And has been for a very long time. Yet another chickenhawk to add to the list, a tax cheating, no talent hack who was behind the Arkansas project, the 4 year, $40 million failed swiftboating attempt aimed at Bill and Hillary Clinton.
http://www.salon.com/news/1998/06/cov_09news.htmlA Clinton critic's tax-exempt lifestyle
As head of the American Spectator's nonprofit foundation,
R. Emmett Tyrrell enjoys some unusual perks -- including expensive trips to Europe, a one-third subsidy for the costs of his Virginia house and two club memberships.
Internal Revenue Service regulations governing 501(c)3-type organizations such as the American Spectator Educational Foundation strictly regulate the use of tax-exempt resources for the "private inurement" of any individual beyond "reasonable compensation" for his or her services.
---
http://www.salon.com/news/1998/06/cov_08news.htmlfunny money
Pittsburgh billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife's effort to damage the Clinton presidency by
channeling almost $2.4 million through the conservative American Spectator magazine may
end up, ironically, damaging the magazine instead by exposing it to possible tax code violations, according to knowledgeable sources and internal documents obtained by Salon.
The crisis at the American Spectator stems from the so-called "Arkansas Project," a
four-year effort aimed at producing investigative exposés about Clinton in the magazine.
The project produced little journalism, according to Spectator staffers. But it led to the
breakup of the American Spectator's founding team, which had been together for 30 years,
the dismissal of its original publisher and the resignation of three prominent members
from the Spectator's board of directors.
However, the Spectator's other co-founder, president and editor-in-chief,
R. Emmett
Tyrrell Jr., angrily rejected Burr's call and declared the case as to whether fraud had
been committed "closed." When Burr persisted, Tyrrell convened a special board meeting at
his home and had Burr summarily fired.
---
http://www.populist.com/98.3.mcgrath.htmlAs the camera roamed,
Tyrrell spoke of his first publication at Indiana of The
Alternative. That first issue's cover was framed near Tyrrell's desk. The graphic m the
middle of the cover was of a B-52 bomber in the shape of the then-popular peace symbol.
Underneath was written "Drop It." With the Vietnam war going all-out at the time, Tyrrell
was clearly part of the conservative cadre on campus being groomed by his right-wing
elders for better days. The Alternative would, over a few years and changes of location,
metamorphosize into the American Spectator and spawn, with the help of large conservative
donors, a host of campus imitators around the country, often with the word "Spectator" in
the titles.
Tyrrell has long been a peddler of fringe ideas. His book Boy Clinton (Regnery Press) was
recently followed by The Impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton (Regnery Press), a book
about the fictional impeachment of Bill Clinton and the triumph of ultra-conservative
ideology in America. Regnery Press is a small, ultra-conservative Capitol Hill operation
funded by an array of heavy-hitting conservative donors, including Scaife.
---
http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/1998/cyb19981026.asp#3 "Item: According to David Hale’s own court testimony, one of his lawyers was powerful
Washington attorney Ted Olson. Item: Ted Olson is an ex-law partner and a close friend of
Ken Starr. Item: Ted Olson is also a member of the board of directors of the American
Spectator. According to Hale’s testimony Mr. Olson began representing him in December
1993. According to a very reliable inside source, Olson hosted a meeting in his law office
that same month. It was attended by Arkansas Project operatives Boynton and Henderson. The
agenda: how best to use Richard Mellon Scaife’s millions to dig up dirt on Bill Clinton.
So Ted Olson, one of Ken Starr’s closest friends, not only helped plan the Arkansas
Project but he also represented David Hale.
"Hale, the con man who Kenneth Starr told the federal court was his prime witness.
Hale the crook that Starr asked the judge to treat with leniency, to reduce his prison
sentence and to release him from the obligation of repaying the $2 million he stole from
the federal government. The road was now wide-open for what would become a relentless four
year, $40 million pursuit of the President, one that still came up dry until Kenneth
Starr’s right-wing friends, directly or indirectly, led him to a young lady named Monica
Lewinsky."
---
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200111/yorkThe Life and Death of The American Spectator
The conservative magazine survived and prospered for twenty-five years before Bill Clinton
came into its sights. Now the former President is rich and smiling, and the Spectator is
dead
---
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=4351"The Arkansas Drug Shuttle," published in the Spectator in 1995, was a fanciful tale of
cocaine smuggling, the CIA, and black cargo jets told to
Tyrrell by former Arkansas state trooper L.D. Brown--who happened to be on the Spectator's payroll at the time. Indeed,
Tyrrell's dispatches stirred considerable controversy among the magazine's own staff.
"Even within the Spectator, people had problems with the
stories," says
David Brock, the Spectator's star investigative reporter at the time.
.....
===
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/conason1.htmlIn their new book, "The Hunting of the President," Joe Conason and Gene Lyons detail the
right wing's machinations to whack Bill and Hillary Clinton, a ten-year campaign that
helped trigger the president's impeachment. Central to this effort was the so-called
"Arkansas Project," a dirt-digging effort financed by Richard Mellon Scaife and run by R.
Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., editor of the "American Spectator." As this invoice shows, the
Project hired former Army spook William T. "Tom" Golden to nose around, a process which
led Golden to meet with a source in Ken Starr's office about that Hillary Clinton
indictment (TSG's still waiting on that one). Hard to believe the independent counsel crew
wasn't so independent after all, huh?
---
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/04/06/time/hale.htmlFrom 1993 to 1997, two Scaife foundations transferred $2.4 million to another foundation
that owns the Spectator. The magazine turned over much of that money to Stephen Boynton, a
Virginia attorney and conservative activist, who spread it around to hunt down stories
about the President through various means, including private detectives. The possibility
that the tax-exempt money was misused--which could jeopardize the tax-exempt status of the
Spectator--was apparently troubling to the magazine's longtime publisher, Ronald E. Burr.
Last year he demanded an audit by an outside accounting firm. In October, Burr was
abruptly fired by Spectator editor in chief
R. Emmett Tyrrell. Now the magazine is
finishing up an "internal investigation" of the funds. It's headed by Theodore Olson, a
Spectator board member, Starr's former law partner and Hale's onetime attorney.
Read:
The Hunting of the President
Blinded by the Right