TRUTH AT LAST

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 221, 12 May 1932, Page 6

TRUTH AT LAST

INSIDE STORY OF THE TEAPOT DOME OIL SCANDAL. FORGED TELEGRAM. Albert B. Fall, former Secretary of the Interior, now in prison as an upshot of the Teapot Dome oil scandal, was appointed to the Cabinet of President Harding as a result of a forged telegram sent to Mr. Harding by Fall but signed with the name of former Attorney-General, Harry M. Daugherty, Mr. Daugherty charges in his book, "The Inside Story of the Harding Tragedy," according to the New York World-Telegram. Mr. Daugherty, collaborating with Thomas Dixon, the authoi", has given his version of virtually every scandal, and answered each accusation that has followed President Harding's death, the newspaper says. The former Attorney-General brands the rumours of negro blood in the Harding family as entirely false, and traces the origin of the story to a quarrel between school children seventy-five years ago, which finished up with children of the Appleman family referring to the Harding ancestors, then youngsters, as coming from negro parents. The American Federation of Labour, Mr. Daugherty declares, was in a plot to "get" him for breaking the railroad strike of 1922 by injunction. Mr. Charles Evans Hughes, the book reveals, once almost slipped into one of President Harding's Congressional messages a paragraph advocating American entrance to the League of Nations. Mrs. Harding discovered it, and in frantic haste called Mr. Daugherty away from a meeting of the Ohio society. Mr. Daugherty pencilled in a substitute paragraph. Mr. Harding said he would not make the change.

Unspoken Antagonism. With Senator Weeks, Mr. Daugherty went to the Capitol, expecting President Harding to end the supremacy of the Republicans by a League endorsement. They were surprised and overjoyed when the President read Mr. Daugherty's paragraph, and they felt the party was saved. Speaking of the telegram, he says Fall sent to President Harding, Mr. Daugherty in his book states: "A. B. Fall and" I could never have been chums in any political enterprise. I think at the last • moment Harding began to fell the unspoken antagonism between us, and hesitated to make the appointment. "And Fall met the crisis in his usual bull-headed fashion. He sent Harding an urgent telegram, asking his immediate appointment, signed my name to it without 'phoning me, wiring or in any way hinting his purpose. i "This message he bodly charged to A. B. Fall. The appointment was made and the mine laid for an explosion about to shake the nation." Mr. Daugherty describes how he took action to prevent revelation of names of important firms, headed by Democrats, who had contributed R the Republican war chest. Contribu tions of these Democrats, Mr. Dixon said, were recorded in the "Jess Smith extra" account in the Midland Bank in Washington. It was to proiect campaign contributors and not to conceal transactions of Mr. Daugher';y that Colonel Thomas W. Miller, as alien property custodian, destroyed the record, the book indicates.