The Teapot Dome scandal of the 1920s involved national security, big oil companies and bribery and corruption at the highest levels of the government of the United States.

In 1920, U.S. Sen. Albert Fall was appointed to be secretary of Interior during the presidency of Warren G. Harding. Fall convinced the secretary of the Navy that, since these were American lands federally controlled under Teddy Roosevelt’s federal land conservation program, the interior Dept. should control them. Once the Teapot Dome oil field was under his control, Secretary Fall made secret deals with two prominent oilmen, Edward Doheny and Harry Sinclair. Both men, close friends of Fall, paid him bribes to authorize them to drill in the three naval petroleum reserves—contrary to the letter and spirit of the law. In return, private oil companies repaid him with “gifts” and “loans” amounting to $400,000.

 

Following a lengthy Senate investigation, he was tried for accepting bribes. He 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.

 

http://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/teapot-dome-scandal