You Can’t Convict A Million Dollars

As Americans, we are all used to the many scandals that can happen with government corruption or just corruption in general. Most of us have heard of Watergate or Whitewater, which are two of the modern-day scandals of our time. Scandals are pretty common really, mostly because greed will always be something we deal with. I just never really considered the scandal that happened in my own back yard…so to speak. I grew up in Casper, Wyoming, and the scandal involved a president, a senator, two oil men, bribery, and a rock (or rather a dome naked after a rock formation) located north of Casper. The rock formation is known as Teapot Rock, and the scandal involved the oil located within that dome…named Teapot Dome.

The Teapot Dome scandal took place in the 1920s, and it involved national security, big oil companies, bribery, and corruption at the highest levels of the government of the United States. Before Watergate, the Teapot Dome scandal was the most serious scandal in the country’s history. It was named for an that rock formation north of Casper, Wyoming, that looked just like a teapot, but they didn’t care about the rock. It was all about money.

The interest in Teapot Dome began decades before the 1920s scandal. The United States government and US Navy officials, while contemplating a new, global presence, began to realize that they needed a fuel supply that was more reliable and more portable than coal. Requiring the battle ships to make stops to reload their coal supply was not feasible. They needed something that worked better, lasted longer, and took up less space. In order to accommodate the need for coal, the Department of the Navy officials, during the Theodore Roosevelt presidency early in the 20th century, resorted to building coal-fueling stations around the world. That would be a huge undertaking.

The United States began to see that they were severely hampered, as other nations began development of petroleum-powered ships. Developing petroleum-powered ships seems like the logical next step, so beginning in 1909, during the Taft administration, Navy administrators decided that they needed to convert the fleet to the more efficient petroleum. Ships would have no need for coaling stations. Once fueled, the petroleum-powered ships had far greater range. Oddly, considering the scandal, the USS Wyoming, which was a battleship initially launched in 1900, became the first ship in the fleet to be converted to oil power in 1909. The ship was later renamed the USS Cheyenne, because the new battleship USS Wyoming was launched in 1910. Soon, more ships were converted from coal. With the conversions came the concern about the long-term availability of oil. They didn’t understand at that time, the longevity of oil. They worried about what would happen if oil were to run out? The Navy would be paralyzed!!

As a result of these concerns, Navy administrators asked Congress to set aside federally owned lands in places where known oil deposits most likely existed. The plan was to reserve these “naval petroleum reserves” for any future event that could have resulted from a national emergency. One of the three petroleum reserves set aside was near Salt Creek in northern Natrona County, you guessed it…Teapot Dome. “A dome is a geological formation that traps oil underground between impervious layers of rock, with the upper layer bent upward to form a dome.” Reserving those areas, was like screaming “come and get me” to oilmen. They all wanted the opportunity to drill within these federally owned reserves.

Enter President Warren G Harding, who was elected president in 1920. Harding’s friend, and poker buddy, US Senator Albert Fall, was picked to be Harding’s secretary of Interior. Fall was a rancher and New Mexico’s first US senator. He immediately accepted the cabinet post. It was the beginning of the scandal, because Fall had “ideas” that would be “helpful” to both of them. Within a few weeks, Fall worked quickly to convince President Harding to allow transfer of the naval petroleum reserves from the Navy to the Department of the Interior. His argument was that the department was “better able” to oversee the protection of these areas where oil was not to be produced but kept in case of emergency. That basically put Fall in charge of the oil reserves, to do with as he saw fit.

Fall made secret deals with two prominent oilmen, Edward Doheny and Harry Sinclair. Both men were close friends of Fall. Of course, Fall didn’t just give them access to the reserves. They paid him bribes to authorize them to drill in the three naval petroleum reserves. The law was specific, saying that access was not to be granted unless it was an emergency situation, and no such emergency existed.

Wyoming Governor Leslie Miller, himself an independent oilman became suspicious when he saw trucks with the Sinclair company logo hauling drilling equipment into the Teapot Dome naval petroleum reserve. He asked US Senator John B Kendrick to look into the matter. Kendrick, sensing wrongdoing, turned the question over to a special Senate investigating committee. At about that time, President Harding took a summer trip west, stopping in Wyoming, enjoying Yellowstone and continuing on to Alaska and, eventually, to San Francisco. While in San Francisco, the President died suddenly. While no one would want to say his death was a good thing, but it’s quite likely that Harding escaped impeachment for his role in Teapot Dome. Of course, there wasn’t exactly proof that he knew anything about the situation, not evidence that he took bribes. Still, there is no proof he didn’t either.

Fall was convicted and sent to federal prison, the first Cabinet-level officer in American history to go to jail for crimes committed while serving in office. Both Sinclair and Doheny were exonerated of the main charge…giving bribes to Fall. As a newspaper reporter observed when the two wealthy oilmen were found not guilty, “You can’t convict a million dollars.” Sinclair was sentenced to a 9-month prison term not for bribery but for contempt of Congress, and for charges connected to his hiring of detectives to trail members of the jury in the original bribery trial

In federal court in Wyoming the federal government filed a lawsuit to cancel the illegally obtained leases of Teapot Dome oil reserves. US District Judge T Blake Kennedy ruled against the government, but the US Supreme Court overturned the Kennedy decision, and the leases were canceled.