TEAPOT DOME SCANDAL

TEAPOT DOME SCANDAL
By Robert W. Duffy
Post-Dispatch
Tuesday, Jan. 13 2004

Teapot Dome, one of the great scandals of the 20th century, was a sludgy story
of oil and bribes. It involved oil company executives and led all the way to
the Cabinet of President Warren G. Harding.

Coverage of this breach of the public trust brought distinction to the
Post-Dispatch for helping to uncover its various intrigues and deceptions. It
also brought glory to a genuine, if tragic, hero in the annals of journalism.

The scandal's name came from a geological formation in Wyoming, one that in
fancy resembled a teapot. This formation rested on a 10,000-acre oil field. But
activity connected with Teapot Dome was only part of the scandal -- there was
also another large field involved -- at Elk Hills, in California.

In 1915, with war raging in Europe, President Woodrow Wilson set aside both
the Wyoming and California deposits for the U.S. Navy, which had begun to use
petroleum rather than coal for fuel.

In 1922, Harding administration officials presided over a secret agreement
to transfer the oil into private hands. The Secretary of the Interior in
Harding's Cabinet was Albert Fall, a New Mexico Republican, whose presence
there was later revealed to have been the result of a deal struck between
politicians and oil interests.

Fall switched control of the oil to the Department of the Interior from the
Navy. Then, in a secret deal, the valuable reserves were leased to private oil
companies who could only profit.

Soon, a political enemy of Secretary Fall noticed that he had made grand
improvements to his ranch in New Mexico. A "loan" from Mammoth Oil, delivered
in a little black bag in cash, and a payoff in Liberty Bonds totaling $230,000,
had made Fall a rich man in the 1920s.

Fall's good fortune did not last. He was caught, tried, convicted of taking
a bribe and sent to prison. He secured a place in White House history by
becoming the first former Cabinet officer ever to do time.

He could place part of the blame for his unhappy end on a reporter named
Paul Y. Anderson.

Anderson worked for the Post-Dispatch from 1917 to 1923 as a news reporter
and editorial writer, but left the paper to cover Teapot Dome on his own. As a
result of his work, the legendary managing editor O.K. Bovard hired him back in
the mid-1920s, and from then until the late 1920s he owned the story.

At first, Fall's conviction looked like the end of the story. However,
Bovard and Anderson remained curious about those Liberty Bonds. It was
established that Secretary Fall had received his $230,000. But the total amount
of bonds purchased by a bogus company incorporated in Canada by unscrupulous
oilmen -- the Continental Trading Co. -- was $3 million. So the newspaper began
inquiries into the disposition of the remaining $2,770,000.

This reporting resulted in the re-opening of the inquiry in the
administration of Calvin Coolidge. And the investigations revealed the Liberty
Bonds purchased by Continental had indeed found their way into the hands of
other politicians well as bankers and financiers.

Anderson was a driven, brilliant, tireless reporter who eventually became
erratic. He was fired in 1938 by the Post-Dispatch "for inattention to duty and
failures to carry out assignments over a period of years." He joined the staff
of the old Star-Times. But in December 1938, in Washington, he killed himself
at 45.

Anderson won a Pulitzer Prize in 1929 for his work on Teapot Dome.
Journalism's most coveted award was given, "For the best example of a
reporter's work during the year, the test being strict accuracy, terseness, the
preference being given to articles that achieve the accomplishment of some
public good commanding attention and respect."

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