Oil Fields, Bags of Cash, a Presidency Exposed
HISTORY This Week
The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios
4.5 • 4.2K Ratings
🗓️ 6 April 2026
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
April 7, 1922. A cabinet secretary signs a secret deal and locks it in his desk.
The land in question holds one of the largest untapped oil reserves in the country. Officially, it belongs to the U.S. Navy. Unofficially, it’s just been handed to a private oilman – no bidding, no oversight, no witnesses.
For Albert Fall, it’s a win-win. For the oil industry, it’s a jackpot. But big money is hard to hide.
Within days, the deal leaks. At first, no one seems to care. The economy is booming. The president is popular. Washington shrugs. Then, investigators start asking a simple question: where did Albert Fall get all of this new money?
Before Watergate, there was Teapot Dome.
How did a secret oil deal become the biggest political scandal of its time? And how did it change the way the U.S. government polices itself?
Special thanks to Joshua Kastenberg, professor at the University of New Mexico School of Law; and Jack McElroy, author of Citizen Carl: The Editor Who Cracked Teapot Dome, Shot a Judge, and Invented the Parking Meter.
Other sources include: The Teapot Dome Scandal by Laton McCartney, Tempest Over Teapot Dome by David Stratton, and Senator Thomas J. Walsh of Montana by J. Leonard Bates.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The History Channel, original podcast. |
| 0:05.1 | History this week, April 7, 1922. |
| 0:10.2 | I'm John Earl. |
| 0:14.9 | With the stroke of a pen, Albert Fall really thinks he's pulled it off. |
| 0:20.4 | Fall has worked the land all his life, mining it, farming it, harvesting it. |
| 0:25.6 | He has a frontiersman's belief that America's riches are there to be exploited. |
| 0:30.6 | Why lock them away when you can create wealth today? |
| 0:34.6 | By Fall's own account, the contract is a win-win. |
| 0:38.3 | The government gets royalties and new oil storage facilities. |
| 0:43.3 | Industry gets to drill one of the richest oil fields left untapped. |
| 0:48.3 | Only Easterners suffering from what some called conservation hysteria could possibly object. |
| 0:56.0 | They'd howled when Albert Fall became Secretary of the Interior. |
| 1:00.0 | Just think how they'll howl when they hear about this secret contract to drill unprotected land. |
| 1:06.0 | That's why it has to stay hush-hush a little while longer. |
| 1:17.1 | Falls' office in Washington, D.C. is as majestic as the frontier itself. |
| 1:21.9 | Redwood paneling, Native American faces etched in glass, and a pair of stuffed Alaskan eagles so lifelike that they seem about to take off. |
| 1:28.3 | Today, there are few witnesses as Fall signs the contract. |
| 1:33.3 | Once all the signatures are gathered, he locks the document away in his desk |
| 1:38.3 | and orders his assistant to tell nobody. |
| 1:41.3 | He really thinks he's pulled it off. But big money, really big money, is hard |
| 1:47.0 | to hide. And with his signature, Fall has set in motion a scandal that, for half a century, |
| 1:53.0 | will be the textbook example of corruption. Before Watergate, there was Teapot Dome. |
... |
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