Scaife favors open marriage, lauds Bill Clinton's charisma Vanity Fair article focuses on billionaire's troublesome divorce
Thursday, January 03, 2008
The Associated Press
Billionaire newspaper publisher Richard Mellon Scaife, who spent millions investigating President Clinton, said the two had a long lunch over the summer and that he found the ex-president to be charismatic.
Mr. Scaife, a central figure in the "vast right-wing conspiracy" that Hillary Rodham Clinton once said was attacking her husband, also says philandering "is something that Bill Clinton and I have in common."
Mr. Scaife made the remarks in an interview with Vanity Fair, his first interview in eight years, according to the magazine. The comments appear in the February issue in a story about Mr. Scaife's troublesome divorce from Margaret Ritchie Battle Scaife.
In the story, Mr. Scaife described the lunch at Mr. Clinton's New York office as "very pleasant."
"I never met such a charismatic man in my whole life," Mr. Scaife said.
Mr. Scaife, a billionaire heir to the Mellon banking and oil fortune and publisher of a Greensburg-based newspaper chain, said he tried to show Mr. Clinton that he isn't "a total Republican libertarian" by talking about their mutual friend, U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa.
Mr. Scaife also told the magazine: "I don't want people throwing rocks at me in the street. But I believe in open marriage."
Mr. Clinton gave Mr. Scaife an autographed copy of his book and Mr. Scaife said he later sent $100,000 to the Clinton Global Initiative.
Forbes magazine has estimated Mr. Scaife's wealth at $1.3 billion.
Several foundations controlled by Mr. Scaife gave millions of dollars to organizations run by critics of Mr. Clinton, including $1.7 million for a project at the conservative American Spectator magazine to dig up information about his role in the Whitewater real estate scandal.