The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Crooked: The Roaring ’20s Tale of a Corrupt Attorney General, a Crusading Senator, and the Birth of the American Political Scandal by Nathan Masters

Episode Date: May 17, 2023

Crooked: The Roaring '20s Tale of a Corrupt Attorney General, a Crusading Senator, and the Birth of the American Political Scandal by Nathan Masters https://amzn.to/436XNXD The riveting, forgotten narrative of the most corrupt attorney general in American history and the maverick senator who stopped at nothing to take him down Many tales from the Jazz Age reek of crime and corruption. But perhaps the era’s greatest political fiasco—one that resulted in a nationwide scandal, a public reckoning at the Department of Justice, the rise of J. Edgar Hoover, and an Oscar-winning film—has long been lost to the annals of history. In Crooked, Nathan Masters restores this story of murderers, con artists, secret lovers, spies, bootleggers, and corrupt politicians to its full, page-turning glory. Newly elected to the Senate on a promise to root out corruption, Burton "Boxcar Burt" Wheeler sets his sights on ousting Attorney General Harry Daugherty, puppet-master behind President Harding’s unlikely rise to power. Daugherty is famous for doing whatever it takes to keep his boss in power, and his cozy relations with bootleggers and other scofflaws have long spawned rumors of impropriety. But when his constant companion and trusted fixer, Jess Smith, is found dead of a gunshot wound in the apartment the two men share, Daugherty is suddenly thrust into the spotlight, exposing the rot consuming the Harding administration to a shocked public. Determined to uncover the truth in the ensuing investigation, Wheeler takes the prosecutorial reins and subpoenas a rogue’s gallery of witnesses—convicted felons, shady detectives, disgraced officials—to expose the attorney general’s treachery and solve the riddle of Jess Smith’s suspicious death. With the muckraking senator hot on his trail, Daugherty turns to his greatest weapon, the nascent Federal Bureau of Investigation, whose eager second-in-command, J. Edgar Hoover, sees opportunity amidst the chaos. Packed with political intrigue, salacious scandal, and no shortage of lessons for our modern era of political discord, Nathan Masters’ thrilling historical narrative shows how this intricate web of inconceivable crookedness set the stage for the next century of American political scandals.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from the chrisvossshow.com, the chrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. We really appreciate you guys tuning in. Thanks for coming by.

No, no, no. Enough of this clapping. Enough of the clapping. Actually, that should have ended a long time ago. Anyway, guys, we have an amazing author on the show. We're going to be talking about his fresh new book that's hot off the presses. It's so hot, it's still steamy. It's got that beautiful fresh ink smell that can get you high.

Don't do that, folks. Don't do that. That's not good. not good but you know we've all been there we're uh i don't know i'm out your school between that and eating the crayons right everyone did that or was that just me i don't know 14 years of this show people are like yeah he's the guy who's eating the crayons in elementary school uh and the glue the glue is always good you know if you mixed it with the crayons you kind of got that nice flavorful taste. I think that's what they call Thai food. No, I'm just kidding.

I just lost two people in the Thai food audience. Anyway, guys, the jokes are there, but be sure to refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives. There's a lot going on in the Chris Voss Show. There's the AI Podcast with Chris Voss at AICrisVoss.com. There's, of course our youtube channels

uh goodreads.com fortress chris voss linkedin.com fortress chris voss the big linkedin pod uh newsletter as well and also for the show to the chris voss leadership podcast as well uh he is the author of the amazing new book that just came out march 21st 2023 nathan masters joins us on the show he's written his latest book crooked the roaring 20s tale of a corrupt attorney general and crusading senator and the birth of the american political scandal uh he's going to be talking to us about his amazing book and the insights that went into it nathan masters has hosted and produced the Emmy award-winning public television series Lost LA since 2016. He's the author of hundreds of articles about Los Angeles history and his true life long form story about America's first policewoman is currently under development

at Amazon Studios as a feature film. He works at the USC libraries and lives in the mountains of Southern California with his wife. What? He doesn't like the Valley. We'll get into that. Uh, the, he's the author and television writer. Uh,

uh, I'm sorry. His wife is a television writer and their two children. Uh, and, and, uh, I always think that's funny how they're like he has two children people like well i should listen to him by the book now there you go but this is a bio so i read it a crooked is his first book welcome to the show

nathan how are you thank you for having me chris yeah it's a standard part of a of an author bio if you have a wife or kids or or or whatever, you got to mention them. Yeah. And I skipped over your wife's name because I didn't want to butcher it. Can you give me her name so we get that proper from the bio? Yeah, that's tricky to pronounce. So it's Ksenia Melnik is her name. Ksenia Melnik?

Ksenia Melnik. Ksenia Melnik. What a beautiful name. What is that origin? It is, yeah.ia Melnik What a beautiful name What was that origin? It's a Russian name And she wrote a book of She wrote a book of short stories That came out about six or seven years ago

About the Russian American experience And dealing with Some of Russia's really dark history Oh yeah, there's been some dark history In Russia? You do say. And some it's recent, too. Yeah, not breaking news exactly. Not breaking news exactly. But no, I'm sure

it was interesting. So, welcome to the show. We really appreciate you coming by. You know what's interesting is no one ever says in their bio that they're happy. No one ever says he is a happy fellow and really enjoying his life. And maybe people should do that just so they can,

I don't know. It's, it's a, they can do a flex. I don't know. I'm just doing jokes. So give us your next book, the next book,

why, why Nathan masters is happy. Actually, it sounds like a great title comes down to it, but you know, you can just flex on people and just shove in their faces i'm happy and you're not maybe that's my that's the next book all right chris voss is happy and you're not fuck you now read this book and you'll find out why i don't know that sounds like it

sounds like something's gonna flop like a lead balloon uh the uh so give us nathan your dot coms if you would so people would find you on the interwebs. Yeah, unfortunately, it's not a dot com, but it's NathanMasters.me. And then I'm also on, you can find me on Twitter at NathanMasters or Instagram as well. Let me check with the judges. Judges, can we accept a dot me instead of a dot com? Ah, the answer is yes. I should have one of those dings from like a family feud that come up.

Uh, so anyway, uh, this is your first book. What motivated you on a right book? Crooked. Yeah. Well, so I, I've been writing a lot for, uh, you know, since for, for several decades, but I hadn't written anything in book form and I resolved to do that around 2018. We were, as you might recall, we were in the middle of the, uh, the Trump administration. Really? There were all of these.

Yeah. Seems like so long ago, but, um, I don't know. I was watching CNN last night. It doesn't seem that long ago. That's right. The town hall. I was like, what the fuck is this? It's like, it's like, uh, it's like, uh, what was that movie with, uh, Bill Murray?

Groundhog day. I'm like, Oh yeah. This with Bill Murray, Groundhog Day? I'm like, fuck this again? Anyway, continue on, my friend. Yeah, so anyway, there were all these questions being raised about how can you hold somebody who's seemingly above the law to account? What role might Congress play in that? How far does Congress's power extend in reining in an executive that might be out of control? And what can the executive branch do? Like, might they violate rules or norms in fighting back against the investigation?

There are all these questions. And I found this story that had been really buried in the history books from 100 years ago. Everybody sort of knows about, if they know about Warren Harding at all, they know that President Warren G. Harding is usually ranked last on presidential ranking lists. He's not very well remembered. He's one of the worst presidents in US history. So I started going there. But then I found out that he had this, you know, Attorney General, who was essentially his political protector, his political fixer as Attorney General, he had been his campaign manager, his name is Harry Doherty, he had taken Warren Harding under his wing several decades before

got him elected Lieutenant Governor in Ohio got him elected to the United States Senate, and eventually got him elected president, against all odds, because Warren Harding was sort of the dark horse candidate in 1920. He's like the William Barr of the 20s. A little bit, yeah. I mean, the difference is that Doherty and Harding, they were like this, you know, their ties went deep. But so I came across the story of Doherty, that was interesting. But then when I found that there was a United States Senator, freshly elected in the Senate, this young idealistic guy, the original maverick in the Senate, he launched a congressional investigation into this attorney general and all of the corruption that was alleged against him and against the Department of Justice. And then when the senator gets a little too close to the truth, he finds himself in the legal

crosshairs of the Department of Justice. I thought, there's a great story. I got to write that book. There you go. And you bill it as the birth of the american political scandal were there no political scandals before this or why did you no not at all pointed to that yeah of course of course there were of course there were scandals before this uh but uh washington chopped down that cherry tree and lied about it i remember that yes yeah and i mean there's there's you know i mean there was the hamilton and burr and of course like the the really contentious election in 1800 between jefferson and adams where uh newspapers toss slime at each other but uh yeah so i qualify it obviously go ahead no no no but i qualified in the book my subtitle was really long enough so

i couldn't i couldn't qualify it anymore but yeah the i'm speaking of the birth of the the sort of the modern political scandal that all of america follows the salacious gossip everybody's talking about it every day it's in the newspapers you know you talk about it around the water cooler it was on the radio then today it's on tv or in podcasts or whatever um this was the first time when all of america was really connected to what was happening in the nation's capital in real time because of uh because of innovations in journalism uh because of the rise of tabloids because of the rise of radio um and the senator in my in my story burton wheeler exploited that like he played he played to popular opinion in fact he decided ultimately that the attorney general was was had broken the

law many times but he probably could never be prosecuted in court sent to jail he was just he just effectively above the law instead the senator tried him in the court of public opinion that's of course that's something something that congressional investigators do, have done ever since. So it kind of built a foundation out for that. And I imagine this is the age of where newspaper and media and, who was the gentleman who controlled a lot of the newspapers back in the day? Hearst, William Randolph Hearst? William Randolph Hearst?

William Randolph Hearst. So this is the age of that, too, as well? It is. And this actually didn't make it into the book, but William Randolph Hearst was originally quite supportive of this investigation into the attorney general. And then the attorney general, and this was the way the attorney general operated, Harry Doherty got some dirt on William Randolph Hearst. I guess he had a, Hearst had a mistress and basically got that news to Hearst. And suddenly all of the Hearst newspapers were no longer supportive of the

misinvestigation. They didn't cover it anymore. That's how the attorney general worked. Wow. That's how the world worked. And so basically they couldn't find a public jury that would probably convict him? Was that it? Or it just didn't seem like anything was stickable? You know, we had a lot of that in the Trump years where nothing would stick.

I think we're still kind of going through it. Yeah, it's very similar to Trump in that Trump will legally, at least according to the Department of Justice official policy, legally a sitting president cannot be prosecuted, cannot be indicted. That's not the case for an attorney general. But you have to realize that the attorney general controls the machinery for federal prosecutions. He's the one who ultimately approves the indictment or can suppress an indictment or an investigation. So effectively, the attorney General was above the law. Now, I should point out that later on, after the events of my book, he was prosecuted.

His successors were a little bit more noble than he was. They put him on trial. He had two different trials. They both ended in hung juries. So he really never did face justice. Wow, that's crazy. And then I think you cover the rise of J. Edgar Hoover, right? Yeah.

Hoover is a character throughout a lot of this book here. Now, in the 1920s, in 1923, 1924, when this book takes place, he's young. He's in his 20s. This fresh face. He's not like the J. Edgar Hoover with the bloated face. And the dress wearing well that well yeah he's not he's not the jagger hoover that you imagine um yeah he's this fresh face almost handsome young lawyer who um was america's most famous radical hunter during world war one and the years after but um he was the deputy director of the bureau of investigation which later became the fbi

yeah and um i think they're calling me right now no i'm just kidding the dress joke i don't know well one of the ultimate ironies about this book is that um yeah they have a file on everybody chris you know i'm sure uh one of the great iris ironies of this book is that you know wheeler burton wheeler the senator was was trying to root out corruption in the department of justice and thought that he had accomplished that but in the end one of the one of the direct consequences of investigation was that jagger hoover became the director of what became the fbi really and wouldn't yeah so this brought that right into it huh this is why hoover ended up running the department or the fbi for several

decades yeah wow hi voksters voss here with a little station break hope you're enjoying the show so far we'll resume here in a second uh i'd like to invite you to come to my coaching, speaking, and training courses website. You can also see our new podcast over there at chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com. Over there, you can find all the different stuff that we do for speaking engagements if you'd like to hire me, training courses that we offer, and coaching for leadership, management, entrepreneurism, podcasting, corporate stuff. With over 35 years of experience in business and running companies as a CEO, I think I can offer a wonderful breadth of information and knowledge to you or anyone that you want to invite me to for your company. Thanks for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you listening to the show

and be sure to check out chrisfossleadershipinstitute.com. Now back to the show. It's interesting to me how all these things tie together and one thing behooves the other and the cause and effect of all sorts of interesting things. And sometimes the result is not better, maybe. I don't know. You can look at the long run of Hoover and try and decide good, bad, and evil. That's probably another book. It is. Actually, somebody just wrote that, Beverly Gage. It's an excellent, from what I hear, I've actually read it myself, but not yet.

But it's an excellent biography of J. Edgar Hoover. But you're right. You're right that people are complicated so hoover um he succeeded a man named billy burns who was at the time um america's most famous detective um he was called america's sherlock holmes by arthur conan doyle um he he was so good at solving mysteries that people thought he had supernatural abilities but he was also really good friends with harry doherty and would do anything in running the bureau of investigation later the later the FBI, in protecting Harry Doherty. So he was out, and it was Burns that Hoover succeeded.

And Hoover, to his credit, when he took office, he professionalized the Bureau. He got rid of all of the sort of shady private detective types, including like con artists and just criminals who were in the bureau and hired a lot of lawyers and accountants and made sure that everybody wore a white shirt with a tie and a suit jacket and for a while kept the bureau out of politics ultimately of course the fbi came to be a political force in its own right you know he served he willing hoover willingly served presidents from fdr johnson to richard nixon he's really good friends with richard nixon um and and of course he held he collected dirt on everybody and held that over them and made himself virtually irreplaceable yeah it was interesting how that whole gameplay. So tease out to us a couple, you know, it's a build is packed with political entry, salacious scandal, which everyone kind of likes to read about,

and no shortage of lessons for our political discord. Give us some tease outs from the book that if you would. Yeah. Yeah. So one of the, one of the great characters i just referred to shady private detectives is this man named gaston means who um was a con artist uh sort of an opportunist he spied for germany against america during uh world war one before before the u.s under world war one but um he uh was S and world war one. But, um, he, uh, was likely, I mean,

he bragged that he was, uh, that he'd been accused, but never convicted of every crime in the books up to, up to and including murder. Um, and this was before he was hired onto the Bureau of Investigation. Um, he was exactly, you know, he was, uh, um, he was excellent as a detective in, you know, in finding, in revealing, exposing secret information, information that people wanted to keep hidden. So he served Harry Doherty and Billy Burns and the Bureau of Investigation really well. But he's not the kind of man who would be welcome in the FBI today. And sort of uh he basically had no morals he was a he was a psychopath um and a con artist and um yeah uh so he he ends up becoming one of the major witnesses against harry doughty in these huge sensational uh hearings uh against against

the attorney general these were these were hearings that were followed, as I said, by everybody across the country. The room was packed with newspaper reporters. People heard about it on the news. And it went a long way to shocking the American public into how corrupt their government and especially their Department of Justice was. And ultimately, it set the Department of Justice on a better path, right?

No institution is perfect but today the the department of justice is made up of people who generally uh uphold the rule of law and they have a you know they they they want to do the best for their country and not protect the political interests of the sitting president or of uh you know of of the attorney general. Yeah. But that's, that's a lot of that's because of this investigation. There you go. And I mean, the, the pub, the court of public opinion, as you put it, you know, the congressional hearings and using that as a way to litigate or, or prosecute a case has held a lot of

power over the years. I mean, we, you know, the famous McCarthy hearings with, uh, where, you know, this, the Senator says to him, you know, McCarthy, have you know, I can't have the quote right on exact, but, uh, have you know, uh, shame, um, and you know, that, that would led to the downfall of the McCarthy hearings and exposing McCarthy for what it was. Sadly, now, it seems like one of the lessons being derived from your book is that we don't, it seems like the American public doesn't care about those so much. I mean, you see the impeachment hearings of Donald Trump and other things, and people just don't care. I mean, they don't even watch it, really,

I think, anymore. Yeah, there's something about the way we're fractured politically today as a country it wasn't the case in the 1920s there was people could agree on on basic facts that were exposed in the congressional investigation and i mean you see that especially with the september i'm sorry the the uh january 6th uh investigation in the house of representatives where they were that that house that House committee really took a page from Burton Wheeler's playbook and really tried to make the case. And they had the benefit of television, too. But you're right. They did an admirable job, but ultimately the country didn't really pay too much attention didn't really move the needle it really it really was interesting yeah how we're divided and we're just running on

confirmation bias and what i was writing about this morning we're just we're just meme brains like i meet a lot of people that they base a lot of their political knowledge on memes like literally it's like tiktok brain um and uh and and so you'll talk to people and you'll be like well what about you know this this political person did this like i don't know or i i saw a meme the other day and it said this and i'm like you're really basing your whole dunning kruger brain on memes and like you know i mean msnbc i love it's good journalism there's there's good people on there but uh sometimes it just turns into an snl build as as a impeachment porn i mean and and i realized after watching msnbc for a long time that it's just confirmation bias to people who

actually give a shit and maybe follow the news every day or want to follow the news every day but most people don't and they don't care they're more interested in what kim kardashian is fucking doing every day than with her ass then you know and wear clothes and whatever perfume she's wearing today and like who gives a shit uh then then what's going on in their lives that impact their kitchen table politics yeah it's it's, it's interesting that in the 1920s, I mean, journalism was actually explicitly or openly partisan newspapers. A newspaper would be a proudly Republican paper or probably democratic paper, but there was a certain amount of accountability. The papers would respond to each other. You know, if you go to a park there,

this was before social media, people would stand up literally on a soapbox and talk and people could count could could counter right people could could could answer but what was happening in journalism at the time and it's still with us today is is journalism was was starting to become it was the term then was jazz journalism which really fits with the era but jazz journalism but journalism was becoming um there were more giant screaming headlines there were photos were starting to appear in newspapers people were becoming more obsessed with you know like sex crime uh money you know those were those were the big issues that drove news that drove the the news cycle that's just friday's. Yeah. That's his Friday's crime. My house, that's crime of money.

But Senator Wheeler knew the solid that was happening and he exploited that. And he, he pointed out, I mean, he, he took pleasure in dragging witnesses before his Senate committee, um, like bootleggers,

like, uh, you know, convicted felons, uh, and showing that they were associated with the sitting attorney general of the United States. That was a pretty effective, effective tactic. And it, and showing that they were associated with the sitting Attorney General of the United States. That was a pretty effective tactic. And that's why his investigation resonated so well. He was willing to play to the public's thirst for salacious details and sensation.

Well, I mean, maybe January 6th committee should have done that. They should have, I don't know how you get more salacious stuff. I got nothing. I got nothing on that lead in. So any other tease outs of the book you want to touch on or tell us about, or maybe things that you learned when you were going through the research on the book? I mean, I learned so much. I learned a lot about the arcane details of prohibition, but more especially how people got around prohibition. And was already a ton of whiskey and other spirits that had been

produced in the United States. So that all of those, all that whiskey was sitting in a, in warehouses that were actually supervised by the treasury department or government bonded warehouses. Yeah. And they could only, that liquor could only be withdrawn for,

for permissible uses, which included, you know like medicinal uses export to foreign countries you had to get just a government officer to sign some form saying oh yeah you can withdraw it this is legitimate um so the attorney general attorney general got involved in brokering these signatures on the government forms uh to get to get the the liquor not you know into doctor's hands or exported to Britain, but basically in speakeasies. So America kept drinking thanks to Attorney General Harry Doherty.

That is crazy, man. Well, that explains a lot of what was going on in that time and a lot of things that were going on with the Roaring 20s. Did you find that any of it helped fuel the lead-up to the big crash in the Great Depression? Well, I'm not sure that there's a direct connection between this. Obviously, America was just sort of living this, collectively, this hedonistic lifestyle that ultimately had to come to some sort of sober this collectively this hedonistic lifestyle and but but that ultimately had to come to some sort of sobering conclusion and I guess you could say that was the crash but this all happened you know about five six years before then well there you go I mean it was a crazy time

it was an interesting time but I think it's I think what's also interesting is how it shaped, like you say, the Justice Department brought us J. Edgar Hoover. And it's always interesting to me, like, the shit that America pulls in its history. Like, we try and do the right thing, and then it ends up being, you know, a Pandora's box where it opens up power corruption and stuff. You know, and it leads down it starts out on the good path and it was like yay it's good path and then it goes dark you know i saw that with social media we saw that you know there's there's a lot of stuff the cia has been involved in other things that that start out you know it's kind of a nice idea and then you're like oh we're assassinating people around the world and And, you know, Bin Laden, we funded Bin Laden,

and then he turns against us. And, I mean, you look at, you know, stuff in Ecuador and all around the world, all through different presidential administrations and stuff. And it's interesting how we're always trying to put our finger on the scale and do the good, right, moral thing. And it ends up not being so moral. So it's kind of interesting how we, you know, this is why history is important. You know, if we don't learn from history, we're doomed to repeat it.

Well said. Well said. There you go. So anything more you want to tease out about the book before we go, or givehistory.com so people can find you on the interwebs? Yeah, I guess I'll just mention one more thing. I mean, we there's sort a bullet wound to the head in the Attorney General's apartment in Washington, D.C. It's revealed that he's it was really

actually no secret. It was an open secret at the time that this man was essentially Harry Doherty's go-between. He was the man who brokered the deals. He was the man who brokered the deals. He was the bad man. Yeah, he was the bad man. Harry Doherty was a smooth operator. He knew he could never be seen in the same room with a bootlegger or a convicted felon trying to get, or somebody trying to get

a pardon, but his friend could. The book really kicks off when this man is found dead in the attorney general's apartment and nobody really knows what happened. Murder, you say? Possibly. Possibly. Uh, the, uh, that's interesting. And, you know, it's, I mean, think of the bag man with, uh, the famous bag man with Nixon. All this stuff that goes on.

Dirty politics. But it's important that the American public really think about this stuff and understand stuff. More and more, I've tried to convey to anyone who will listen to my idiot brain, that as Americans, we need to pay attention to this stuff and we need to call it out. We need to not, you know, like I said, it was interesting to me to watch Trump's town hall. I believe it was in Ohio, Michigan last night with CNN. And it was interesting to watch CNN did an interview after of Trump voters. And they just really don't give a shit about anything

like he like he was he was so correct in 2015 when he said i could murder somebody on fifth avenue no care like like somehow they did the polling on that and it's true and it's part of the problem of what i talk about like this meme sort of stuff but you you watch uh you know it's part of the problem of what I talk about, like this meme sort of stuff. But you watch, you know, it was just endless corruption, day after day corruption going on in the White House during his presidential term. No one cared. No one even paid attention. Like half the time, if you talk to a Trump voter, you go, well, what about that? They're like, I don't know much about that. When it really comes down to it, you really nail them down.

They don't follow anything when he does. Which is the great thing that people have been doing to steal from the poor and the average people, billionaires, rich people all these years. They go, look over there. Hey, the immigrants are stealing from you. Well, they pick your pockets and clean out your bank accounts. And so it's interesting how these scandals just keep going and going and going and no one ever learns, but, you know, at least the justice department got a little bit better. I think under William Barr, they were, they were tied up a little bit. Um, you know, I know the Southern district, uh, the Sunday district of, uh, New York was tied up a little bit. They couldn't do what they wanted, but, uh wanted but uh corruption the the game that never ends

in american politics isn't that right yeah well hopefully uh you know through your book and other stories people get wiser in the american public and demand better the jokes just keep coming but please god make it stop um so thank you very much, Nathan, for coming on the show. This has been very insightful and a fun book read. Give us your.com or your.me, I should say, so that people can find you on the interwebs. Yeah, thanks, Chris. It's nathanmasters.me. There you go.

There you go. So, Nathan, thank you very much for coming on. It's been fun. Sorry, we had some technical difficulties oh thank you thank you yeah i think the audio is dropping just a little bit so uh thank you for coming on the show thanks to my honest for tuning in go to goodreads.com fortress chris fuss youtube.com fortress chris fuss and all those crazy places on the interwebs thanks for tuning in be good to each other stay safe and we'll see you guys next time and that should have us out