Nd back in the late 90s/early 2000s, he ran a terrorist cabal and ordereed the massacre of an entire building via a flesh-eating virus designed to take it's victim's DNA apart to be reassembled later...all the while moonlighting as the co-owner of the Daily Bugle and playing the innocent victim of violent assaults...all of which you'd think would qualify him for at least a convincing stab at sanity...
...and then, to put the cherry on the cake, he actually DID go crazy - not manipulative-crazy, but I-Am-An-All-Powerful-God, Losing-Grip-On-Reality, Exposition-Monologuing, Sitting-On-Ground-Cackling-After-Bombing-His-Own-Newpaper-Building Crazy, only controllable by copious doses of experimental drugs.
An awful lot of burying would have had to happen to let that slip away from the American people's memories...