Craig Smith Report

It's amazing how, once you take the time to look for it, Richard Mellon Scaife's money just seems to show up at all the corners of the is with the vast right wing conspiracy.

Take, as yet another example, Craig Smith's interview this week. He usually finds a Scaife money recipient to interview for Scaife's "news" paper and this week is no exception.

Cliff Kincaid is president of America's Survival Inc., a U.N. watchdog group, and editor of Accuracy in Media's "AIM Report."

An investigative journalist who specializes in analyzing communist and terrorist movements, Kincaid went through a national journalism program headed by conservative author and journalist M. Stanton Evans. He was on the staff of Human Events newspaper and was an editorial writer and newsletter editor for former National Security Council staffer Oliver North at his Freedom Alliance educational foundation.

Ok, so we got America's Survival, Accuracy in Media and the Freedom Alliance. All beneficiaries of Scaife money:

• $885K from 1999 to 2009 for America's Survival
• $4.36 million from 1987 to 2005 for Accuracy in Media
• $125K from 1993 to 1998 for the Freedom Alliance

So when Kincaid shows up on the pages of Richard Mellon Scaife's newspaper, he's representing about $5.37 million dollars of Scaife foundation money. Again no mention of that at all in Scaife's paper.

Regardless of the content of the interview (they could be talking yarn skeins for all I care) the fact that all that money changed hands with no mention of it being made on the page, is cause enough for criticism and ridicule.

Keith Olbermann got suspended for much much less. But then again MSNBC is a news organization and Richard Mellon Scaife's op-ed page - not so much. Obviously.