross-country tour that included a first presidential visit to the territory of Alaska. While on the four-day boat voyage to Alaska, an ill-at-ease Harding asked Commerce Secretary and future president Herbert Hoover, “If you knew of a great scandal in our administration, would you for the good of the country and ...
Under the new leadership of President Calvin Coolidge, two special prosecutors, one Democrat and one Republican, were appointed to take over the Senate investigation into Fall’s oil deals. Soon the investigation would reveal that Fall had received a $100,000 interest-free “loan” from oilman Doheny to purchase land for his enormous New Mexico ranch....
Doheny was acquitted of offering the bribe, since both he and Fall had claimed the amount was simply a loan. But Doheny had little reason to celebrate. Before the rulings came down, Doheny’s son, Ned, was shot and killed in February 1929 in the family’s luxurious new Beverly Hills mansion, Greystone. An investigation concluded that the killer was h...
As for the oil reserves in Wyoming and California, the Supreme Court voided the suspicious oil leases in 1927 and production was halted at Teapot Dome and the California sites. Under newly established protocols between the federal government and the oil industry, oil was eventually tapped at Elk Hills to support U.S. efforts during World War II. Al...
The Teapot Dome Scandal, How Big Oil Bought the Harding White House and Tried to Steal the Country by Laton McCartney, published by Random House, 2008. President Harding dies in San Francisco, Aug. 2, 1923, Politico. The Naval Petroleum Reserves, U.S. Department of Energy. Senate Investigates the “Teapot Dome” Scandal, U.S. Senate Stories. The Teap...
The Teapot Dome scandal was a bribery scandal involving the administration of United States President Warren G. Harding from 1921 to 1923. Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall had leased Navy petroleum reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyoming, as well as two locations in California, to private oil companies at low rates without competitive ...
Jun 6, 2024 · Overview. Teapot Dome Scandal. Quick Reference. (1922–24) US fraud perpetrated by the “Ohio gang” surrounding President Harding. It involved the siphoning of oil, intended for the US navy, from the oil reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyoming, to the Mammoth Oil Company.
See if you can tell the story—in a brief essay, a Power Point slide show or an oral presentation—of the Teapot Dome Scandal and how it affected both Wyoming and the nation. You’ll need to consider: Who were the key figures in the scandal? What did they do to cause the trouble? Did they commit crimes? If so, were they punished? How?
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Jun 6, 2021 · ON MARCH 4, 1801, America’s new chief justice administered the presidential oath of office to his rival and kinsman to complete the nation’s first peaceful (?) transfer of power.
