An Enigmatic Heir's Paradoxical World (WaPo 1999)

Richard Mellon Scaife, the most generous donor to conservative causes in American history, is astoundingly rich and has given away more than $600 million, yet is known to people who have worked for him as a cheapskate.

In his own small world in Pittsburgh, Scaife is known as a man who wants to be in control, who wants employees who say "yes," who is capable of bearing grudges for years. Once, it is said by knowledgeable sources, he compelled the Mellon Bank to fire a newly hired attorney in the bank's legal department because the lawyer was the son of a former employee Scaife had turned against.

Conservatives regularly honor him. He is vice chairman of the board of trustees of the Heritage Foundation and has turned down many suggestions that various buildings, schools and professorships be named for him. "The man is a hero," said a young activist in one of the organizations he supports.

Despite his demons and his difficulties, Scaife and the Mellon fortune he inherited have prevailed. The money didn't buy a happy childhood or the personal confidence he has always lacked, but for all the distractions of his complicated life, he has, at 66, established an imposing legacy. With the help of a few longtime aides and of the conservatives who got his money -- people who made him feel useful and appreciated -- Richard Mellon Scaife became the leading financial supporter of the movement that reshaped American politics in the last quarter of the 20th century.

How did Scaife do this? Why did he do it? And how does he feel about his accomplishment? Those are questions Scaife has never shown any desire to answer. He has never spoken revealingly about himself at any length, and he has rarely given interviews. Though he provided a brief written statement in response to questions from The Washington Post, he refused, over many months, to grant an interview...

Scaife is known to many acquaintances as a man who bears grudges. He has cut off old friends who angered him and never acknowledged them again. He has tried to blackball people he fired with other possible employers. "People are really afraid of him," said the director of a charity in Pittsburgh.

Shuman said he saw in Scaife's history "a sort of steady thread of hurting people who don't like him or who he gets at cross [purposes] with."

"When he gets a hate on for somebody, he tends to pursue it to substantial length," said a prominent Pittsburgh lawyer whose firm has had extensive dealings with Scaife.

Scaife has often behaved like a man who expects the world to bend to his wishes. Hersh, author of "The Mellon Family," recounted an example. Nearly 25 years ago Hersh had an extensive interview with Scaife, who told him more than he has told anyone else about his early life, his disputes with members of the Mellon family and his political and business activities. Hersh was at home in New Hampshire writing the book when he received a telephone call from Scaife, who evidently had decided that he told the author too much. Hersh recently recalled:

"He tried to bully me into not using parts of our interview, and he warned me ominously that I could regret it if I didn't do as he asked.

" 'No, I won't,' I replied.

" `Why not?' Scaife asked.

" `Because I'm tape recording this conversation,' I said. I never heard from him again."

Hersh concluded that Scaife was "basically just a great big spoiled child."

Throughout his adult life Scaife has worried about his personal security. Shuman, his former aide, recalled Pittsburgh police cars stationed outside his house 20 years ago. This year those fears were realized in a bizarre episode that grew out of Scaife's new notoriety as a bogeyman of the left.

Scaife is the topic of much discussion on the Internet. One of his critics in cyberspace, Steve Kangas, maintained his own Web site where he wrote diatribes against the "overclass," a combination of the wealthy and the CIA. He considered Scaife an influential member.

On Feb. 8, Kangas was found dead in a men's room on the 39th floor of the Oxford Center office building, where Scaife's Pittsburgh offices are now located. Police ruled it a suicide. Kangas had come from Las Vegas with a gun; Scaife concluded that he was Kangas's target, according to knowledgeable sources.

Kangas's suicide was not publicized for weeks after the event, but the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette finally got wind of it and wrote several stories. So did Scaife's Tribune-Review. Scaife apparently didn't like the Post-Gazette's coverage, which raised questions about why Scaife had hired a private detective to investigate Kangas (the same Rex Armistead who worked on the Arkansas Project) instead of relying on Pittsburgh police.

Scaife's Tribune-Review ran an angry editorial denouncing the other paper's coverage -- an editorial that had to have the owner's personal approval, according to a former editor of the Tribune-Review. The editorial described Dennis B. Roddy, the Post-Gazette reporter who wrote the stories, and John G. Craig Jr., the editor of the paper, as "Scaife haters" who should have realized that "Kangas, an unstable man who became fully unhinged, was pushed over the top by liberals like them who joined the Clinton White House and their friends to demonize Dick Scaife."