The Commission:
Adolph Sutro constantly pursued funding for his project. He was always after private money, but was not able to collect enough. Seeing that other projects were able to garner public funds he went to Washington. There he asked for a cool $2 Million to help build the tunnel he said would bring safety to the mining operations in the Comstock. He convinced Congress to create a Committee charged with investigating the need for the tunnel and the practicality of his plan.
 When they came to investigate, Sutro purposefully steered them to what he wanted them to see, and away from any problems. Then before Congress he continued his manipulation of the system grilling Committee members about things they had missed. He won approval for the money. Before Congress could act upon it, President Andrew Johnson was impeached. The issue of funding the tunnel was lost in the fray and never revisited. Instead the funding for the Sutro Tunnel came completely from private donors.
The Hearings:
In his never-ending search for funding, Adolph Sutro tried a number of different tacks and bolstered his arguments with both fact and hopeful fantasy about his tunnel. But through it all be maintained his role as a master manipulator.
After getting a commission appointed to investigate the Tunnel and the appropriateness of the Government funding it, he masterfully worked to keep investigators on site, from seeing anything that could prove damning to it’s construction.
Then, during cross-examination at the Congressional hearings he proceeded to ask those same investigators detailed questions about things they had not witnessed and in the end showed their lack of attention to detail, and that he, in fact, was the only one who truly knew everything about the project.
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