KOCH Brothers' SECRETS Revealed In New Book [View all]

[Segami]

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Schulman examines the roots of Charles and David Koch's libertarian worldview through the lens of their family, including the formative relationship that all four Koch brothers had with their father, the cold, ambitious Fred Koch. Schulman also traces the bitter and litigious history of Charles and David Koch's relationships with their lesser-known brothers: Frederick, the eldest, and Bill, David’s twin brother. At the center of the saga is patriarch Fred Koch, a staunch anti-communist who drilled his political ideology into his sons from a young age. In 1938, then sympathetic to the fascist regimes ruling Germany, Italy and Japan, Fred wrote that he hoped one day the United States would resemble these nations, which had "overcome" the vices of "idleness, feeding at the public trough, [and] dependence on government." Elsewhere, Fred warned of a future "vicious race war" in which communists would pit black Americans against white. "The colored man looms large in the Communist plan to take over America," he wrote.



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Schulman describes how Charles, unable to convince brother Frederick to sell his stake in Koch Industries, allegedly resorted to "a homosexual blackmail attempt to force Frederick to sell his shares." And when the youngest twin, Bill, launched a bid to wrest control of Koch Industries from his older brothers, Charles' legal team responded by releasing a dossier of opposition research on Bill, filled with sordid details of his personal life. In 2000, Bill's then-wife Angela, the mother of two of his children, called the police to accuse Bill of punching her in the stomach and threatening "to beat his whole family to death with his belt." Bill was charged with domestic assault and threatening to commit murder. Angela later recanted parts of her account, shortly before receiving a divorce settlement worth $16 million. Nonetheless, Bill spent decades waging vicious legal battles against Charles and David, which cost the family tens of millions of dollars. Much of the book revolves around Bill's failed attempts to gain control of Koch Industries. As Schulman recounts, Bill hired private investigators to bug his brothers' offices and pick through the garbage cans at their homes. He planted false memos aimed at rooting out spies in his own company, Oxbow, who he suspected were secretly working for his brothers.





After losing a string of huge regulatory battles in the 1990s and paying heavy fines, Charles softened his stance somewhat. Still, the company remains a libertarian venture to this day. Schulman writes that Charles believes the role of government should be "only to keep a check on those who might attempt to interfere with the laws of supply and demand." Charles still lives in their hometown of Wichita, Kansas, with his wife, Liz, and generally avoids drawing attention to himself or his family. By comparison, his brothers can seem like dilettantes, despite Schulman's exceptionally fair treatment. As a bachelor, David was known for hosting hundreds of people at champagne-soaked, all-night parties at his homes in Aspen, Colorado, and Southampton, New York. He once boasted that at least a third of his guests were "beautiful, wild, single women." A guest told Schulman, "A lot of the crowd were these L.A. chicks who had just bought a new pair of tits and wanted to make sure that they did not go unnoticed -- those parties got pretty wild." In 1996, Bill went to court to evict his former girlfriend from the Boston apartment he had set her up in. Included in the court records were faxes the couple exchanged, some of them sexually explicit. One of the notes was signed "Hot Love From Your X-Rated Protestant Princess." In another, the woman described herself as "a wet orchid," writing, "every inch of my body misses you." Bill succeeded in having her evicted.






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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/17/koch-brothers-book_n_5342694.html


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