"A Stench"

A Democrat writing to the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee referred to the disclosures of the Senate Public Lands Committee in regard to leases of Naval oil reserves as "this scandal which is a stench in the nostrils of all decent citizens." The past week did much to shed light on, if not purify, the matter.

The Prelude.

Sept. 27, 1909, President Taft withdrew 3,000,000 acres of public lands in California and Wyoming from "location" under the placer mining law.

Sept. 2, 1912, President Taft created Naval Oil Reserve No. 1 at Elk Hills, Calif., containing 38,969 acres.

Dec. 13, 1912, President Taft created Reserve No. 2 near Buena Vista Hills, Calif., containing 29,341 acres.

April 30, 1915, President Wilson created Reserve No. 3 (Teapot Dome) near Casper, Wyo., containing 9,481 acres. (There are two other Reserves, Nos. 4 and 5, in Utah in the shale oil region.)

May 31, 1921, Secretary of the Navy Denby transferred the Administration of the Naval Oil Reserves to the then Secretary of the Interior, Albert Bacon Fall. Several Naval officers protested.

Nov. 30, 1921, Edward L. Doheny, head of the Mexican Petroleum Corporation, for 30 years a personal friend of Fall, according to his admission, lent Secretary Fall $100,000 in cash on an unsecured demand note bearing no interest.

April 7-12, 1922, Secretary Fall leased Naval Reserve No. 3 (Teapot Dome) to Harry Ford Sinclair, who turned it over to the Mammoth Oil Co. in exchange for $106,000,000 of stock.

April 14, 1922, news of the lease was published.

April 18, 1922, Departments of Interior and Navy announced that the lease had been made.

April 25, 1922, the Doheny interests received a preferential right to lease Reserve No. 1 under a contract to perform certain works for the Navy at Pearl Harbor.

Dec. 12, 1922, lease to Reserve No. 1 given to Doheny interests.

March 4, 1923, Secretary Fall retired from the Cabinet.

June or July, 1923, by Mr. Sinclair's direction $25,000 in Liberty bonds was sent to Mr. Fall, who later gave a note for the amount to Colonel J. W. Zevely, Mr. Sinclair's personal attorney.

About the same time Mr. Fall received $10,000 for expense money on a trip to Russia with Mr. Sinclair on oil business.

The Investigation.

The Senate was incited to look into the oil lease matter by the terms of the Teapot Dome lease, some Senators charging that the return to the Government was inadequate. The Government gets a royalty of about 17% on the oil extracted. The oil is refined, delivered to seaboard and placed in tanks built by the Sinclair interests, but belonging to the Navy. For these services the Government yields about two-thirds of its royalty oil to the oil company, so that assuming that there are about 26,000,000 barrels of oil in Teapot Dome, the Government will receive about 1,666,000 barrels and some oil storage tanks. Fall defended the terms of this lease as the best available, but the Senate ordered an investigation, which began last Summer.

The investigation developed that about the time of the oil leases, Mr. Fall had suddenly acquired considerable sums of money. Mr. Fall testified, not under oath, that he had borrowed '$100,000 from Edward B. McLean, Washington newspaper publisher, and that he had never received from Doheny or Sinclair "'one cent on account of any oil lease or upon any account whatsoever." Then Mr. McLean told that he had given Secretary Fall $100,000 in checks, which in a few days had been returned uncashed. This was followed immediately by Archibald Roosevelt's resignation from one of the Sinclair Oil Companies (TIME, Jan. 28).

Last week Mr. Doheny came forward and told (see above) that he had lent $100,000 to Mr. Fall, and Colonel Zevely told of the later loan of $25,000 in bonds from Sinclair.

Action.

President Coolidge, following the latter disclosures, announced that he would have legal action instituted on behalf of the Government by special counsel, chosen from prominent attorneys of both parties. The Democrats accused the President of having taken this action only to forestall their demand for it. Meanwhile measures were proposed in both houses for revoking the oil leases. Mr. Doheny also offered to cancel his company's leases if a board of inquiry determined that they had not been entered into for the best interests of the Government.

Following the President's announcement that suits would be instituted, the House passed a resolution (with one Texan--Blanton--dissenting) to authorize the President to expend $100,000 in prosecution. In the Senate the Democrats set up a cry for the resignation of Secretary Denby, of Attorney General Daugherty, of every official suspected of "misfeasance or malfeasance" in office.

The Characters.

Secretary Fall is a New Mexican rancher, for many years interested in mines, lumber and railroad properties in his State. He was twice State Attorney General and has been a member of the State Supreme Court. Later he was a Senator, and one of the bitterest League-of-Nations irreconcilables. He was summoned to testify again last week, but his testimony was postponed because he was suffering from bronchitis.

Harry Ford Sinclair is one of the largest oil operators in the world with wealth estimated in hundreds of millions. He was one of the chief backers of the now defunct Federal League, which tried to buck organized baseball. He owns the Rancocas racing stables, to which Zev, victor over Papyrus, belongs. Now he is in Europe "indefinitely."

Edward L. Doheny, formerly a miner, made his fortune in oil near Los Angeles sortie 30 years ago, and later made a great strike in the Tampico oil fields of Mexico.

The famous Zev is the namesake of Colonel J. W. Zevely, attorney for Sinclair.