Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: Scaife’s antics add to paranoia surrounding Clinton scandal

Thursday, March 26, 1998 | 10:53 a.m.

"Scaifing" on thin ice in the land of paranoia.

The classic paranoid believes everyone is after him. That belief, unfortunately, is being main-streamed by which I mean many Americans are beginning to look over their shoulders. That means we are either becoming a country defined by the degree of our paranoia or, if all we think is true really is, a country in which the quality of our lives has been diminished.

I have never considered myself a person given to such brain fits although there have been plenty of times my colleagues would have suggested otherwise. I know just how sane I am because I often grade myself against my friends. In my own mind I come out way ahead!

Lately, though, there has been a crack in my armor of psychological invincibility which is causing no end to this feeling that I, too, am becoming one of them. I am referring to the legions of Americans who believe there lurks a conspiracy behind every corner, corners which mostly find themselves adhering to the structure of official Washington.

As much as I like, respect and admire our nation's first lady, I took with several grains of salt her belief that there was a right-wing conspiracy behind this country-maddening effort to destroy her husband. Like many others, it was difficult for me to comprehend the sheer numbers of people who would have to be "brought into" the plan to chase President Bill Clinton from office in order for it to work. So, rather than embrace a conspiracy behind this unrelenting desire to undo what the voters of the United States have done -- twice -- it was easier for me to discount Mrs. Clinton's conjecture as just that.

Now, though, I am not so sure. And that admission alone makes me feel a bit uneasy in my own paranoia-proof life. Let me explain.

There has never been any doubt in any rational person's mind that there are elements in our society who did not take kindly to the fact that a small state governor upended the good thing the establishment had going for itself when Bill Clinton won the White House in 1992. But it has been just too long a leap for many of us to accept on faith the fact that those unhappy campers formed a cabal of sorts to do in the nation's chief executive.

There is no longer a need for faith to start to believe that Hillary may be right. And while I am not prepared to say it is a full-fledged conspiracy, I think the facts, as alleged, point to the makings of a great confluence of wishes amongst a disparate set of conspiratorial collaborators.

Using the same source that most of those who want to believe everything bad about President Bill Clinton use, I finally found my way to the Internet. There it is alleged that Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr has been co-opted, willingly or not, by the kooky right-wing antics of a guy named Richard Mellon Scaife.

Scaife is a very wealthy American who came upon his multi-millions, maybe even billions, of dollars honestly. He inherited them. And while I certainly am not opposed to the creation of wealth by the happenstance of birth, it seems clear in this case that this Scaife fellow was on the receiving end of just too much of what's needed to make a good conspiracy work.

Now, I can't claim that everything I read on the Internet is true. However, I have no reason to believe that what I am about to report is not accurate. Part of that reasoning is based on the fact that no one I know of has stood up to challenge what is written which is a far cry from what is bandied around cyberspace about President Clinton. He, at least, has said it is not true.

Back to Scaife. He's the fellow who handsomely endowed a cushy job at Pepperdine University for Kenneth Starr upon his retirement from the Special Prosecutor's office. If you recall, Starr tried to do just that and had to un-retire because his friends called him a quitter. What they really meant was that their plans had not been completed -- the ouster of President Clinton before the next election -- and how dare he go for their gold without finishing his work?

So Starr remained. You may ask, why? That answer is also floating around in the rumor mill of cyberspace. It has been whispered about and alleged that Mr. Starr makes somewhere just short of $1 million a year as a partner in a very high-powered law firm. Despite all the time he spends on television and in the grand jury, at the rates the government pays, Starr could never get rich. But since he spends most of his time away from his private law office, how does he justify his large salary?

That's a good question.

I, too, have sources who wish to remain anonymous. And if you believe what they are saying, then you'll understand why Hillary is crying conspiracy. Could it be that Scaife is funneling at least $1 million of his companies' money to Starr's law firm and that amount is paid over to the former federal judge? Just asking.

But if that's true, then Scaife would be paying Kenneth Starr to continue his years-long crusade to get President Clinton at any cost, so to speak. And that would be a very ugly picture of a private individual paying a government employee to persecute the President of the United States!

And that, my friends, would be a right-wing conspiracy. All you have to do is believe!