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

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.

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.

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.