Richard Mellon Scaife
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Richard Mellon Scaife (1932 - 2014) was a nephew of Andrew W. Mellon and billionaire heir to the Mellon family fortune made on oil, banking, and aluminum businesses. He was the chief financier behind the "Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy" that spent most of the 1990s trying (and failing) to get Bill Clinton out of the White House. A number of conspiracy theories surround Scaife, and he himself was given to whacked-out conspiracy theories.
In the 1960s and '70s, he donated to the campaigns of Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon (some of the money for which ended up in a Watergate slush fund) and helped co-found the Heritage Foundation.
During the 1990s, he bankrolled a number of organizations and news outlets that attempted to dig up dirt on Clinton, including Accuracy in Media, American Spectator, Christopher Ruddy of Scaife's Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (who ironically gave Clinton a positive review in a 2007 article[1]) and Judicial Watch, which filed a number of lawsuits against Clinton. These groups pushed a number of Clinton conspiracy theories, mostly surrounding the death of Vince Foster and allegations that Clinton had run a drug smuggling ring in Arkansas in collaboration with the CIA. A common moonbat conspiracy is that Scaife had intimate ties to Kenneth Starr and the two orchestrated the vast right-wing conspiracy in a smoke-filled room somewhere.[2] Another moonbat conspiracy is that Scaife put a hit on Steve Kangas, a Las Vegas-based investor in gambling operations and proprietor of a website called "Liberalism Resurgent" (which contained anti-Scaife material), who committed suicide in 1999.[3]
Scaife himself had an interest in intelligence operations and was prone to seeing "Reds under the bed" and some of his outlets like Accuracy in Media push Bircher-esque conspiracy theories about socialist and United Nations takeovers of the US. They are also big backers of global warming conspiracy theories and denialism.
In a notable exception to his usual nutty politics, he was pro-choice and donated to Planned Parenthood, as well as to the Reason Foundation, which advocates against the War on Drugs.
See also
- Andrew W. Mellon, Mellon Scaife's wingnut uncle and Herbert Hoover's Secretary of the Treasury whose advice on how to deal with the Great Depression was to "liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate... it will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up from less competent people."
- The Koch Brothers, the 21st century's heirs to Scaife's scoundrelcy (albeit not quite so in control as some of the far-left claims, they're powerful enough)
- Newsmax, now mostly owned by Christopher Ruddy
External links
- Sourcewatch entry
- Scaife: Funding Father of the Right, Washington Post
- A Vast Right-Wing Hypocrisy, Vanity Fair
References
- Burnett, Thom. Conspiracy Encyclopedia. pp. 128-130 [1]
- Knight, Peter (ed.) Conspiracy Theories in American History: An Encyclopedia. pp. 645-646 [2]
References
- ↑ Bill Clinton Gives Interview to Former Foe, New York Times
- ↑ Starr did in fact belong to a couple of Scaife-funded organizations including the Washington Legal Foundation, but there is no evidence the two met to work together against Clinton. In addition, it was Starr's investigation that ruled Foster's death a suicide while Scaife-backed propaganda organs continued to push the conspiracy theories.
- ↑ Death Sparks Conspiracy Theory, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette