‘ The Fall Guy,’ Albert Bacon Fall led colorful political life
The headline on the front page of the Feb. 14, 1924, El Paso Times read:
MILLION DOLLAR OIL SCANDAL SLUSH FUND
WASHINGTON SHOCKED BY SENSATIONAL TEAPOT DOME REVELATIONS
The report from Washington began: Information of a million-dollar slush fund sent to the national capital by Sinclair oil interest for the purpose of influencing persons high in the councils of both major political parties was in the hands of the senate committee investigating the oil scandal today.
This great fund, according to reports received by the committee from sources considered reliable, was for distribution among high officials and others who had lost huge sums in unfortunate stock market speculations in shares of an independent oil company.
A former New Mexico Senator and El Paso resident, Albert Fall, has been attributed to the phrase “fall guy” for his role in the Teapot Dome Scandal while he was secretary of the interior in 1922. Teapot Dome, Wyo., was one of two naval oil reserve sites improperly leased to private interests by Fall.
Following a lengthy Senate investigation, Fall was tried for accepting bribes. He was convicted and sent to federal prison, the first Cabinet-level officer in American history to go to jail for crimes committed while serving in office.
Fall was convicted of taking a bribe from Edward Lawrence Doheny, however, Doheny was found innocent of giving the bribe that Fall was convicted of receiving, making Fall the “Fall Guy.”
Following is Leon Metz's May 14, 2006, column on Albert Fall:
‘ The Fall Guy’ led colorful political life
Otherwise, the media, when mentioning his name, usually (and correctly) refer to Fall as “the Fall Guy,” primarily because Fall went to prison when perhaps someone else should have.
But who was Fall?
Well, his great-grandfather was an officer in the British army. His grandfather, Philip Slater Fall, also an Englishman, moved to America, purchasing several hundred acres in Kentucky, living on land near Ashland known as “Popular Hill.”
Philip Fall subsequently went to Nashville, Tenn., prior to the Civil War, becoming a minister in the Campbellite (Christian) Church.
Albert's father, Williamson Ward Robinson Fall, taught school, supported the Confederacy and lost everything after the Civil War.
As for the son, Albert Bacon Fall, he became a man with a soft draw but frequently of quick temper. He taught school, read law at night, then moved to Texas where he became a cook, sold real estate and practiced law. He finally settled in New Mexico, worked in the mines, served in the territorial legislature as well as the Supreme Court, and was twice appointed attorney general.
One of Judge Fall's least-known legal cases involved defending a man and a woman, both in their 70s, who had lived together for 45 years, yet each having former spouses of numerous years whom they had never divorced. Now with a multitude of children and a respectable background, they were both charged with adultery.
Although the district attorney vigorously prosecuted the case and got a guilty verdict, Judge Fall passed the sentence by “directing them to go back home and help one another as they had been doing for the last 45 years.”
Somewhere around this same time, Fall and the politically arising Warren G. Harding became close friends, as well as poker players. Thus, shortly after Harding became president in 1921, Fall switched to the Republican Party and became a senator. From there he rose to Secretary of Interior during the Harding administration.
In 1887, Fall acquired the Three Rivers Ranch in New Mexico, brutally losing that after a series of lawsuits.
In another case, better known as the Teapot Dome Scandal, the court convicted Fall of taking a bribe of $400,000 from Edward Lawrence Doheny, Doheny later being found innocent of giving the bribe that Fall had already been convicted of receiving. Hence the perfect, but ironically fitting term: “Fall Guy.”
Montana Sen. Thomas Walsh subsequently commenced an investigation which by 1924 had implicated Fall, the odd part being that Fall's real passion was mining.
Another odd, little-known part of the trial is that Robert Geronimo, son of the famed Indian chief, became one of Fall's chief character witnesses.
Fall allegedly received $100,000 in bribes, the evidence being thin, but nevertheless in 1931 sending Fall at the age of 69 to the Santa Fe prison, a trip he made from his palatial El Paso home (designed and supervised by Mrs. Fall), at 1725 Arizona Ave., an area still known as Golden Hill Terrace.
Fall left his home and made the entire trip to prison in an ambulance since he was suffering from hardening of the arteries, a heart ailment, disabling arthritis and chronic but inactive tuberculosis and pleurisy.
Albert Bacon Fall died at El Paso's Hotel Dieu Hospital on Nov. 30, 1934, and is buried in Evergreen Cemetery on Alameda Avenue.