(3 of 4)
In 1922, the late Senator La Follette demanded a Senate investigation of the leases. President Harding covered his Secretaries with a long letter of explanation which Fall had prepared. "The policy decided upon and the subsequent acts have at all times had my entire approval," said the President's letter. But the inquiry went ahead and Senator Walsh of Montana plunged undaunted into a truckload of documents which Fall delivered as evidence of his good faith. It took Senator Walsh a year and a half to digest the whole mass of documents. Six months before Walsh finished, Secretary Fall resigned "to devote his time to his private interests." Fall went abroad with Sinclair, receiving $10,000 for his expenses.
Suits. Spurred by the Senate's findings, the Department of Justice began five suits—two civil suits to void the Elk Hills and Teapot Dome leases; three criminal suits, charging Fall-and-Doheny and Fall-and-Sinclair with conspiracy to defraud, and Fall-and-Doheny with bribery. Last autumn, the last of the civil suits was settled. The U. S. recovered all its oil reserves, plus improvements which the "tainted" lessees had to default. In the Fall-Doheny conspiracy case, a District of Columbia jury found the defendants not guilty. The Fall-Doheny bribery case has yet to be tried.
When Fall and Sinclair went to trial last autumn, Sinclair or his friends hired Burns detectives to shadow the jury. At this they were caught and a mistrial was declared. Sinclair, earlier sentenced for contempt of the Senate, was sentenced to six months in jail for contempt of court. The present trial is a new version of last autumn's mistrial, with Fall temporarily excused as a defendant on account of sickness.
Plans. Long trials do not, however, a prison make, nor sentences a cage—not for Harry Ford Sinclair. The thousands of dollars of bail which keep him at large are scarcely pin-money for a man whose financial operations have been called "cosmic" by his admirers. Last week came reports that other oil companies, such as Standard of Indiana, with which Sinclair is closely affiliated, were buying control of Sinclair Consolidated. And Sinclair's $500,000 town house in Manhattan went on the market last week. But underlings at the Sinclair office in Manhattan indignantly denied a rumor that Sinclair was retiring. A popular view in Wall Street was that the Sinclair holdings were to be "made respectable" through mergers and changed names. And if and when Harry Ford Sinclair goes to jail, his obscure, presumably honest brother, E. W. Sinclair, will remain to look after his interests.