Tea Pot Dome, Watergate, Trump: Crime, Cover-up and Curious Death Comparisons

[robertpaulsen]

Tea Pot Dome, Watergate, Trump: Crime, Cover-up and Curious Death Comparisons

Sunday, September 17, 2017

This is Robert Paulsen standing outside of Teapot Rock in Wyoming. Nearby are the Teapot Dome oil fields that are notorious as the focus of the Teapot Dome scandal during the Harding administration in the 1920s. Though Teapot Dome started as a bribery scandal, like most famous political scandals, it was the cover-up that really made the whole affair explode.

The origins of the Teapot Dome scandal began around 1909 when Navy administrators began converting their fleet from coal powered ships to oil powered ships. As more ships were converted, Navy officials became concerned about the possibility of oil running out (an occurrence many Peak Oil deniers point to as a means of dismissing the notion it could ever happen). The Navy asked Congress to set aside federally owned lands where oil deposits existed for protected reserves that would not be used except during a federal emergency. Two of the three reserves, set aside in 1912, were in Elk Hills and Buena Vista Oil Fields in Kern County, California. The other oil reserve set aside was Teapot Dome in Natrona County, Wyoming in 1915.

The corruption that lead to scandal officially started with newly inaugurated President Warren G. Harding switching responsibility of these oil reserves from Navy to Secretary of Interior through Executive Order 3474 on May 31, 1921. The Secretary of Interior was Harding's poker-playing buddy Albert Bacon Fall, who was a Senator from New Mexico until President Harding appointed him in March 1921. It was Fall who actually wrote the Executive Order that Harding signed. Once these oil fields were under Fall's control, he made secret deals with two powerful oilmen, Harry F. Sinclair of Mammoth Oil, a subsidiary of Sinclair Oil Corporation, and Edward L. Doheny of Pan American Petroleum and Transport Company. Fall leased oil production rights to Doheny for the Elk Hills reserve and Sinclair for Teapot Dome. Though both leases were issued without competitive bids, this was not illegal at the time. What was illegal was the bribes of more than $400,000 that Fall accepted from Doheny and Sinclair for these leases.

When independent oilman and future Democratic Governor of Wyoming Leslie Miller observed Sinclair trucks hauling drilling equipment into Teapot Dome, he was suspicious enough to ask Democratic Senator John B. Kendrick to look into it. On April 15, 1922, Kendrick introduced a resolution calling for an investigation into the deal. The leader of the investigation through the Senate Committee on Public Lands was Republican Senator Robert La Follette. La Follette was a Progressive who would later launch a third party run for President in 1924. Any suspicions La Follette may have had regarding the corruption involved in this deal would only have intensified after the quarters of his Senate Office Building were ransacked.

READ MORE AT LINK...

http://americanjudas.blogspot.com/2017/09/tea-pot-dome-watergate-trump-crime.html

OR JUST WATCH THE VIDEO...

[Paka]

1. K&R

I enjoyed that.

[robertpaulsen]

2. Thanks Paka!

I appreciate that.