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Coors funds take on Clinton Family's foundation

By Lou Kilzer -- Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer

August 23, 1998

A tax-exempt private foundation controlled by the Coors brewing family last year gave $403,500 to groups that have worked to portray President Clinton as a lawbreaker or abuser of power.

Among the causes pursued by the groups supported by Coors money are conspiracy theories surrounding the 1993 death of White House Deputy Counsel Vincent Foster.

Coors' Castle Rock Foundation, headquartered in Denver's Cherry Creek district, last year contributed to the Western Journalism Center, the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation and the Landmark Legal Foundation.

A prime benefactor of these groups is Pittsburgh billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, who some Democrats claim is at the center of what first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton earlier this year called a "vast right-wing conspiracy" to ruin her husband.

Bill Coors, chairman of the Adolph Coors Co., said the Coors foundation's donations aren't part of a campaign to discredit Clinton.

"There is no right-wing conspiracy, for God's sake," Coors said. "That's Hillary. That's the most ridiculous damn thing in the world. A right-wing conspiracy that contrives to have the president perform sex with an intern, for God's sake. Come on."

Coors said the Castle Rock Foundation gives only to other tax-exempt groups and "cannot use its funds politically. That would be a violation of the (tax laws)."

Coors Brewing Co., the nation's third-largest brewer, is the principal subsidiary of the Adolph Coors Co., founded 125 years ago and based in Golden. The Coors family long has supported conservative political causes along with hefty philanthropic giving.

"We like to support those organizations that front for the free enterprise system, the free market system and keeping everything in the private sector," Coors said. "I certainly wouldn't give any money to someone wanting communism in here or socialism, for that matter."

Linda Tafoya, executive director of the Castle Rock Foundation, said "our foundation does not look at any administration."

"We do not look at any of the organizations that we support and try to go at Clinton or the administration. We have been around a long time, and we have been through a number of administrations.

"So to sit there and say that Castle Rock is funding organizations that are Clinton-bashing, I think you're not looking historically at how long Castle Rock has been around or the unrestricted funding of the Adolph Coors Foundation. We've funded most of these organizations for a long time."

The Coors philanthropy is handled by two foundations. The Adolph Coors Foundation, with $188 million in assets, gives to traditional community groups including health, education and children's programs. For example, it gave $170,000 last year to the Boulder Valley YMCA, according to tax

documents filed with the Colorado attorney general's office.

The smaller Castle Rock Foundation, with $67 million in assets, is the Coors empire's chief public policy outreach.

Coors said the foundation, founded in 1993, was given the Castle Rock name to avoid any association with the brewing company. He said the company and the two foundations are separate entities.

The two Coors foundations share administrative offices. Tafoya is executive director of both. The boards of directors are identical.

In addition to Bill Coors, Coors family members on the boards include his nephew Peter, CEO of Coors Brewing Co.; Jeffrey, Peter's brother and co-chief executive of ACX Technologies, a Coors spinoff company; and Holly Coors, mother of Peter and Jeffrey and former wife of Joseph Coors

Sr., vice chairman of Adolph Coors Co.

The other member of both boards is Robert Windsor, another Coors family member.

In the year ending last Nov. 30, the Castle Rock Foundation gave $2,640,500 to more than four dozen organizations. Among the recipients were the Mountain States Legal Foundation and the American Indian College Fund. It gave the Denver Foundation $100,000 for support of last year's Summit of the Eight gathering of world leaders in Denver.

The $403,500 given to groups opposing Clinton represents 15.3 percent of Castle Rock's total giving. Most of the remainder finances conservative public policy groups that often oppose Clinton administration practices.

The biggest Castle Rock grant to a group opposing Clinton last year was $150,000 given to the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation. Scaife's foundations gave the group $1.5 million.

The foundation finances a television program by conservative commentator Paul Weyrich. A section of the program, called American Investigator, delves into alleged Clinton wrongdoing, including allegations that, as Arkansas governor, he overlooked drug running at an airport in Mena, Ark.

Clinton spokesmen have dismissed those allegations as absurd. No such charges have ever been filed against Clinton, and the allegations have received little credence in mainstream political circles.

Tafoya said the Castle Rock Foundation placed no restrictions on the $150,000 it gave Weyrich's group.

"I was not even aware, I don't know if it ever came up in conversation that they're after (Clinton)," she said.

The Castle Rock Foundation has contributed to other groups also supported by Scaife.

A $98,500 grant went to the Western Journalism Center, which has promoted investigative reporting by Christopher Ruddy, a reporter for the Scaife-owned Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Ruddy has so irritated the Clinton administration in his challenge to the official version of how and why Foster died that both former presidential adviser James Carville and Press Secretary Mike McCurry have labeled him the White House's most antagonistic enemy in the press.

Two independent counsels -- Robert Fiske and Kenneth Starr -- have concluded that Foster committed suicide by shooting himself at Virginia's Fort Marcy Park on July 20, 1993. At the time of his death, Foster was handling the investigation of the White House travel office, and he was said to be despondent over the vicious nature of Washington politics.

But Ruddy, author of The Strange Death of Vincent Foster, says there is evidence that Foster's heart had stopped beating before he was shot.

The Center this year called Starr's report a "lie."

Coors said he didn't know that the Western Journalism Center was investigating Foster's death.

"Heavens, no," he said.

If he had known, he said, "I would have wondered why they were and I would have asked how much of what they were doing went into the investigation."

Ruddy was an associate of the Western Journalism Center, a nonprofit company that also investigates abuses by the IRS and California teachers unions.

The center also publishes WorldNetDaily, an Internet publication that examines Clinton's alleged misdeeds and has written about Foster's death.

Joseph Farah, the journalism center's executive director, said they gave Ruddy "little money directly." Most of the help was taking articles Ruddy previously had done for the New York Post and repackaging them "in a way to bring (his research) national attention.

"We took out a series of newspaper ads across the country to raise Ruddy's visibility. ... I guess it worked pretty well because by December 1994 the White House was very much on our case."

Tafoya said the Foster saga was only one focus of the Western Journalism Center. She said the Castle Rock Foundation had declined the group's request for money the previous year.

"We told them that if they came in with something that was more specific and something we could hang our hat on, that we would look at it," Tafoya said.

She said that when the center then launched the Internet project and a training program for young journalists, the foundation approved the grant.

She said the Castle Rock Foundation doesn't keep track of all the activities of the groups it supports.

"We don't do an investigative report on our agencies," she said. "We go out and try to find out in general what their programs are and whom they're serving. ... We don't get maybe into the details of it. And I don't know that we have the staff, time and ability to do that."

Another group supported both by Coors money and Scaife is the Landmark Legal Foundation, which has openly voiced support for Paula Jones and Linda Tripp, two women at the heart of Clinton's troubles.

The Castle Rock Foundation last year gave the group $50,000 and Scaife gave $525,000.

Jones' sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton was dismissed earlier this year by a federal judge. She is appealing.

Landmark Legal Foundation played an indirect role in Starr's investigation of Clinton. James Moody, an attorney who has worked on Foundation litigation, was hired by Linda Tripp to defend her in the

Monica Lewinsky investigation. Tripp, armed with secretly recorded phone conversations she had with the former White House intern, later went to see Starr's investigators.

More recently, Landmark President Mark Levin denounced the decision by a Maryland state prosecutor to investigate whether Tripp violated the state's wiretapping laws when she recorded Lewinsky.

In an opinion column last Wednesday in the Washington Times, Levin accused Clinton of "outright lies" in the Lewinsky investigation and said they constituted "grounds for impeachment."

Levin said verbal support is the only help Landmark has given Tripp.

Clinton was required to testify last week before a federal grand jury investigating his relationship with Lewinsky.

Scaife is a major contributor to Pepperdine University's public policy school, which offered Starr its deanship last year. Starr first accepted, then declined the offer.

Scaife earned his place in Hillary Rodham Clinton's "vast right-wing conspiracy" after spending more than $1 million to finance investigative reporting on Clinton by the American Spectator, a magazine that has focused on allegations of wrongdoing by Clinton in Arkansas.

Called "the Arkansas Project," the magazine first revealed Clinton's strained ties to his former state trooper bodyguards in Arkansas. The Spectator also first reported on an incident between Clinton and a woman named "Paula."

Scaife has scoffed at the notion that he is part of any conspiracy.

Scaife and Holly Coors are members of the board of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington, D.C., think tank that Joseph Coors Sr., Scaife and Weyrich formed in 1973. Scaife and the Castle Rock Foundation have generously contributed to the Heritage Foundation.

There is no evidence that Scaife and the Coors group ever consulted in their various philanthropic endeavors, only that their interests often coincided.

Coors said "I don't know Mr. Scaife at all. I've never met him."

The Castle Rock Foundation also gave $50,000 to the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, which publishes a popular Internet magazine featuring the Matt Drudge Information Center.

Drudge was the first journalist to disclose that Starr was investigating Clinton's relationship with Lewinsky.

The Castle Rock Foundation also gave $5,000 for its membership on the Council for National Policy, which in June 1997 called for an impeachment investigation of Clinton.

The council once sent its approximately 500 members a video, The Clinton Chronicles, which focused on Clinton's alleged encounters with several women, according to published reports. Holly Coors has served on the council's executive committee.

Tafoya said she was unfamiliar with any tapes distributed by the Council for National Policy.

Castle Rock also gave $50,000 to the Media Research Center, a Virginia-based organization. In public documents detailing its donations, Castle Rock said the Media Research Center "analyzes and documents the left-wing bias of the media." The Media Research Center is highly critical of alleged media bias toward Clinton.

Castle Rock also gives to organizations with no anti-Clinton agenda.

Colorado-based Promise Keepers, launched in 1990 by former University of Colorado football coach Bill McCartney, last year received $50,000 from Castle Rock.

Castle Rock made a $35,000 donation last year to the Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute, which has sued the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, seeking the release of an ATF study that it says shows cardiovascular benefits of moderate consumption of alcohol.

Tafoya said she didn't know about the litigation.

Used without permission