Reprinted from The Washington Times , 5am -- April 28, 1998
There's a liberal side to 'right-winger' Dick Scaife
By Bill Sammon
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
T
o his liberal critics inside and outside the government, philanthropist Richard Mellon Scaife is the malevolent money man behind a "vast right-wing conspiracy" to destroy President Clinton.
Mr. Scaife, an unabashed conservative and generous giver to conservative causes, and his charitable foundations have also given millions to women's shelters, environmental groups, and colleges such as Howard University and the University of California at Berkeley.
Documents and interviews reveal a side of the money man that is not well known.
He has endowed projects at Pepperdine University -- the Malibu, Calif., school that once reserved a job for Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr -- and has given generously to Stanford University, where the president's daughter, Chelsea, is a freshman.
Scaife critics note that he has contributed to the American Spectator, the conservative magazine that first reported the incident that led to the Paula Jones lawsuit and, ultimately, the White House sex-and-lies scandal. But Mr. Scaife has also given $1 million to the aggressively liberal Corporation for Public Broadcasting over the last five years.
The reclusive 65-year-old publisher, whose health is frail, is known in the public eye as an ultraconservative zealot. Yet he supports abortion rights and opposes the North American Free Trade Agreement. He has pointedly declined to align himself with the religious right.
Mr. Scaife is the man most frequently blamed for funding what Hillary Rodham Clinton called the "vast right-wing conspiracy" to hound her husband from office. Yet Mrs. Clinton invited Mr. Scaife to the White House for dinner on Jan. 21 to thank him and others who gave large sums to the White House Endowment Fund, a restoration effort that Mr. Scaife has supported since the Bush administration.
"I'm honored," Mr. Scaife told the New York Post of the invitation from Mrs. Clinton. "Lord knows, it's more than I got from George Bush."
The black-tie event was held the same day the White House sex-and-lies scandal broke. Mrs. Clinton greeted Mr. Scaife and "thanked him for his support," according to White House spokesman Michael McCurry.
Mr. Scaife posed for a photograph with Mr. Clinton and on Friday sent a letter to the White House authorizing public release of the photo. The White House declined to release the photograph for publication, although spokesman James Kennedy says he did not know why.
"I think they're embarrassed by the fact that he was in the White House for a party," says Mr. Scaife's attorney, Yale Gutnick. "I'm not even sure that the president knew who he was shaking hands with."
Asked why Mr. Scaife accepted the Clintons' invitation, Mr. Gutnick says: "Dick Scaife loves America. He loves Washington. He loves the presidency.
"He's not happy with this president or what he represents, but that's not going to stop him from doing the things that he thinks are right."
Mr. Scaife, the publisher of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, has been publicity-shy for years, shunning interviews and even instructing his lawyer to decline to answer questions about his activities. But since the White House scandal exploded three months ago, White House defenders have portrayed Mr. Scaife as a Darth Vader-like figure whose fortune is underwriting the effort to unseat Mr. Clinton.
"We were hoping this thing would just sort of die and go away," Mr. Gutnick told The Washington Times. "But it didn't and they're making this into something it's not. So we're changing our view."
The final straw came last week when Time magazine published a caricature of Mr. Scaife smiling diabolically and rubbing his hands together as underlings hurl muck at a bust of Mr. Clinton. Money protrudes from the cartoon Mr. Scaife's pockets.
"He's here, there and everywhere," the caption reads. "Subsidizing probes, underwriting witnesses, chipping in for a deanship at a Malibu school, the omnipresent megamillionaire Richard Mellon Scaife owns the cash box of the anti-Clinton crusade."
Mr. Scaife hit the roof.
"He has seen it and he's not happy -- he's offended by it," Mr. Gutnick says. "It really is shocking and outrageous. I just can't believe that Time magazine has gone that far. It's just outright libel."
Mr. Gutnick says his boss, whom he describes as a passionate defender of the First Amendment, was particularly incensed at being accused of underwriting witnesses.
"Neither he nor any foundation has ever, ever intruded into that area," Mr. Gutnick says. "They're criticizing him for using his money to express himself or to express the ideas of the foundations."
Last week, the Media Research Center, which documents bias in the media, released an analysis that concluded the "media's savaging of Richard Scaife is unprecedented."
"Our analysis shows the media have been out of control when it comes to coverage of Richard Scaife," says Tim Graham, director of media analysis at the center. "Hillary Clinton understood all too well that Scaife would be an irresistible target for the media elite to aim at. He's rich, he's conservative, and he's funding the investigative journalism that they should be doing."
He also gave $10,000 to the Media Research Center in January 1997. A spokesman says it was the only gift the center has received from Mr. Scaife in a decade. In 1997, the center had an annual operating budget of $4.5 million.
Mr. Scaife is perhaps best known for funding the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, whose reporter Christopher Ruddy suggested that former White House Deputy Counsel Vincent W. Foster Jr. was murdered. Ken Starr last year released an exhaustively documented report agreeing with previous reports that all concluded Mr. Foster committed suicide.
None of these inconsistencies in the conspiracy theory appears to faze the philanthropist's critics, says Mr. Gutnick. "I think this is one of the most effective diversionary tactics that the White House --that any White House -- has ever employed," Mr. Gutnick says.
Mr. Scaife has been particularly frustrated by the frequently repeated claim that he is linked directly to Mr. Starr, who is investigating Mr. Clinton.
"I can tell you unequivocally that there is absolutely no linkage between Scaife and Starr in any way, shape or form," Mr. Gutnick says. "Had Ken Starr's picture not been all over the television and newspapers in recent weeks, I don't think Dick Scaife would recognize him at a social event. They have never communicated, they have never seen each other personally, and there's no relationship whatsoever."
What about Mr. Scaife's financial support of Pepperdine?
"Dick Scaife has been involved with Pepperdine I think before Clinton became governor of Arkansas, and clearly long before he was president and before the special prosecutor ever was even a dream in anybody's imagination," Mr. Gutnick says. "His giving to Pepperdine has been consistent over the years and it's been generous.
"People of great wealth make various choices of what to do with their money," Mr. Gutnick says. "Some buy baseball teams, some buy stadiums. Some buy rock 'n' roll companies and some invest in movies. Dick Scaife has chosen to invest in ideas."Copyright 1998 News World Communications, Inc.
Reprinted with permission of
The Washington Times.
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