Richard Mellon Scaife (born July 3, 1932) 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 proceedings of President Bill Clinton.
How do we know none of this money is getting to Alex Jones, Mike Rivero and the rest of them? It would make a lot of sense if it were true.
With Scaife as publisher, the small circulation newspaper [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review] 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 to write about the Foster case for the Tribune-Review and other right-leaning media.
....the [Arkansas] 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.
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In 2004, Scaife was reported to own 7.2% of NewsMax Media, a news-based website with conservative political content founded by Ruddy in 1998.[13] In 2009, Scaife reportedly "controlled" 42% of NewsMax, with Ruddy the 58% majority owner, CEO and editor.[14]
NewsMax huh? Vince Foster too.......the Arkansas Project.......nothing Rivero, Jones and co would find problematic. They're actually deeply involved in the same stuff.
Some other interesting connections:
[Scaife's 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
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Scaife involved himself in the 1964 presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater, with whom his mother was acquainted.
OSS/CIA? Nuff said. And Barry Goldwater? He was the Republican's main (failed) opposition to the New Deal Great Society legislation. Importantly, he represented the so-called "libertarian" wing, and ended up a staunch opponent of the Christian Right's takeover of the Reagan-era republican party.
Something of the relevance can be found in this Goldwater quote, perhaps:
"I suggested on the floor of the Senate today that we stop all funds for the United Nations. Now, what that'll do to the United Nations, I don't know. I have a hunch it would cause them to fold up, which would make me very happy at this particular point. I think if this happens, they can well move their headquarters to Peking or Moscow and get 'em out of this country."[11]
It isn't difficult to see how Alex Jones and Rivero and co could be seen as useful to such people.
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.
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Scaife also funded the Western Journalism Center, headed by Joseph Farah.
Joseph Farah - of WorldNetDaily...........hmmm. Another source familiar to readers of Prisonplanet and Whatreallyhappened and all the rest. There are clear lines of common interests, themes, agendas. There's good cause to wonder.
Here's a list of (some) of the groups Scaife has funded:
[Scaife] supported such varied conservative and libertarian organizations as:
* American Enterprise Institute
* Atlas Economic Research Foundation
* David Horowitz Freedom Center
* Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, which advocates for free-market solutions to environmental issues and dissent on anthropogenic global warming [21]
* Commonwealth Foundation for Public Policy Alternatives - a Harrisburg-based libertarian think tank [22]
* Federalist Society
* Foundation for Economic Education
* Free Congress Foundation (headed by Paul Weyrich)
* Freedom House
* GOPAC (headed by Newt Gingrich)
* Independent Women's Forum
* Intercollegiate Studies Institute (which operates the Collegiate Network)
* Judicial Watch
* Landmark Legal Foundation
* Media Research Center (headed by Brent Bozell)
* Pacific Legal Foundation
* World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh
* Reason Foundation
By 1998 his foundations were listed among donors to over 100 such groups, to which he had disbursed some $340 million by 2002.[23]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Mellon_Scaife
Of course, I don't know that Scaife is helping Prisonplanet and WhatReallyHappened......but it wouldn't surprise me. And even if there's no direct financial connection, there are nevertheless important connections. Indeed - one can view the entire thing as one grand project, to further the shared political and ideological goals of these people, all of whom hold so much in common.
Rivero and Prisonplanet publish stories put out by Scaife owned "news" outlets, his publications, reports published by his sponsored think-tanks, university schools, sponsored research etc. Maybe they're getting donations, too? Maybe ad revenues? Being secretive about their funding and sponsors means we can't know.
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