Richard Mellon Scaife (born July 3, 1932 in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is an
American billionaire and newspaper publisher.
Scaife owns and publishes the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. With $1.2
billion, Scaife, a principal heir to the Mellon banking, oil, and aluminum fortune, is No. 283 on the 2005 Forbes 400.
Scaife is particularly well known for his financial support of conservative public
policy organizations over the past two decades. Scaife has provided support for conservative and libertarian causes in the U.S., mostly through the private, nonprofit foundations he controls: the
Sarah Scaife Foundation, Carthage
Foundation, and Allegheny Foundation, and until 2001 the Scaife Family Foundation, now controlled by his daughter Jennie and son David [1] [2]. Scaife also helped fund the Arkansas Project, which ultimately led to
the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.
Early life
Scaife was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Alan Scaife, the head of an affluent Pittsburgh family, and Sarah Mellon, who was a member of the influential Mellon family, one of the most powerful families in the
country and in Pittsburgh. Sarah Mellon Scaife was the niece of former United States Secretary of the Treasury Andrew W. Mellon, and she and her brother, financier R.K.
Mellon, were heirs to the Mellon fortune, a raft of investments that included Mellon
Bank and major stakes in Gulf Oil and Alcoa aluminum.
Young Scaife attended high school at Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, Massachusetts. He was expelled from Yale
University in the aftermath of a drunken party, and later attended University
of Pittsburgh where his father was chairman of the board of trustees. Scaife graduated with a bachelor's degree in English
in 1957.[3]
Scaife's mother Sarah Scaife was an alcoholic, as were he and his sister Cordelia. Scaife
was affected by the family's poor relationship with the Mellon family, and came to despise the Mellon family name. Still, he
inherited a good part of the Mellon fortune when his mother died. A portion of the fortune was placed in trust funds and the rest
in foundations. Charitable foundations are required to disburse at least 5% of their assets annually, forcing Scaife to become a
philanthropist. [4]
Scaife inherited positions on several corporate boards in 1958 when his father Alan died unexpectedly. However his family had
become estranged from his uncle, R.K., who retained control of the companies. His mother encouraged him to get involved in the
family's philanthropic foundations, and he did so. (See management of
Scaife family foundations.)
In 1973 he became estranged from his sister Cordelia Scaife May, and took control
of many of the family foundations while Cordelia supported her own charities, including Planned Parenthood and the National Aviary in Pittsburgh.
Shortly before her death, the siblings reconciled and he eulogized her in January 2005, [5] lauding "Cordy" for devoting
her life and resources to "worthwhile causes." [6]
Business
Purchase of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
In 1970, Scaife purchased a small market newspaper, then known as the Tribune-Review. The
paper was based in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, a county seat of about 15,000
people located about 35 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. For a number of years, the paper was published and distributed in the
small Greensburg market. [7]
In 1992, the two main newspapers in Pittsburgh were embroiled in a lengthy labor dispute that
ultimately led the largest paper, the Pittsburgh Press, to cease operations, and for
the remaining paper, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, to suspend publication for
nearly six months. [8] During this time frame, Scaife expanded operations of the newspaper into
Pittsburgh and renamed the paper the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Though the
name changed, and there are several satellite offices in and around Pittsburgh, the newspaper's headquarters remain in
Greensburg, about an hour east of Pittsburgh near Scaife's home.
Leadership and media interests
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review continues to challenge the
Post-Gazette in the Pittsburgh media market. Twelve years after Scaife's newspaper began publishing, the
Post-Gazette reported major financial losses, and the unions representing its employees agreed to wage concessions to keep
it afloat. According to the Audit Board of Circulation, the Trib has a combined 221,000 regional circulation, about 7,000
subscribers fewer than its competitor.
In 2005, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review announced that operations of
its suburban editions would be consolidated, with "staff reductions" in the newsrooms, business, and circulation departments.
[9] Two managers were laid off immediately along with several other staff members later in 2005.
With Scaife as publisher, the small circulation newspaper was the chief packager of editorials and news columns claiming that
then United States President Bill Clinton or his
wife, then First Lady Hillary Clinton were responsible for the death of Deputy
White House counsel Vincent Foster. Scaife paid freelancer Christopher W. Ruddy [10] to write about the Foster case for the Tribune-Review and other right-leaning media. He went on to found
NewsMax Media. Calling the company's website "America's News Page," NewsMax.com[11] has grown to be one of the largest Internet news
sites in the U.S., in which Scaife is an investor. Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr,
appointed to investigate Clinton, concluded that Foster committed suicide.[12]
According to Richard Poe's book, Hillary's Secret War: The Clinton Conspiracy to Muzzle Internet Journalists, Scaife
also owns 7.2% of NewsMax Media, a news-based website with conservative political
content.
Politics and philanthropy
Scaife's interest in politics was influenced by several factors.
- He was fond of newspapers he read during his childhood.
- His father served with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during
World War II and the family lived in Washington,
D.C. for a time. (The various functional units of the OSS were reconstituted in 1947 as the Central Intelligence Agency; see How the OSS
became the CIA in the OSS article.)
- He was influenced by Robert Duggan, his sister Cordelia's fiance who later became her husband. Scaife worked on Duggan's
political campaigns and Duggan was twice elected Allegheny County District Attorney. Duggan helped Scaife become a committeeman
in the Allegheny County Republican Party in 1956. In 1974, however, Duggan killed himself with a shotgun, hours
before he was indicted by a grand jury for income tax evasion and racketeering.
- Scaife involved himself in the 1964 presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater, with
whom his mother was acquainted.
The inherited Mellon fortune allowed Scaife to pursue his political activism. In 1965, when Sarah Scaife died, Scaife
inherited not only financial increase but also a new influence over the family foundations.
Support for Richard Nixon
Scaife gained notoriety for making an end-run around weak campaign finance laws to donate US$ $990,000 to the 1972 re-election campaign of President Richard
Nixon. Scaife was not charged with a crime, but about $45,000 went to a fund linked to the Watergate scandal. Scaife later said he was repulsed by the scandal and refused to speak with Nixon
after 1973. Following Duggan's suicide and then Watergate, Scaife shifted his political giving from politicians' campaigns to
anti-communist research groups, legal defense funds, and publications.
Opposition to Bill Clinton
Scaife's publications were substantially involved in coverage against then-President Bill
Clinton.
- Scaife was the major backer of The American Spectator, whose
Arkansas Project set out to find facts about Clinton and in which Paula Jones' accusations of sexual harassment against Clinton
were first widely publicized.
- In a 1999 series of articles on Scaife and foundations that support conservative causes, the Washington Post named a
close Scaife associate, Richard Larry, and not Scaife himself as the man who drove the Arkansas Project.
Regardless of his role, the project not only accused Clinton of financial and sexual indiscretions (some later verified,
others not), but also gave root to hyperbolic conspiracist notions that the Clintons
collaborated with the CIA to run a drug smuggling operation out of the town of Mena,
Arkansas and that Clinton had arranged for the murder of White House aide
Vince Foster as part of a coverup of the Whitewater scandal. The possibility that money from the project had been given to former
Clinton associate David Hale, a witness in the Whitewater investigation, led to the appointment of Michael J. Shaheen as a
special investigator. Shaheen subpoenaed Scaife, who testified before a federal
grand jury in the matter.
So involved was Scaife in efforts against Clinton that many Democrats believed Hillary Clinton's statement condemning a "vast
right-wing conspiracy" against her husband was a direct reference to Scaife himself. President Clinton later admitted to
sexual indiscretions, but the other allegations that came out of the Arkansas Project were never proven.
Coincidental to the Lewinsky scandal and Clinton's impeachment, Scaife endowed a new school of public policy at Pepperdine University. Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr
was named the first dean of this school, although Pepperdine denies any connection. Starr accepted the post in 1996, but in the ensuing controversy, Starr gave up the appointment in 1998 before
ever having started at Pepperdine.
That same year Scaife's friend and Pittsburgh attorney, H. Yale Gutnick, denied that there was any connection between Scaife
and Starr:
- I can tell you unequivocally that there is absolutely no linkage between Scaife and Starr in any way, shape or form. 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.
- 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. His giving to Pepperdine has been
consistent over the years and it's been generous. [13]
However, once the investigation was behind him, Starr was appointed to head Pepperdine's law school in 2004.
Political donations
According to campaignmoney.com, from 1999 through 2006, Scaife has, under the name "R. Scaife," made 10 contributions of over
$200 to political campaigns, for a total of $19,000. Under the name "R.M. Scaife" he made 4 donations, for a total of $22,000.
Under the name Richard Scaife, he made 23 donations over this period, for a total of $142,904. Besides donations to the
Republican National Committee and various political campaigns such as
Santorum 2000 and the Santorum Victory Committee for Rick Santorum, he has also supported
Political Action Committees such as the Pro-Growth Action Team, the Free
Congress PAC (formerly: Committee For the Survival Of a Free Congress), and the Club For Growth Inc. PAC.
Scaife also funded the Western Journalism Center, headed by Joseph Farah. Farah has been connected to reconstructionism, a
movement to replace judicial law with Christian Old Testament law. The organization is antigay, and would move to punish
"practicing homosexuals" by sentencing them to death. [14]
Management of the Scaife family foundations
When Scaife refocused his political giving away from individuals and toward anti-communist
research groups, legal defense funds, and publications, the first among these was the Hoover
Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University.
Through contacts made at Hoover and elsewhere, Scaife became a major, early supporter of the Heritage Foundation, which has since become one of Washington's most influential public policy research institutes. Later, he supported such varied
conservative and libertarian organizations as:
By 1998 his foundations were listed among donors to over 100 such groups, to which he had disbursed some $340 million by
2002.
Other philanthropic support
Scaife is identified with his contributions to conservative and libertarian causes. The Washington Post dubbed him "funding father of the Right" in 1999.
However, he has also supported policy research groups which are not explicitly conservative, such as the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the
National Endowment for Democracy, and the Foreign Policy Research Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, among others.
Scaife has also been a major donor to abortion rights advocates, including Planned Parenthood, giving "millions" to the organization, though
most such giving stopped in the 1970s., according to The Washington Post [15].
In the late 1990s, during the height of the Clinton scandals, Scaife nevertheless continued to provide more than $1 million to
the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the prime benefactor of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). His donations to restore
and beautify the White House led to an invitation by Hillary Clinton for a black-tie celebration. She warmly received him and
posed for a photograph on the same day her husband's sex scandal hit the press [16]. Scaife told the
New York Post that he appreciated Mrs. Clinton's invitation. "I'm honored," he
said. "Lord knows, it's more than I got from George Bush."[17]
Scaife has also supported non-political groups. He is a key benefactor of a number of Pittsburgh-based arts organizaions.
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Sarah Scaife Galleries at the
Carnegie Institute of Pittsburgh art museum, the Brandywine Conservancy,
the Phipps Conservatory, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, as well as Goodwill Industries of
Pittsburgh. He and his foundations have contributed to Sarah Scaife's favorite causes: population control (e.g. Planned Parenthood), environmental conservation, and hospitals; Jonas
Salk developed his polio vaccine in a Sarah Scaife-funded laboratory. He also
supports a variety of educational institutions, notably the University of Chicago,
the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, Carnegie Mellon University,
Boston University, the University of
Pittsburgh, the University of Rochester, Smith College, and Bowling Green State
University.
Personal life
Scaife's first marriage was to Frances L. Gilmore (born December 2, 1934). The couple had two children, Jennie K. Scaife (born July 8, 1963), and David N. Scaife (born February 5, 1966). The couple subsequently divorced.
In June 1991, he married his longtime companion, Margaret "Ritchie" Battle Scaife (born
February 15, 1947), who had influenced the giving pattern of
the Scaife foundations and made the couple active in the social and cultural life of patrician
Pittsburgh.
The couple subsequently separated, and on December 27 2005,
the Pittsburgh Police responded to a call placed by Richard Scaife
reporting trespassing at Scaife's residence in the prestigious Shadyside section of Pittsburgh. They arrived to find Ritchie
Scaife, his estranged wife, pounding on doors and peeking in windows of the couple's mansion. Mrs. Scaife refused to leave the
property, and was arrested and charged with defiant trespass. "Tribune Publisher's Wife Charged with
Trespass"
On April 8, 2006, the Tribune-Review published an article [18] describing a
fight between Scaife's estranged wife and three of his servants over a dog that Scaife told the New York Daily News
[19]
his wife had given him. Both newspapers reported that Scaife's servants went to the hospital for scrapes and bruises after the
fracas.
On April 11 2006 Scaife confided to a gossip columnist that he
and Margaret "Ritchie" Battle Scaife, 58, plan to divorce and that their marriage began without a prenuptial agreement. The New
York Daily News column estimated his vulnerable assets at half of $1.2 billion. [20]
Scaife himself is something of an enigma; he is intensely private and public reports about him have often been
contradictory.
- Marisol Bello, a Tribune-Review reporter covering the Pittsburgh edition for its 10th anniversary edition, described
Scaife as an affable man who took little interest in the day to day operations of the paper. [21]
- Karen Rothmyer, a reporter for The Nation, writes that while she attempted to
interview Scaife in 1981 for a series in the Columbia Journalism
Review on his financial support of the "New Right," he responded by calling her a "fucking Communist cunt" and telling
her to "get out of here." According to Rothmyer, the rest of the five-minute interview transpired at a rapid trot down a city
street, during which Scaife tried to hail a taxi. Rothmyer wrote that Scaife said her teeth were "terrible," and after she
thanked Scaife for his time, he called her and her mother "ugly" and issued a veiled threat, telling her "Don't look behind
you."[22]
Scaife denies the incident.[citation needed]
- A former employee, Pat Minarcin, describes him as having the 'emotional maturity of a 12-year old." [23]
References
- Baer, John M. "Hardly a Right-Wing Cause He Can Refuse," Philadelphia Daily News.
- Bellant, Russ The Coors Connection: How Coors family philanthropy undermines democratic pluralism, (Boston: South End
Press, 1991), covering the related political funding activities of Coors family.
- Kaiser, Robert G. "Money, Family Name Shaped Scaife," Washington Post, 3
May 1999.
- Kaiser, Robert G. and Chinoy, Ira. "Scaife: Funding Father of the Right," Washington Post, May 2, 1999.
- Ira Chinoy and Robert G. Kaiser, "Decades of Contributions to Conservatism", Washington Post, May 2, 1999.
- Kennedy, John F., Jr. and Scaife, Richard Mellon. "Who's Afraid of Richard Mellon Scaife? JFK, Jr. Interviews Richard Mellon
Scaife," George magazine, January 1999.
- Richard Mellon Scaife profile at
NNDB.
- Rothmyer, Karen. "The man behind
the mask," Salon.com, April 1998.
- Rothmyer, Karen. "Citizen Scaife," abridged excerpt from Vetter, Herbert F., ed.Speak Out Against the New Right (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1982).
- Saloma III, John S. Ominous Politics: the new conservative labyrinth, (New York: Hill and Wang, 1984).
- Savage, David G. "Richard Scaife: A 'Savior' of Right, a Scourge of Left," Los Angeles Times, April 17, 1998.
- http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05361/628424.stm "Tribune-Review publisher's wife charged with trespass,"
Pittsburgh Post Gazette, December 27, 2005.
See also
External links
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