9 American Political Scandals

 

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Oliver F. Atkins—White House Photo/Nixon Presidential Library and Museum/NARA

Greed and lust—for power as well as for sex—are the essential elements of most political scandals. Other contributing factors often include mendacity, obfuscation, obsession, moral bankruptcy, naïveté, misplaced loyalty or trust, and lapse of good judgment. Frequently, a vigilant investigative press is involved. Usually, the crucial question is Who knew what when? Sometimes the consequences for the perpetrators are dire and destructive, but sometimes the perpetrators get off scot-free. The historical impact of scandals can be transient or lasting and profound. Here’s a look at nine of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history.

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• Watergate scandal

  The Watergate scandal of the early 1970s is the gold standard of American political scandals because it forced Richard M. Nixon to become the first—and thus far the only—U.S. president to resign from office. After five men were caught breaking into the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.’s Watergate complex on June 17, 1972, the trail eventually led to Nixon’s Republican administration and to the president himself, who was ultimately incriminated by tape recordings that he had made of Oval Office conversations. Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein—aided by an informant known as “Deep Throat” (later revealed to be FBI Deputy Director Mark Felt)—catalyzed the probing of the ever-expanding break-in trial presided over by Judge John J. Sirica and the Senate special investigating committee chaired by Samuel J. Ervin, Jr. On August 9, 1974, facing likely impeachment, Nixon stepped down. Nearly a dozen of Nixon’s advisers and acolytes received prison terms. Nixon was pardoned by his successor, Pres. Gerald Ford.

• Teapot Dome Scandal

  Pres. Warren G. Harding apparently was a very nice guy (albeit a philanderer) who really didn’t know how to pick his friends. Many members of the Ohio Gang, who had ascended to high political office by hitching their wagons to Harding’s rising star, became embroiled in scandal. Attorney General Harry Daugherty, Harding’s longtime campaign manager, was accused of selling government supplies of alcohol during Prohibition. Charles R. Forbes, head of the Veterans Bureau, was convicted on bribery and corruption charges. But the scandal for which Harding is remembered was engineered by Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall. Two large oil reserves—Elk Hills, California, and Teapot Dome, near Casper, Wyoming—had been preserved for the energy needs of the U.S. Navy. Fall persuaded Harding to transfer control of the reserves from the Navy to the Department of the Interior. Then, in 1921–22, without seeking competitive bids, Fall leased Elk Hills to oil tycoon Edward L. Doheny of the Pan American Petroleum Company and Teapot Dome to Harry F. Sinclair of Mammoth Oil. Subsequent congressional investigations into the Teapot Dome Scandal revealed that Fall had received as much as $400,000 in payments and loans as a bribe to facilitate the leases, which were subsequently terminated by Congress. Fall was convicted of accepting bribes and became the first sitting cabinet member to be imprisoned. Harding was never personally implicated in the scandal, but the stress related to it took a toll on his health, and he died in office.

• Whiskey Ring Scandal

  Like Harding, Ulysses S. Grant was seen as a man of great personal integrity. But, also like Harding, Grant was a poor judge of character, and his presidential administration was awash in corruption. In 1869 Grant’s cronies Jay Gould and James Fisk brought on the Black Friday stock market crisis. Before the 1872 election, Grant dispatched Internal Revenue supervisor Gen. John McDonald to Missouri to bolster waning political support. McDonald “rewarded” Grant’s trust by establishing the “Whiskey Ring,” a multistate criminal network in which whiskey distillers, Treasury and Internal Revenue agents, shopkeepers, and others worked together by manipulating liquor taxes to defraud the federal government of some $1.5 million per year by 1873. In 1875, as Treasury Secretary Benjamin Bristow was breaking up the ring, Grant appointed a special prosecutor, John B. Henderson. When Henderson began closing in on Grant’s personal secretary, Orville E. Babcock, and intimated that Grant might be involved, the president fired and replaced Henderson. Convinced that Babcock was innocent, Grant testified on his behalf. Babcock went free, but 110 of the 237 other individuals who were indicted were convicted.