Richard Mellon Scaife

From SourceWatch

Richard Mellon Scaife is a U.S. billionaire, newspaper publisher, and major funding source of right-wing causes through the Scaife Foundations, which he controls. 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."^[1]

Scaife controls the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Carthage Foundation, and the Alleghany Foundation. Until 2001, he also controlled the Scaife Family Foundation, which is now controlled by his son and daughter.^[1]

1 Profiles
2 Affiliations
3 Resources

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Profiles

Richard Mellon Scaife is a billionaire contributor to the Republican Party and right-wing think tanks, one of the most influential men behind the right wing today. Scaife has helped establish their biggest institutions and supported some of their most radical ideas.

Scaife was a primary source of money used to fund attacks against Bill Clinton during the Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky eras of his presidency. He has also been known to purchase mass quantities of conservative books (especially those published by Regnery Press) to push them up the bestseller lists.

Among the right-wing organizations substantially funded by Scaife are the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, Judicial Watch, Cato Institute and a working group within his American Spectator publication called the "Arkansas Project," whose specific aim was to locate and create dirt on the Clintons in order to smear them, in hopes of removing Clinton from office.

People for the American Way estimates that the Scaife Foundations have channeled in excess of $340 million to right-wing groups over the last thirty years, more than any other individual.

Scaife has a long history of supporting attacks on organizations and institutions which refuse to kowtow to right-wing interests. For example in 1985 Scaife reportedly financed most of retired Gen. William Westmoreland's libel suit against CBS over a documentary, "The Uncounted Enemy". This documentary claimed that he deliberately underestimated enemy troop strength in Vietnam (Morning Call, (Allentown, PA), March 1, 1985, Westmoreland Suit backed by Mellon Heir, Associated Press).

Scaife has been criticized by sections in the media for attempting to corrupt the practice of journalism and dilute it with a very specific agenda.^[2]^[3]

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