The Strange Death of President Harding - Softcover

Means, Gaston B.; Thacker, May Dixon

3.76

25 ratings by Goodreads

9780898755978: The Strange Death of President Harding

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0898755972 ISBN 13: 9780898755978

Publisher: Univ Pr of the Pacific, 2001

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Awesome inside-track from the diaries of Gaston B. Means and his the Department of Justice Investigations. Means asserts that Harding was poisoned. Mrs. Harding employed Gaston Means as a private detective in 1921. Teapot Dome was breaking. The scandal took its toll, and by the spring of 1923, Harding was visibly distraught at what he regarded as the betrayal of his friends who were taking advantage of his kindliness and lax administration. He sought escape from Washington in mid-June by taking a trip to Alaska with his wife and a large entourage. On his way home at the end of July, the president complained of abdominal pain, but he seemed to rally as he rested at a San Francisco hotel. On the evening of August 2, however, as his wife read to him from a magazine, Harding suddenly died from either a heart attack or stroke. This book is full of cool, insider and conspiracy "stuff" (for lack of a better word).

The appendix lists a number of deaths, suicides, investigation notes, a request by Mrs. Harding that no death mask be made, a few details on the death of General Sawyer ("died in the same mysterious manner" as Harding) who may or may not have been in Harding's death room, etc.

The Teapot Dome Scandal (also called The Oil Reserves, or Elk Hills Scandal) in American history, was a scandal of the early 1920s surrounding the secret leasing of federal oil reserves by the Secretary of the Interior, Albert B. Fall. After President Warren G. Harding transferred supervision of the naval oil reserve lands from the Navy to the Department of the Interior in 1921, Fall secretly granted to Harry F. Sinclair of the Mammoth Oil Company exclusive rights to the Teapot Dome (Wyoming) reserves (April 7, 1922). He granted similar rights to Edward L. Doheny of Pan American Petroleum Company for the Elk Hills and Buena Vista Hills reserves in California (1921-22). In return for the leases, Fall received large cash gifts and no-interest "loans." When the affair became known, Congress directed President Harding to cancel the leases; the Supreme Court declared the leases fraudulent and ruled illegal Harding's transfer of authority to Fall. Although the president himself was not implicated in the transactions that had followed the transfer, the revelations of his associates' misconduct took a severe toll on his health; disillusioned and exhausted, he died before the full extent of the wrongdoing had been determined.

In 1920 Harding won the presidency by the greatest popular vote margin to that time. He died during his third year in office and was succeeded by Vice President Calvin Coolidge. His brief administration accomplished little of lasting value, however, and soon after his death a series of scandals doomed the Harding presidency to be judged among the worst in American history.

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About the Author:

Gaston B. Means was a former FBI Agent who worked on both sides of the law. The title page says that he was "A Department of Justice Investigator". Yet, he was serving time in prison for perjury when this book was published.

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