CREDIT MOBILIER: One of the worst pre-Enron financial scandals on record, this tacky affair took place during the notoriously incompetent presidency of Ulysses S. Grant and revolved around the building of the Union Pacific Railroad. Its most visible villain was Oakes Ames, a director of the railroad and a member of the House of Representatives. When Congress agreed to pick up the tab for building the Union Pacific, Ames, who knew the job could be done for much less than the amount granted, got together with some other stockholders to form the Crédit Mobilier, a dummy construction corporation. They used the company to divert excess funds into their pockets. By the time the project was completed in 1869, it was heavily in debt and Ames and his friends had skimmed about $23 million in profits. To be on the safe side, Ames passed out Crédit Mobilier stock to some of his favorite congressmen. Then, in one of those priceless moves that make history, he wrote a letter to a friend telling him he’d distributed the stock “where it would do the most good” and listing the names of the lucky recipients. Naturally, the newspapers got hold of the letter, and you can guess the rest. Note, however, that although the list implicated officials as high up as the vice president, none was ever prosecuted. In fact, some historians now wonder what the big fuss was about. After all, they say, what’s a few million dollars in the nation’s history? They got the job done, didn’t they? Yes, but on the other hand, who rides the Union Pacific anymore?
TEAPOT DOME: An oil scandal that took place during the administration of Warren G. Harding, generally acknowledged to have been one of the most worthless presidents ever. Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall persuaded Harding to give him control of the U.S. naval oil reserves at Elk Hill, California, and Teapot Dome, Wyoming. A year later, Fall secretly leased the reserves to the owners of two private oil companies, one in exchange for a personal “loan” of $100,000, the other for $85,000 cash, some shares of stock, and a herd of cattle. It wasn’t long before the secret leaked and everybody was up before a Senate investigating committee. In yet another remarkable verdict, all three men were acquitted, although Fall was later tried on lesser charges and became the first cabinet member ever to go to prison. Meanwhile, the public was outraged that the Senate had prosecuted at all; this was, as you’ll recall, the Roaring Twenties, when everyone was busy doing the Charleston or making shady deals themselves. Even the New York newspapers accused the Senate of character assassination, mudslinging, and generally acting in poor taste.
THE SACCO-VANZETTI CASE: People still seem to take this one personally. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were Italian immigrants accused of murdering two people during an armed robbery in Massachusetts in 1920. The trial, which took place in the wake of the wave of national hysteria known as the “Red Scare,” was a joke; the public was paranoid about immigrants and the presiding judge made it clear that he knew what to expect from people who talked funny To make matters worse, Sacco and Vanzetti were avowed anarchists who both owned guns. Although there was no hard evidence against them, they were convicted and sentenced to death. The case became an international cause célèbre, and people like Felix Frankfurter, John Dos Passos, and Edna St. Vincent Mil-lay spent years pressing for a retrial. When Sacco and Vanzetti were finally electrocuted in 1927, everyone was convinced that the whole liberal cause had collapsed. In the end, liberalism didn’t die, of course, and Sacco and Vanzetti became martyrs, with poems and plays written about them. Unfortunately, modern ballistics tests conducted in 1961 seemed to prove conclusively that the fatal bullet used in the robbery did indeed come from Sacco’s gun. Never mind, it still looks like Vanzetti might have been innocent.
THE PUMPKIN PAPERS: A misnomer, referring to the Alger Hiss case. It is essentially another story of Red-baiting and questionable goings-on in the courtroom, but nobody feels all that bad about this one; they just love to argue about it. In 1948 Alger Hiss, a former high official in the State Department, was accused by Whittaker Chambers, a senior editor at Time magazine and a former spy, of helping him deliver secret information to the Russians. Nobody believed Chambers until Richard Nixon, then an ambitious young lawyer out to make a name for himself, took on his case. Soon afterward, Chambers suddenly produced five rolls of incriminating microfilm (not “papers” at all) that he claimed to have hidden inside a pumpkin on his Maryland farm. These, along with an old typewriter supposedly belonging to Hiss, were the famous props on which the case against him rested. Nixon pushed hard, and the government bent the law in order to try Hiss after the statute of limitations on the alleged crime had run out. He was convicted and served almost four years in jail; Nixon’s fortunes were—or seemed to be—made. The case just won’t die, however; new evidence and new theories keep popping up like ghosts in an Edgar Allan Poe story. The most recent appeared in October 1992, when a Russian general named Volkogonov, chairman of Russia’s military-intelligence archives, declared that in examining the newly opened KGB files, he’d found nothing to incriminate Hiss. He concluded that the charges against Hiss were “completely groundless.” Hiss fans celebrated, and the news media headlined the story for days. Then Volkogonov recanted, saying, well, he hadn’t actually gone through all the files himself, it was more like he’d chatted with a couple of former KGB agents for a few minutes. Hiss foes celebrated, while at least one pro-Hiss political commentator suggested that Nixon may have had a word with Russian president Boris Yeltsin, who happened to be Volkogonov’s boss. The upshot: To this day, nobody quite believes that Hiss was entirely innocent; on the other hand, they’re sure Nixon wasn’t.
Famous Last Words
Why worth knowing? Because in a country with a two-hundred-year-old constitution that was never very nuts-and-bolts in the first place, executive and legislative powers that cancel each other out, and a couple hundred million people all talking at once, it can be mighty tricky to tell our rights from our wrongs, much less make either stand up in court. In the end, none of us can be sure of what’s a freedom and what’s a felony until nine cantankerous justices have smoothed their robes, scratched their heads, and made up their minds. And lately, given how rarely the justices are able to agree on anything, even that doesn’t seem to help.
The Supreme Court in 1921. That’s Justice Brandeis in the back row, far left; Oliver Wendell Holmes is seated second from right. MARBURY v. MADISON (1803)