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Could Scaife be Mr. Big? It seems that among most conservatives there are only two degrees of separation from the ubiquitous philanthropist. Those who haven't taken money from him usually work with someone who has. Washington Post matriarch Katharine Graham writes in her memoir that Nixon wanted Scaife to buy the Post during the Watergate scandal. Scaife has also financed the Southeastern Legal Foundation, a backer of former FBI agent Gary Aldrich's loosely sourced, Clinton-bashing best seller Unlimited Access, and the Free Congress Foundation, which once set up a toll-free hot line for women who claimed they had been sexually harassed by President Clinton. (Please hold; your call will be answered in the order in which it was received.) Yet another Scaife pet project, the Landmark Legal Foundation, has links to James Moody, the lawyer for Linda Tripp, and--very tangentially--to Starr, who once represented, with Landmark, the State of Wisconsin in a school-choice lawsuit.
When wandering in a labyrinth, especially one whose walls are hung with mirrors, it's difficult to follow a single thread. The field of right-wing publishing alone offers dozens of them. Consider Lucianne Goldberg, the smoky-voiced New York City literary agent and Bea Arthur act-alike who represents, among others, one Mark Fuhrman, the infamous O.J. detective. Not only did Goldberg serve in her youth as an undercover agent for Nixon during the 1972 election, and not only did she suggest that Tripp tape-record Lewinsky, but she has also been a tipster for Star, which broke the Gennifer Flowers story. According to Phil Bunton, Star's editor in chief, Goldberg came to him last fall with a sketchy version of the sex-with-an-intern tale. Star couldn't crack the story, but when it surfaced elsewhere, Bunton offered Goldberg big money for the tapes. "We made it clear that a million dollars wasn't out of the question." She turned him down, he says, demonstrating that some alleged conspirators are in it for fun, not profit.
Tripp may be in it for revenge. Going back to the Foster case, when she publicly questioned furtive comings and goings in the dead man's White House office, Tripp has played an unwelcome Nancy Drew in several Clinton mysteries. Last August she leaked the story of Kathleen Willey, claiming to have seen Willey emerge all aglow and clothes disheveled from a hands-on briefing with the President. When Clinton attorney Bob Bennett dismissed Tripp as "not to be believed," she stomped off to Radio Shack and bought herself a tape recorder.