TEAPOT DOME.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 12 April 1928, Page 7

TEAPOT DOME.

STORY OF THIS LEASES. A LUNG BATTLE. Alter seven yea is ot iin estigatioii and oi court trials, civil ami criminal, the mystery ot Teapot Dome is still unsolved, wrote an American eoriespondenti oc “The Tunes'’ recently. The unwinding ot the tangled story goes oil interminably, us in a Chinese drama, with, the “atmosphere” getting Ucwavs thicker and thicker. .Principals and supernumeraries crowd the stage, and the scenes shut with the vagaries u, the actors. There is not one plot but three, or maybe four, and of subplots no end. Presidents, Cabinet udicers, oil magnates, “ex-bandits, ’ secret service detectives, journalists, Senators, adventuresses, bootleggers, prize-light promoters, admirals are for ever rushing into or scuttling into the limelight, or “materialising, ’ hazily, against the back-drop. there is a. wealth of “properties”; millions oi debars, oceans of blocks ol Li'-erty Bonds, “big brown packages” and ‘Tittle black bags”; a goodly stock, too. of red herrings for drawing across trails —these last most energetically employed. There are mortgages and loans, share certificates, and bloodstock.

The dialogue is of infinite variety, now dull now lively, with diverting narratives of things that never happened, and even more diverting ones of things that did—strange tales that Ananias would have blushed to own, and other simple, if startling, disclosures drawn from the very well of truth. Teapot Dome is only one of the threads of the story. It is twisted in a formidable snarl of other threads, but with a little cutting and tying, here and there, it will be possible, perhaps. to draw it out from the skein. To begin somewhere, it is advisable to go back at least as far as March, 1.921, when Warren G. Harding was inaugurated as President of the United States, and took Albert 13. Fall, of New Mexico, into liis Cabinet as Secretary of the Interior. Two months after that event. Mr. Harding, at the .suggestion of Mr. Fall and Mr, Edwin I fen by. Secretary of the Navy, signed an executive order transferring the naval oil lands from the jurisdiction of the Navy Department to that of the Interior Department. Although this was strongly resented by many naval officers, there was no particular public discussion of it at that time. Early in the next year, 1922. a rumour got abroad that the naval oil lands were being leased to private interests. The fact that they actually had been leased did not become generally known until the middle of April, when Senator La Eollette persuaded the Senate to demand from Secretary Fall copies of the leases. There were two of these properties, Teapot Dome, in Wyoming, and Elk Hills, in California. When it was discovered that Teapot Dome had been turned over to the Mammoth/ Oil Company, controlled by Harry F. Sinclair. and Elk Hills to Edward L. Doheny's Pan-American Petroleum Company, there was at once a storm. The Senate authorised its Committee on Public ('.alids to make an investigation The hearings, however, did not begin until October of the next year. This was largely because it took Senator Walsh, the committee’s prosecutor, all that time to procure and lead through the voluminous records of the Department- of the Interior hearing upon the leases. Meanwhile, though President Harding had written to the Senate that all f all's acts had his “entire approval,’’ Kail had resigned as Secretary of the Interior —"to devote himself to private business.’’ Shortly aTterwards lie went abroad with Sinclair. who gave him £2OOO for his expenses.

When the Semite Com mil tee nt last began its hearings—-this was in the autumn of 1023—Ka II was the first witness. He said he was proud of the leases, that the secrecy of the transactions was in the public interest—there was a hint of impending war with

‘ a Pacific Power'’ —:md that, it tlie leases were not made, the oil from the naval lands would all have been drained oft in a tew years by privatelyowned wolis on adjoining lands. The Secretary of the Navy, testifying a few days later, was not so proud of his part in the transaction. He said he had signed the leases without inestimating them tally.