WHEN WEALTH IS BROUGHT INTO COURT
When Wealth is Brought Into Court "YOU CANNOT convict a hundred million dollars," Francis J. Heney, one of the greatest of all prosecutors, despairingly declared in the midst of his famous contest...
...It has piled up a great mass of evidence to support its charges, so complex that the jury may well be confused by its very completeness...
...And yet I know what "Fighting Bob" would say if he were here today...
...And so those of us whom he has left behand to carry on his work must draw our inspir on from his valiant spirit, and regardless of the outcome in this or any other case, must fight on in the faith that in the end right must triumph over all the powers of darkness...
...They are charged with having corruptly conspired to defraud the United States in connection with the leasing of some 30,000 acres in the Elk Hills Naval oil reserve, estimated by Doheny to be worth a hundred million dollars...
...Day by day and night by night he dug into these secret transactions...
...For more than ten years Senator La Follette had fought and blocked the oil interests that had sought by every cunning device of legislation to loot the nation's oil reserves...
...I have said this trial was the acid test of the possibility of convicting a hundred million dollars...
...e. Albert B. Fall) has been acting as the business agent of the Navy Department, under direction of the President, handling naval reserves of the United States...
...The Iundamental basis of the charge of corruption is the admitted passing of $100,-000 in currency from Doheny to Fall while he was engaged in negotiating the leasing of these oil lands to Doheny's Company...
...Today in the quiet District Court in Washington we are witnessing the supreme test of the correctness of Heney's epigram...
...From his friends in the Navy, for he had many...
...That is why I have called it the supreme test of Heney's declaration that it is impossible to convict a hundred million dollars...
...Two men—Albert B. Fall, former Secretary of the Interior, and Edward L. Doheny, oil magnate—are facing the har of justice...
...BASIL M. MANLY...
...As I am writing these lines the government has just finished putting in its case...
...So thorough was his work that when he took the floor of the Senate he was able to present such evidence of this gigantic raid on the nation's resources, that not one of the many Senatorial friends of fall, Doheny and Sinclair dared to raise their voices in opposition...
...But there was no surrender in "Fighting Bob...
...Only a few weeks ago, Harry M. Daugh-erty, Fall's colleague in the Harding cabinet, was tried, also on a charge of criminal conspiracy...
...For the sake of one's soul, for the sake of the nation, for the sake of humanity, the forces of evil must be resisted...
...This is Fall's admission of his personal responsibility and of the position of trust which he occupied by direction of the President...
...He was so poor that he had not paid the taxes on his ranch at Three Rivers, New Mexico, for years prior to his appointment...
...Except for the actual evidence of the cash transaction, his case was substantially as complete as it is today...
...One of these men, Fall, was relatively poor until he became Secretary of the interior...
...To him defeat even in a test case did not end the struggle...
...Never know defeat in a good cause," was his slogan...
...This trial is without precedent in the history of the United States...
...He had exposed the "jokers" which they had sought to insert in pending legislation and had defeated their cunningly drafted oil leasing bills...
...It is the second time that an ex-cabinet officer has been tried for crime in this country...
...As I sat in the dreary court room listening to the monotonous introduction of the technical evidence, my mind went back to the days when I sat in Robert M. La Follette's office, helping him while he marshalled the evidence for his great speech of April 28, 1922, which brought the Senate reluctantly but unanimously to order the investigation which has now resulted in this epochal criminal trial...
...A weaker man would have thrown up his hands and surrendered...
...If there was crime, if there was corruption, must be fought...
...It was but a spur to greater exertion...
...He would not wince regardless of the outcome in this particular case...
...Then suddenly he discovered that secretly and in defiance of law, these oil reserves which he had so jealously guarded had been opened to exploitation by executive order under circumstances that to his mind indicated gross fraud...
...FIRST, Fall's letter to Senator Harreld of Oklahoma, in which he declared: "The Secretary of the Interior (i...
...The nation's oil reserves seemed safe, and so his attention turned to other matters of pressing importance...
...from the car load of official documents with which the Interior Department sought to overwhelm him, he assembled his evidence bit by bit, fragment by fragment, until his suspicion of fraud grew into a certainty...
...He is rated as one of the six richest men in the United States with total wealth of more than $100,000,000...
...from his admirers among the independent oil men, whom he had labored to protect...
...But this is the first time in the history of the world that a man of Doheny's wealth has been brought face to face with criminal charges of personal guilt...
...From all this maze of technical evidence two points seem to stand out with crystal clearness...
...Thus this one man of courage and steadfastness wrought victory out of the dust of defeat...
...The other man, Doheny, is rich...
...SECOND, Doheny's personal testimony, now admitted in evidence, that while the negotiations for leasing this immensely valuable property were under way, he stecretly sent Fall $100,000 in currency in a satchel, which was carried to Washington by his own son and handed to Fall in his private apartments in the Wardman Park Hotel...
...When Wealth is Brought Into Court "YOU CANNOT convict a hundred million dollars," Francis J. Heney, one of the greatest of all prosecutors, despairingly declared in the midst of his famous contest against the Beef Trust...
Vol. 18 • December 1926 • No. 12
