If Congress considers alternatives to a system of temporary, court appointed independent counsel, history provides an important model--the investigation and prosecution of the Teapot Dome scandal. In 1924, President Coolidge nominated two special counsel, one a Republican and one a Democrat, to investigate and pursue the civil and criminal cases arising from allegations that members of President Harding's cabinet had corruptly leased naval oil reserves to private oil firms. His appointees, Democrat Atlee Pomerene and Republican Owen Roberts, were confirmed by the Senate.
Deep concerns over the integrity of then Attorney General Harry Daugherty mobilized Congress and the President to look outside the Department of Justice for counsel who could be trusted to vigorously pursue the case. Once such counsel were appointed, Congress continued to play a critical role, aggressively pursuing the facts through a Senate committee and working cooperatively with special counsel to further their efforts. The President, for his part, offered counsel his assistance but then withdrew to permit them the necessary independence to pursue the wrongdoers. The investigation was fraught with difficulty and high drama, consuming more than six years and culminating in significant victories in civil litigation and a mixed bag of results in the criminal prosecutions. Special counsel suffered intermittent shortages of funds and for one of them, frustration with the impact of the job on his ability to maintain his law practice.
Those difficulties notwithstanding, history has largely judged the Teapot Dome investigation a success. The tale of corruption was told, the fraudulent leases were set aside and the oil leases returned to the government, and at least some of the perpetrators were successfully prosecuted. Consequently, when allegations of high-level wrongdoing in the government again arose, Teapot Dome has served as a call to action. See, e.g., Watergate: Clean-Up Precedent, Chr. Sci. Monitor, reprinted in 119 Cong. Rec. 13721 (1973) (Watergate); Byron York, How Congress Can Break Through the Reno Stonewall, Wall St. J., Dec. 16, 1997, at A18 (Campaign finance).
