The Teapot Dome Scandal

In the greatest story of government scandal ever told, Warren Harding's Secretary of the Interior was "giving away oil leases like kisses at a wedding." Oil magnates of the 1920s then tapped into the public's petroleum reserves, realizing hundreds of millions of dollars in profits, all quid pro quo. Narrator William Hughes races through the details of the devilish deals like he's just finished 20 grande lattes. His caffeinated style mixed with a conspiracy as complicated as an Agatha Christie novel will leave many listeners' heads spinning--and grateful there won't be a test at the end. Hughes has a laudable knack with the numerous quotes, using subtle changes in his word stress to set them apart without employing annoying pauses or hundreds of characterizations. J.A.H. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

February 4, 2008
McCartney (Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story) does an efficient job of narrating 20th-century America\x92s first great federal corruption scandal. Petroleum preserves (or domes) were set aside on public lands in California and Wyoming, to be kept until needed by the navy. During 1921, President Harding\x92s secretary of the interior, Albert Fall, took control of the lands from Secretary of the Navy Edwin Denby and leased two domes\x97Teapot Dome in Wyoming and California\x92s Elk Hills\x97to Harry Sinclair\x92s Mammoth Oil Co. and Edward Doheny\x92s Pan-American Petroleum and Transport Co., respectively. Concurrently, Fall received personal payments from the two men totaling $404,000, some of which he distributed to underlings who helped with the transactions. Scandal ensued, continuing through the presidency of Harding\x92s successor, Calvin Coolidge. Congressional investigations were held; Coolidge appointed special prosecutors, and in 1929 a federal court found Fall guilty of bribery, fining him $100,000 and sentencing him to a year in prison. Though McCartney adds nothing new to the story, he has a solid grasp of it in this retelling.