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

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Laton McCartney's The Teapot Dome Scandal: How Oil Bought the Harding White House and Tried to Steel the Country is one of the best investigations into this scandal in a long while. Many Americans may have heard of this in their school history classes but may not realize the far reaching implications of the oil scandal nor the impact it had on American politics for years after. It is not dissimilar to the impact that Watergate had on politics for a decade after the breakin.

At one time huge oil reserves had been set aside for the U. S. Navy; commercial drilling was not allowed and the oil barons of the day were constantly looking for ways to get their hands on this precious set aside.
Eventually a fortune in contributions were pumped into Harding's presidential campaign. After the successful election Harding appointed Albert Fall as Secretary of the Interior who was intent is passing out oil leases to the here-to-fore oil reserves. And it nearly worked.

It wasn't long before the deal was made public knowledge and the recriminations began. Americans found out just how far reaching the scheme had reached. Powerful politicians had been paid off as were powerful newpaper men. Some even fled the country as more and more of the scandal was made public.

The Teapot Dome scandal was, for its time, one of the most significant events in American political history. McCartney's telling of this story is generally well done, though at times it does seem to mire down in details. Still, McCartney's research is dead on as is his ability to tell this complicated story.

This would be a good beach read.

Peace to all.

Laton McCartney's new book, "The Teapot Dome Scandal" is a well-crafted look at the Harding White House and the tales of woe which followed it. Until Watergate, this was America's "finest" scandal, and one that would have brought down a president had he not had the good fortune of dying along the way. McCartney is detailed to a fault but his picture is thorough and worth every page.

Teapot Dome was about oil and politics and the comparisons to today's administration are not insignificant. President Harding, most believe, should never have been installed in that office and once he began, his administration unfolded rapidly. McCartney focuses in on the "baddies"...Albert Fall, Harding's Interior Secretary, being the worst of the lot. But oilmen Edward Doheny and Harry Sinclair round out the trio and their stories are riveting. Of course, there are good guys, too... the exposing of Teapot Dome would never have gotten very far without the persistence of Montana Senator, Thomas Walsh, whose brilliance unnerved many of his Republican colleagues. In the end, there were no winners, it seemed, and the "Roaring Twenties" flickered out just as the investigations came to an end.

McCartney has a crisp narrative style and although the cast of characters seems almost too big to keep track of without a scorecard, he keeps the story going resolutely. It's not hard to imagine that every generation or so, American politics gets down and dirty enough to have one of these scandals and one wonders at the end of the Bush administration if certain illegalities will come to light. Teapot Dome was the mother of them all, and McCartney's book is highly recommended.

This is a very well-done story about oilmen, Warren G. Harding, and just what money can buy if you "invest" it properly. By today's standards, a million dollars laundered into a political campaign, or $230K delivered in cash to the Secretary of the Interior is impressive: even more so if you remember Sherman Adams (Eisenhower's White House Chief of Staff) scandal over a gift of a vicuna overcoat. And, of course, we're talking about 1920 dollars here. McCartney's book has lots of villains, but not as many heroes: Montana's Senator Thomas Walsh being the star.

The bribery and corruption did not unravel easily. The cover-ups and foot-dragging is reminiscent of Watergate. The outcome of Watergate was far from preordained--without the revelation about the White House tapes, the investigation might have fizzled out, since the public was starting to lose interest. The Teapot Dome hearings followed an eerily similar pattern--fizzling out, waning public interest, etc, until, like Watergate, new life was breathed into the scandal. Without the perseverance of Walsh and a few others, nothing would have come out of the hearings, and Teapot Dome would be forgotten today. Of course, if that had happened, when you take your vacation this summer you wouldn't be visiting the privately-owned No Visitors Allowed resorts for the very wealthy where Yellowstone, Yosemite, etc, used to be.

Some things are a little different today. One of the startling things in the book is the servile deference to rich oilmen at the hearings. When asked a question at the hearings a common reply was "None of your business!" and the senators would take this lying down. The only thing recently that might rival this is the fawning shown to Roger Clemens at the recent hearings on Capitol Hill. But you also may come away with the thought "So what's different nowadays anyhow?" You'll see from the book that things were a bit more flagrant, a trifle more brazen back then. The author writes with a comfortable, easygoing flair: this history is full of life and wit, and not a dry, dusty history that you might at times wade through. Enjoyable, amusing, and lucid!

This is a wonderfully written, well researched and very detailed account of the scandal-plagued Harding administration. Like Watergate, Teapot Dome was a botched up creation brought on by greed and stupidity. McCarthy's book is hard to put down. The characters are the stuff of great fiction: only this was real. An American president hand picked by a few wealthy businessmen and then sold to the voters, Harding was truly one of the least qualified men to occupy the White House. Most interesting to me was Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall: the original "fall guy", the only person convicted in this mess. He was a real cowboy from New Mexico whose rise and fall, and whose corruptibility, could be the plot of a Shakespeare tragedy. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading about history and politics.

I was interested in this book because it begins in my hometown, Ardmore, Oklahoma. Some things came out in the book that were unknown until its publication, even though it has been almost 90 years since the incidents in the book took place.

It tells an interesting story about the largest scandal in government to that time. It also shows how people have used the media and government to distort the truth for a long time in this country.

It is a facinating read.

Who ever thougt that the Teapot Dome Scandal of the roaring 20s would be an interesting subject? But McCartney's book is a true page turner. Easy to read and understand, you will get an enjoyable education on the subject. Seeing the inner workings of political corruption and the personalities involved are just a few of the gripping elements of this book. Yes I recommend this book... a good read.

After seeing the author on The Daily Show, and having written advertising copy for oilfield-supply companies for 38 years, I HAD to get this book. I enjoyed it so much, despite my abhorrence of most non-fiction writing. This book is far from dry or dusty, as is so much n.f.. The characters are real, live people in these pages. Unfortunately, nothing much has changed since Teapot. Witness the bloodlust of the Bush/Cheney administration for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWAR) or the inability of Mr. Clinton to control his urges. This book has it all: money, power, sex, oil and a public that is largely unaware of the shenanigans taking place in Washington DC.

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.

This is the story of how a weak President was overwhelmed by powerful interests that still dominate our economy and foreign policy. During the Harding administration, cars were just coming into common use, yet Big Oil had already accumulated huge pools of money and influence. The Teapot Dome Scandal relates how Sinclair Oil and Standard Oil of Indiana helped themselves to the government's oil fields. Laton McCartney does an admirable job of simplifying a convoluted and largely forgotten tale. I was happy to read of one hero: Sen. Thomas Walsh (D-Montana) who was able to bring this before the public and identify the guilty.

Does this 80 year-old story have any relevance for today? Hmmm... We have the oil industry locked in secret meetings with the Vice President to establish the energy policy. The same are now enjoying obscene profits, yet they can't satisfy our requirements. The oil company lobby continues to drench the right candidates with all the election funds allowable. A Presidential candidate sees nothing untoward with staying in oil-rich Iraq for 100 years. We await our Tom Walsh.

When Warren G. Harding won the GOP nomination for president in 1920, no one saw it coming. Except for the moneymen pulling the strings. The definition of a darkhorse candidate, Harding was almost unheard of before the convention. But the shenanigans that went on at the convention were small change compared to what happened after Harding was elected. Even before he was sworn in, deals were being made.

The US Navy owned several plots of land throughout the country that were rich with oil. These were oil reserves solely for the Navy's use. But they hadn't been tapped. And with the oil boom, there was money to be made. Albert Fall was named Secretary of the Interior and made a deal with oil tycoons: he would take control of the oil fields from the Navy and offer no-bid leases to the oil companies in return for kickbacks. He granted leases to reserves in California and a large reserve in Wyoming called Teapot Dome.

This book details the scandal as it happened and the Congressional investigation that followed, which eventually led to the first occurrence of a Cabinet member being sent to prison (the only other being Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell). Because the scandal was so convoluted and involved so many various players, the first half of the book is quite confusing. Only once McCartney beings to discuss the investigation of the scandal do the pieces start to fall into place. Some readers might grow frustrated at the first part of the book, but once you get a handle on what all was happening, it's quite an amazing story.