The Teapot Dome Scandal

Zusatztext A terrific tale that resonates nearly a century on! at a time when many people are still wondering about the connections between Big Oil and politicians at the highest levels. Jon Meacham! author of Franklin and Winston This is a story that has it alla Jazz Age background! a pleasure-loving president surrounded by booze and chorus girls! boomtown capitalists from the Wild West! [and] conniving politicians. . . . [Laton McCartney has] a certain zest for Teapot 's sordid comedy [and] delivers fresh! arresting portraits of the main players! some of them lovable rogues! others beady-eyed scoundrels. The New York Times The most thorough treatment of the scandals to date. Los Angeles Times Book Review Titillating! tantalizing . . . The book reads like a novel. McCartney's cast of characters jumps off the page. Baltimore Sun A cautionary tale of what happens when corrupt and indifferent public officials give an industry undue influence over public policy. The Denver Post Fascinating reading. St. Louis Post-Dispatch Informationen zum Autor Laton McCartney Klappentext In this amazing and at times ribald story! Laton McCartney tells how Big Oil handpicked Warren G. Harding! an obscure Ohio senator! to serve as our twenty-third president. Harding and his "oil cabinet made it possible for cronies to secure vast fuel reserves that had been set aside for use by the U.S. Navy. In exchange! the oilmen paid off senior government officials! bribed newspaper publishers! and covered the GOP campaign debt. When news of the scandal finally emerged! the consequences were disastrous. Drawing on contemporary records newly made available to McCartney! The Teapot Dome Scandal reveals a shocking! revelatory picture of just how far-reaching the affair was! how high the stakes! and how powerful the conspirators-all told in a dazzling narrative style. Zusammenfassung In this amazing and at times ribald story! Laton McCartney tells how Big Oil handpicked Warren G. Harding! an obscure Ohio senator! to serve as our twenty-third president. Harding and his oil cabinet made it possible for cronies to secure vast fuel reserves that had been set aside for use by the U.S. Navy. In exchange! the oilmen paid off senior government officials! bribed newspaper publishers! and covered the GOP campaign debt. When news of the scandal finally emerged! the consequences were disastrous. Drawing on contemporary records newly made available to McCartney! The Teapot Dome Scandal reveals a shocking! revelatory picture of just how far-reaching the affair was! how high the stakes! and how powerful the conspiratorsall told in a dazzling narrative style. ...

#8220;A terrific tale that resonates nearly a century on, at a time when many people are still wondering about the connections between Big Oil and politicians at the highest levels.”
–Jon Meacham, author of Franklin and Winston

“This is a story that has it all–a Jazz Age background, a pleasure-loving president surrounded by booze and chorus girls, boomtown capitalists from the Wild West, [and] conniving politicians. . . . [Laton McCartney has] a certain zest for Teapot’s sordid comedy [and] delivers fresh, arresting portraits of the main players, some of them lovable rogues, others beady-eyed scoundrels.”
–The New York Times

“The most thorough treatment of the scandals to date.”
–Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Titillating, tantalizing . . . The book reads like a novel. McCartney’s cast of characters jumps off the page.”
–Baltimore Sun

“A cautionary tale of what happens when corrupt and indifferent public officials give an industry undue influence over public policy.”
–The Denver Post

“Fascinating reading.”
–St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Autorentext
Laton McCartney

Klappentext
In this amazing and at times ribald story, Laton McCartney tells how Big Oil handpicked Warren G. Harding, an obscure Ohio senator, to serve as our twenty-third president. Harding and his "oil cabinet” made it possible for cronies to secure vast fuel reserves that had been set aside for use by the U.S. Navy. In exchange, the oilmen paid off senior government officials, bribed newspaper publishers, and covered the GOP campaign debt. When news of the scandal finally emerged, the consequences were disastrous. Drawing on contemporary records newly made available to McCartney, The Teapot Dome Scandal reveals a shocking, revelatory picture of just how far-reaching the affair was, how high the stakes, and how powerful the conspirators-all told in a dazzling narrative style.

Leseprobe
1 A Reversal of Fortune

Ardmore, Oklahoma, November 21, 1920

“The Oil King of Oklahoma” came back to the Randal Hotel and flopped down on the bed in room 28 without undressing. It was just after 6:00 p.m. Jake Hamon had been drinking most of the afternoon. He needed a nap if he was going to make supper.

Clara Hamon was in the adjoining room when Jake came in. She listened as he dropped his keys and change on the bureau and collapsed on the bed. She and Jake had been together ten years. They shared the Hamon name but were neither married nor related. A few months after they met, Jake had paid his nephew Frank Hamon $10,000 to marry Clara and then sent him off on the first train to California. The marriage had been a “blind.” Jake wanted Clara for himself. Sharing the Hamon name made it easier for them to travel together, registering in hotels as Jake and Clara Hamon.

Jake had left his wife and two children for Clara. A clerk in a dry goods store, Clara had been seventeen at the time, eighteen years Jake’s junior. With her wavy brown hair modestly done up, her deep blue eyes, and her reluctance to wear rouge, she looked more like an attractive young schoolteacher than Jake Hamon’s mistress. After they met, Jake offered her a job, sent her to stenography school, and took her out to the oil fields with him when he’d been wildcatting on the Osage and up on the Panhandle. Clara was smart and every bit as ambitious as Jake. For the past few years, she’d been acting as his business partner and adviser. “He was . . . a masterful man,” Clara said. “He dominated me from the first time I looked into his eyes and noted the strange glint in them.”

Now Jake had hit the big time, the jackpot of all jackpots. Not even in his wildest dreams could he have imagined the good fortune that had recently befallen him. Until six months ago, Jake had been a big fish in a pond that was far too small to accommodate his vast ambitions. “The Oil King of Oklahoma,” the newspapers called him. The raucous, hard-drinking Hamon had graduated from the Law Department of the University of Kansas, then set off for Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), where he clerked in a store in Newkirk. When the Kiowa-Comanche country opened up to settlement, Jake went in with the first rush of new settlers to Lawton, then an Indian town. Over the next few years, he had been named Lawton’s first city attorney and chairman of the Oklahoma Republican Territorial Committee; made money building a railroad with John Ringling, the circus impresario; and then got into oil, where the real money was.

With the 1920 presidential election coming up, Jake decided to gamble almost everything he had on backing a long shot in the 1920 Republican presidential convention, Senator Warren G. Harding from Ohio. Hamon borrowed nearly $1 million from the National City Bank of New York (today’s Citibank), using his substantial oil holdings as collateral. He took his bankroll to Chicago and sp…

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