A L S O +T O D A Y Clinton's "Soviet connection" By Murray Waas GOP money man discussed digging up dirt on Clinton T A B L E+T A L K Peace in Northern Ireland: Is a resolution near? Join the discussion in the International Issues area of Table Talk D A I L Y+Q U O T E Yo quiero saliva R E C E N T L Y A diminished view of manhood By Earl Ofari Hutchinson Reggie White's remarks that homosexuality is a sin reflects a widespread fear of gays in the black community (04/06/98) Republicans to Ken Starr: Ugh! By David Corn Now that Paula Jones has gone, all the Republicans have left against President Clinton is a 20-year-old land deal (04/03/98) Turning the tables on Starr By Murray Waas and Jonathan Broder Attorney General Janet Reno considers investigating key Whitewater witness David Hale (04/03/98) Day of reckoning By Andrew Ross With Paula Jones' case thrown out, it's time to expose those responsible for four years of political and journalistic fraud (04/03/98) The men who kept Paula Jones' lawsuit going By Murray Waas How associates of billionaire Clinton-hater Richard Mellon Scaife propped up her legal battle (04/03/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		THE MAN BEHIND THE MASK | PAGE 2 OF 2 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - But it was clear that Scaife, like his father before him, would never be given any true power within the Mellon banking and industrial empire. So he turned to other pursuits, acquiring a few newspapers, attempting unsuccessfully to buy his way into politics (he gave $1 million to Richard Nixon in 1972 but never got more than a minor appointment from any president) and taking effective control of the trusts and foundations that his mother had established. Among Scaife's acquaintances at this time were Glenn Campbell, head of the conservative Hoover Institution, and Frank Barnett, a shadowy figure with links to the CIA. With their encouragement, Scaife began directing the vast resources at his disposal -- most particularly the donations of his family's trusts and foundations -- to fight the "Soviet menace." Later, joined by a number of younger conservatives, some with ideas, others with money, Scaife would become the biggest funder of the New Right, spending millions of dollars a year to help establish the Heritage Foundation and a host of other think tanks focused on marketing conservative ideas both to Congress and to the public. Other Scaife-funded groups dedicated themselves to watchdogging the media, training federal judges in conservative economics and litigating on behalf of causes such as opening up federal lands to oil and gas exploration. At the same time, Scaife gave generously to candidates who believed in these policies, a two-pronged strategy that proved triumphant in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan, "It seemed to me that he operated very strongly on the strength of passionate impulse," said James Whelan, editor of the now-defunct Scaife-owned newspaper the Sacramento Union. "My sense of Dick is that there was not a depth of conviction about the causes he supported," said Whelan, who went on to edit the Washington Times. "They were rather strongly felt prejudices -- which isn't necessarily something bad, but not the same as conviction." Whelan said that he tried to get Scaife to buy a major national news organization -- something favored by Nixon aides who wanted someone more friendly at the helm of the Washington Post -- but failed owing to what he regards as Scaife's insecurity. "You know insecure people frequently are bullies with those they can bully, but then [in other situations] they will act a bit meek," Whelan said. Less than a decade after Reagan's election came the fall of the Berlin Wall -- and with it, the right's most powerful ideological raison d'être. In short order, however, culture replaced communism as the great battleground, and Clinton -- the draft-dodging, skirt-chasing, pot-smoking symbol of all that was wrong with America -- became its new Satan. It is no surprise that Scaife's contributions to Clinton-bashing have ranged from underwriting efforts around the conspiracy theories of Vincent Foster's death -- which Scaife called "the Rosetta Stone of the Clinton administration" -- to supporting the conservative Landmark Legal Foundation, which advised Paula Jones and helped find her lawyers at crucial moments. Scaife, whose charitable entities now give away approximately a half million dollars a week, also underwrote projects that included retaining investigators to look into Clinton's alleged drug connections. A life regent of Pepperdine University in Southern California, Scaife donated more than $1 million for a new public policy school there. The man offered the job as the new school's dean: Kenneth Starr. Reflecting his continuing obsession that the republic is in mortal danger, if not from one quarter then another, Scaife told the Heritage celebration in 1994 that "the ideological conflicts that have swirled about this nation for half a century now show clear signs of breaking into naked ideological warfare." Such pronouncements might be dismissed as merely the overheated rhetoric of a man with more money than historical or political sense if it weren't for the fact that Scaife has shown that he has the power to bend the nation's agenda to his will. It is only now, with Attorney General Janet Reno considering an investigation into the alleged payments to Whitewater witness Hale, that there seems to be any possibility that light may finally be shed on Scaife's role in this and perhaps other undertakings. Some years ago, Pat Minarcin, editor of the defunct Pittsburgher magazine, published by Scaife, mused that while the United States operates on a system of checks and balances, "With inherited wealth the very idea of checks and balances is anathema. People who inherit their wealth have got everything they want all their lives. So they don't know about things like responsibility." Then, in a comment that may yet prove prescient, Minarcin added, "It's at the heart of what's going to bring Dick down some day." SALON | April 7, 1998 Karen Rothmyer is a senior editor at the Nation.