In the hours before his death, Steve Kangas was thousands of miles from home with little money in his pocket. He spent nine hours inside a Pittsburgh office building which housed the offices of a foundaiton linked to Richard Scaife -- the billionaire publisher who is now probing his alleged sucide. Questions linger. Was Steve Kangas after somebody, or was he on the run?

n February 11, 1999 police founded the dead body of a 37-year old man in the 39th floor bathroom of an office building in Pittsburgh. The victim was identified as Steven Kangas; the local coroner's ruled the death a suicide, based on evidence of a gunshot wound to the head.

   Case closed. Or is it?

    The misfortune of Mr. Kangas is now raising questions, especially given his background as a political activist, and the involvement of billionaire publisher Richard Mellon Scaife. According to today's edition of the New York Times, Scaife -- one of the preeminent critics of Bill Clinton, and a man often accused of being at the center of a right-wing plot to discredit the President -- has hired a private investigator to probe the circumstances of Kangas' death. Already, it's turning out to be a story with plenty of twists and odd coincidences. Steven R. Kangas, 37, operated a website titled "Liberalism Resurgent," rejected religious belief and identified himself as an Atheist, and ground out a steady flow of information about everything from what he called "the overclass" to the involvement of the Vatican, the CIA, Catholic groups like the Knights of Malta and other organizations in world politics. Did it get him killed, or drive him to madness and depression?

   ¶    Start with Richard Mellon Scaife. Scaife is a billionaire publisher, owner of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and has played daddy big-bucks for plenty of far right causes over the years. When former White House aide Vincent Foster committed suicide in Washington, D.C., Scaife opined that the death was the "Rosetta stone" of a scandal running far and deep through the Clinton administration.

    Kangas identified Scaife as one of the "overclass," and in an information-rich section of his internet site, traced the publisher's involvement with everything from the Central Intelligence Agency to an elaborate web of foundations underwriting their favorite political causes. This was no paranoid dream, though. Most of what Kangas was writing was evidently pasted together from an enormous range of sources, including newspaper articles from the Washington Post and other media, to a small library of books penned by Washington insiders and investigative reporters. Other sources included Guenter Lewy's work, "The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany" (London and New York, 1964); editions of the National Catholic Reporters newspaper; and the Covert Action Information Bulletin issue devoted to "Nazi's, The Vatican and the CIA."

    One story illustrates Scaife's involvement in the shadlowland of political intrigue, often bringing him into contact with religious right extremists. Scaife is known to be one of the major backers of groups like the Heritage Foundation (contributing over $100 million) and the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress. Less publicized, however, are his other activities such as his operation of Forum World Features, described as "an international CIA news outlet that supplied over 300 newspapers until its exposure in 1975," by writer Sarah Diamond. So is his involvement with a man named John McGoff, who during the 1970s funneled money from the apartheid South African government into groups such as the Christian League of Southern Africa. Headed by Rev. Fred Shaw, the Christian League established contacts with American-based religious right groups including the Campus Crusade for Christ headed by evangelist Bill Bright.

   ¶    Kangas had plenty to say about the little-known Roman Catholic group, the Knights of Malta. In a section of "The Origins of the Overclass," Kangas discussed the involvement of this Vatican group with the historical backwater eddies such as the aborted military plot to remove Franklin Roosevelt from the White House -- actually a Keystone Cops-style putsch exposed by former General George Smedley Butler, and the involvement of the Knights with former Nazis. "A partial list of the Knights and Dames of Malta reads like a Who's Who of American Catholicism," noted Kangas, who then named names, including a slew of CIA directors and underlings; financial tycoons (William S. Schreyer of Merril Lynch, Richard Shinn, Metropolitan Life, Martin F. Shea, Morgan Guarantee; religious boosters, such as Schick razor king Patrick J. Frawley who underwrote Rev. Fred Schwarz's Christian Anti-Communist Crusade; and church officials such as Cardinal Francis Spellman -- actually the American head of the Knights -- Cardinal Bernard Law, and Cardinal John O'Connor, who still pitches the Vatican line from the pulpit of New York's St.; Patrick's Cathedral.

    Admittedly, Kangas was also serving up a "conspiracy stew" of sorts, blending known historical fact -- such as material about the Knights, or Scaife -- with conjecture and possibly some creative theorizing. He still managed to develop a reputation on line at least as a daring researcher, and he could well have been a thorn in the side of Richard Scaife.

   ¶    The circumstances surrounding the "suicide" of Steve Kangas, and the details of his life remain sketchy. The February 12, 1999 edition of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported the death, 3-4 days after the body had actually been found. A terse 46-word article concluded "He died of a gunshot wound to the head. The Allegheny County coroner's office ruled the death as a suicide."

    There are questions concerning what Kangas was doing in the "One Oxford Center" building on that Monday, in the 39th floor bathroom. On that floor is the office of the Allegheny Foundation, operated by Richard Scaife. How did Kangas manage to get through the building security? And there are questions about how Kangas was found. According to published reports, a building engineer discovered Kangas alive and lying on the floor of the bathroom on the evening of Feb. 8. He went for help, and when he return he reportedly found Kangas sitting in a toilet stall with a gunshot wound to the head. A police report says that nearby was a pistol which Kangas had purchased two weeks earlier in Las Vegas, along with $14.63 in his pockets and 47 rounds of ammunition -- and a copy of Hitler's "Mein Kampf," not exactly the reading diet of the modern liberal, in a nearby backpack. It's a strange melange of objects. Kangas' blood level was reportedly 0.14 percent, above the Pennsylvania driving drunk limit of 0.10 percent. There is no mention of a bottle found nearby, though, and video tapes made by security cameras as One Oxford Center show that Kangas was in the building for nearly nine hours before his death.

    Kangas' background is also intriguing. He graduated from the Defense Language Institute of the U.S. Army in 1983, and went on to serve as an intelligence analyst eavesdropping on Russian radio communications in Berlin. After returning to the U.S., he knocked around various restaurant jobs. At the time of his death, he was a Doctoral Candidate at the University of California in Santa Cruz. He reportedly had no ties to Pittsburgh, save perhaps his interest in Richard Scaife.

   As for Richard Scaife, he is sufficiently interested in Kangas to have hired the services of private investigator Rex Armistead. Armistead "has been traveling the country to investigate Kangas," reports the New York Times.

    The name of Rex Armistead comes up frequently in connection with something known as the Arkansas Project, and the film "The Clinton Chronicles," aggressively marketed by Rev. Jerry Falwell. Scaife spent $2.4 million over a three-year period investigating Bill Clinton, a project dubbed the Arkansas Project which operated from June, 1993 to December, 1997. Armistead, former director of the criminal investigation section of the Mississippi Department of Safety, was hired on to do the digging; he soon started feeding Scaife information, but according to an investigation by Salon Magazine, "Federal investigators have found no evidence to support the allegations." That didn't stop lurid tales of Clinton drug dealing, fraud, bribery and even possible murder from leaking to the news media. According to Salon, "The investigative effort by Armistead was so secretive that funds paid by Scaife to Armistead were funneled through two tax-exemption foundations, and then through two law firms..." Among the charges Scaife and Armistead were tracking down; that Clinton, while governor of Arkansas, ordered officials to ignore cocaine smuggling going on at a small airport in Mena, Ark.

   When CNN reported that the drug dealing accusations against Clinton were groundless, Armistead reportedly was turned loose to investigate CNN writer John Camp. Salon managed to obtain a copy of the file, noting "Camp was targeted by Armistead, according to documents and sources, after he reported in a CNN broadcast that the Mena accusations were based on erroneous information..." Still, a copy of Armistead's background investigation turned up in the files of the House Banking Committee. The Drug Enforcement Agency also reportedly interviewed Armistead, who, according to Salon, "misled the federal agents about the true source of his investigation's funding..."

    Equally revealing is the link between Hickman Ewing, an operative for Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr who looked into Clinton affairs in Little Rock, Ark. and Armistead. David Talbot of Salon told a journalism conference at University of California recently that Ewing "has met privately and quietly with this same investigator, Rex Armistead.

    The fruits of the Arkansas Project and the allegations about Mena airport found their way into the movie, "The Clinton Chronicles," dubbed "the Jerry Falwell video" by news insiders and pundits. The film, marketed by Falwell and produced by a California-based firm known as Jeremiah Films, weaves an intricate web of conspiracy allegations about Bill Clinton; critics see it playing fast-and-lose with the facts, skillfully blending innuendo and half-truths. Believe Falwell and "The Clinton Chronicles," and Clinton is a cross between the Godfather and the Antichrist. It's all part of the stew involving Paula Jones, a group linked to Falwell known as the Citizens for Honest Government, and ultimately of course the trail leads to Richard Scaife.

    So, what was Steven Kangas doing for nine hours inside an office building in Pittsburgh, 2,500 miles from home, possibly out of money, and possibly drunk. How did he get there? What was he looking for? Richard Scaife wants to know, and has called out his own James Bond to find out. According to the Times, Kangas' mother, Jan Lankeet is also puzzled.

    "We still don't know if Steve was running or if he was after somebody," she said.

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