"Warren G. Harding was the kind of president American people of all classes loved - kind, genial, decent, ordinary, human, one of them."

--Historian Paul Johnson

As we pick up our story of the Harding administration and the Teapot Dome scandal, it's March 1921 and Harding has just been inaugurated. For him, it was also Cabinet selection time.

Harding had some enlightened choices, principally Andrew Mellon at Treasury, Charles Evans Hughes as Secretary of State, and Herbert Hoover at Commerce.

But Harding also found room for his Ohio friends, to become known as the "Ohio Gang." One of his worst choices was to select his Ohio campaign manager, Harry Daugherty, to be his new Attorney General. Daugherty promised Harding that he would screen him from all the influence peddlers from Ohio that would inevitably be seeking favors. "I know who the crooks are, and I want to stand between Harding and them," boasted Daugherty. [Source: Johnson, "A History of the American People."]

Well, as we'll learn later on, this wasn't to be the case. But there was one Cabinet selection that Harding made that had nothing to do with Ohio, yet proved to be a colossal mistake; that being the nomination of Albert Fall to be the new Secretary of the Interior.

Born in Kentucky, 1861, Fall went west as a young man. He tried his hand at a variety of occupations including cowboy, logger, miner and U.S. marshal. This latter position included an encounter with the legendary gunfighter John Wesley Hardin, which, of course, requires some embellishment.

Hardin was the most feared gunman in Texas, killing anywhere between 21 and 40 men. If the second figure is accurate, that would be the most by any single gunfighter in the history of the Wild West. He was a quick-draw artist and perhaps the fastest gun alive.

Hardin was eventually thrown in jail and, after 16 years as a model prisoner, he settled in El Paso, Texas. It was here that he met his end at the hands of policeman John Selman who, after being threatened by Hardin on an earlier occasion, walked up to the gunfighter in a saloon and shot him in the back of the head. And who should defend Selman from his own murder charge? Why if it wasn't Albert Fall, who successfully won an acquittal
for his client.

But back to our original intended story. Fall and Harding had been best friends in the U.S. Senate; Fall representing New Mexico, Harding, Ohio. Upon assuming the presidency, Harding sought to take care of his friends and, thus, despite the fact that Fall was hardly a conservationist, he was tabbed for Interior.

Albert Fall was known for his "florid" style. He had a thick handlebar mustache and always wore a flowing black cape with a broad-brimmed Stetson. Harding was charmed by this "Bad Man from the Border." And Fall was so popular among his Senate colleagues that he was confirmed for the position of Interior Secretary by acclamation, the only time in American history a Cabinet member has received such a vote of confidence.

But Albert Fall was really a figure of tragic weakness. At one time he was wealthy, but his extensive mine holdings were lost in the Mexican Revolution, leaving him with little more than a ranch in New Mexico. He desired the trappings of the rich.

During his mining days in New Mexico, Fall made two acquaintances, Edward Doheny and Harry Sinclair, both of whom ended up in the oil business. The three were to become
enmeshed in "Teapot Dome."

Back in the early 1900s, the government had begun to establish oil reserves for the navy. Two examples of this were Elk Hill, California (established in 1912) and Teapot Dome, Wyoming (1915). As historian Robert Sobel writes, "At the time, the navy was converting its fleet from coal to oil, and it was feared that the supply of oil would be too small to meet future needs. Thus, the need for the reserves was deemed pressing."

The oil reserves were administered by the Interior Department. But once Albert Fall took control of the department, he brought his old friends, Doheny and Sinclair, into the picture.

With the acquiesce of the Secretary of the Navy, a naïve man by the name of Edwin Denby, Fall entered into an alliance with the two. Doheny was chairman of Pan-American Petroleum and Transport Company while Sinclair owned Mammoth Oil Company. Fall then gave them some of the navy's oil reserves for development; Doheny was granted the Elk Hill holdings, while Sinclair gained the right to develop Teapot Dome in Wyoming. In return, the government obtained oil storage tanks in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

But what made this a real scandal was that the negotiations were
conducted in secret, without competitive bidding, and that Fall
had received $400,000 in bribes from Doheny ($100,000) and
Sinclair ($300,000).

We'll pick up the story next week.

Sources: See Part I

Brian Trumbore