Tempest Over Teapot Dome: The Story of Albert B. Fall (Volume 16) (The Oklahoma Western Biographies)

About this book

Albert B. Fall interior secretary in the Harding administration was the first American cabinet member sent to prison for a crime committed in office. In the Teapot Dome affair - the worst modern political scandal until Watergate - Fall leased two naval oil reserves Wyomings Teapot Dome and Californias Elk Hills to Harry F. Sinclair and Edward L. Doheny and received payments of $404 000 from the two millionaire oilmen. Historian David Stratton pulls no punches as he sheds new light on western and national politics conservation and economic development in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Tempest over Teapot Dome describes Falls role in Hardings administration his tribulations in court before going to prison in 1931 his freewheeling career in New Mexico politics his lawyering for underdog ranchers in a bloody range war his gut-fighting style as a U. S. senator who opposed Woodrow Wilsons foreign policy and his strident activities as an expert on Latin American affairs particularly U. S.Mexican relations. Falls belief in the unrestricted and immediate disposition of public lands was as typically western as his black broad-brimmed Stetson hat and his love of fine horses.