Burns Detective Agency and Teapot Dome
Burns also became indirectly involved in the Teapot Dome Scandal, involving the secret leasing of naval oil reserve lands to private companies. In November 1927, Harry F. Sinclair went on trial in federal court for conspiracy to defraud the U. S. in the leasing of the Teapot Dome naval oil reserve. At the request of Sinclair oil executive Henry Mason Day, Burns secretly hired a squad of 14 men from the William J. Burns Detective Agency to "investigate" his jurors. Day arranged for their compensation and received their daily reports. Midway through the trial the government's investigators discovered Burns' agents, and a mistrial was immediately declared.
At a new hearing, Sinclair's defense was that he had had the jurors followed to protect them against federal influences; that in no case had the operatives made direct contact with the jurors. Sinclair was convicted on corruption charges and sentenced to six months in jail, Day to four months' imprisonment, William J. Burns to 15 days' imprisonment, and Burns' son, William Sherman Burns, was ordered to pay a $1,000 fine. William Burns immediately appealed, and the Supreme Court later reversed William J. Burns' conviction (Sinclair v. United States, 279 US 749 - Supreme Court 1929).
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Famous quotes containing the words burns, detective, agency, teapot and/or dome:
“Let them cant about decorum Who have characters to lose!”
—Robert Burns (1759–1796)
“Everybody thinks detectives do nothing but ask questions. But detectives have souls the same as anyone else.... You know, Mrs. Beragon, being a detective is like, well, like making an automobile. You just take all the pieces and put them together one by one. First thing you know you’ve got an automobile. Or a murderer.”
—Ranald MacDougall (1915–1973)
“It is possible that the telephone has been responsible for more business inefficiency than any other agency except laudanum.... In the old days when you wanted to get in touch with a man you wrote a note, sprinkled it with sand, and gave it to a man on horseback. It probably was delivered within half an hour, depending on how big a lunch the horse had had. But in these busy days of rush-rush-rush, it is sometimes a week before you can catch your man on the telephone.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“Miss Ghote ... hadn’t the slightest intention of sitting passively by and allowing her neighbor the luxury of placing the teapot of her Episcopalian proclivities on her Baptist trivet.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)
“A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)