Favorite collaborator in one of the nations great independent bookstores, we pride ourselves of the library among other things on the timeliness and relevance of her signature programming. Whether forms on those issues or addressing emerging or hot button national topics. We certainly did not intend on the particular timeline of todays presentation. Christopher leonard was a busy man at the end of last week. Taking reporter calls, wrote a couple pieces for the New York Times and cnn business. They spent eight years and cook koshland and the extraordinary empire in the poem Political Network has put together by david coke and his older brother charles based hundred hours on the road in wichita. Anybody had a chance to read the book . So you will not understand, youll know immediately when you get into it as you get into it it is daunting when you pick it up. Its encyclopedic, 574 pages and thats before you get to the notes and the appendix and then acknowledgments. But they have written a 574 page page turner. As a former journalist, i am inspired by how deeply researched this book is. By the degree of detail that he is packed into it, despite his limited access to Company Executives including koch industry mastermind. Its so obsessively written, its fastening, dramatic and at the very top of the checklist, it is fair. Maybe more than some people would like. New york times said in its review, it rings among the best books ever written about american corporation. It was released two weeks ago today, and immediately caught the times top ten list of nonfiction bestsellers. Chris was born and raised in kansas city, group in brookside, went to college and you and he got hooked on journalism. He worked as for job after graduation at the tribune, a Business Reporter there and has been one ever since. He went on to arkansas democratic and Associated Press where he worked out of st. Louis. The tribune in columbia, he worked a story on tyson foods. And with that he became intrigued with the issue of Corporate Power. Which is brought us to tonight. Chris is here for the second time, he spoke with a Central Library in 2014 on his book, the meat market and the secret takeover of americas food business which is how a handful companies cornered the meat supply, joining me on stage will be sean, a longtime broadcaster is collaborated on a couple of books including james autobiography. He was terrific if you were here interviewing the former mayor in july. Were honored to have both of them here tonight. Please welcome sean and christopher leonard. [applause] thank you for having us here. Non[inaudible] [applause] with kansas city, we know what a lot of people on the east coast and the west coast dont know, theres tremendous wealth in this part of the country. I think all of us are not fully understanding your book, theres tremendous power in this part of the country and mainly wichita, kansas. That is exactly right, what attracted me so much to the story is how powerful and influential this institution is, and how littleknown it is, how secretive it is and will talk about it, its not secretive in a james bond villain sense, this is an institution that does not want the rest of the world to know what its doing for strategic reasons, thats based in what they do and how they make so much money. You have a massive powerfully institution that affects everybody that walks. Koch industry specializes in the businesses in civilization. This is something you cannot fully live with. They refined the gasoline come the building and materials probably in this building, the structures, carpeting, material in her clothing, nylons, spandex, one of the World Largest makers of nitrogen fertilizer, it is something that most people dont think that they by but its that the little bedrock of our food system. Coke industries is engaged in businesses beneath the surface of everyday life, earning, stunning process, annual sales are bigger than that then facebook, Goldman Sachs combine. At the same time, you never encounter the koch brand name, you never know here engaging with this company. That is what really drew me that when youre writing about this company, i feel like youre writing about the entire American Economy in the entire political system because its so diverse that the story is a story of a bluecollar manufacturing workers on the manufactory for them i belong to the labor union not getting a pay raise in 20 years. Or who are earning millions of dollars year trading derivatives and future contents. Your writing about private equity dealmakers who are going out across the country looking for other companies to buy that they use debt to buy and pressure them to boost productivity and profit and finally he writing about one of the largest corporate lobbying operations in the country, truly unrivaled as terms of corporate lobby. The story of this company over the last 50 years, really is a portrait of Corporate Power in our country. It helps us explore a lot of questions of what is going on in our economy, very early on in the book you talk about 1988 when the federal government and the bureau affairs, find out about Coke Industries. And this is 19901988, congress had noisy who they were and some people thought they were part of cocacola, sending investigators to atlanta, some people thought it was pronounced cost, how did they make it in 1988 were outside the Energy Industry that not only were they not known to the general public, they were known to the nae United States congress. The book opens with an fbi agent hiding behind surveilling. And it really happened. And they said they investigators when they started investigating the hewitt issue of theft and oil in a chain reaction. Who are these people. All the sudden, they come to realize its a Largest Crude Oil gathering in the United States and nobody has ever heard of it. And it reminded us very early executives, who was on a plane in the late 50s, and to back up a little bit, we could talk about the koch family but to say they take over the company in 1967 when his father passed away and they were rearranging the firm and tried to figure out what to name it. He specifically chose the name koch, a family name but also completely without character, hard to remember and without description. They were not a Consumer Oriented Company that wanted to develop a name, they wanted to imply scrutiny, largely because they were in the oil business, and the theory of the oil business was opposite of the saying, what is good for the general Motor Company is good for the United States, they put themselves in the 1970s when oil prices shot up in these companies were getting massive profits in the expense of ordinary people. The idea when your business like this, you sort of stay behind the curtain and make a fortune. Coke is a second ward brother but really the patriarch, early in the book you talk about a visit, this goes both ways, no matter how they view charles koch, where wall street come to visit him and then they want to take Coke Industries public. Because i see it as a reader of your book and its brilliant. Everyone has read it or about to reader and its brilliant. [laughter] you know how to read it but if you can please buy the book. [laughter] early on the koch send them away, and on the one hand you say good, and the other side of that is, theres no motive, is not just sticking up for the little guy, they dont want to publicly report things and how that scrutiny, they dont want to be holding to anybody outside of the koch family. And if i get back that up and talk about this family, this company Koch Industries was founded by fred koch who lived in wichita, kansas in the 1960s he owned a wide assortment of cattle ranges, Oil Refineries, networks, he died of a heart attack in november of 1967, his son charles is a president of the company at just 32 years old at the time and that is when he consumer control of the firm. From the beginning, this guy, charles koch was the ceo ever since that time, he became ceo of Koch Industries and hes been in control for 50 years and i know of no other corporation in america that is been so chased by a Single Person in Single Personalities and from the very beginning he had a very clear idea of how corporation ought to be run. And one of the key elements of the dna is longterm strategic thinking. This is an organization that thinks on the horizon of two, five, ten years from now. At the same time, we talk about that and we talk about the theory of trading. But charles knew he wanted to remain private, remain contro ad control and quarter to quarter to quarter as so many corporations do, he wanted to think more longterm. Bankers came and one from j. P. Morgan and said to take the property public, you have access to all this money and you will get 25 million tonight, it was a nobrainer and he sent him packing, and when they got home they were banging their heads against the desk they said charles koch does not want the cash and one of the things he told them, if we go public, not only will the be capable to shareholders every three months but people will know how much our Commodity Traders make. And if they know how much they make they wont do business with us anymore. That is very important to me. And if we could talk a moment about trading, it set the heart of the organization, the heart of what they do in the heart of what they think in the corporation and politically, i was interviewing these traders, from the 1970s Koch Industries has been the largest traders of Energy Supplies in the world. Buying and selling supertankers of crude oil and shipping stuff. Then they began trading the future contracts and derivative based on actual oil supply. So to succeed in life as a traitor, you want to know more about the world than anybody else. You want to know what oil is actually in the real world working today better than anybody else knows. If somebody is willing to sell you a barrel for 50, you might know that is worth 52 so you by all you cannot 50, then you wait for the world to wake up to the reality that is worth 52 inyo sella above. For this reason, koch relays is in the 70s that the most important resource they deal with is not crude oil, natural gas, its information, data and knowledge about the world. They were in a particular good position because he ran huge chunks of the system. When they would shift the gold coast of the United States and can make a bet off the knowledge that the shipment was about to come in. At the same time the regressive in getting much information thats going on as much as possible. Lets get to the year 2000, koch hired and brought them inhouse to create internal secret weather forecaster codes that were better than the public forecast so koch could into spate energy demand. Koch would tap into the databases of snowfall in california, for example, snowfall is an early predictor of reservoir levels which is an early predictor of hydroelectric supply, and electricity prices. They take all the data, analyze it and use it to make trades out in the real world. When this is your line of work, you do not want other people to know what you know, you dont want people to know what youre about to do, thats why theres such a wall of secrecy around what they do. It is strategic in the company of the headquarters built in 1992, it is a giant black Granite Building with opaque windows, that is not coincidental, its black on the northern side of wichita, kansas and they dont want you to know what theyre doing. This is like trump towers in manhattan. [laughter] the philosophical differences and differences between donald trump and charles koch. Its like the world lexicon. Theres actually four and its almost shakespearean, i say naturally because of the patriot under patriarch and the oldest brother wanted nothing to do the company and the two youngest, one passed away and bill, twins and bill wound up suing in the long legal fight with his brothers and quite nasty. It is a really sad story, the brothers, the oldest, charles was in charge and then the younger twin and you have to point, he was never content with the idea that his older brother would run the firm. They had an actual dispute over how to run the business. Charles wanted to plow 90 bakken, bill koch wanted to live like a rich person and take money out of the company and by big houses and have helicopters. Which he essentially did. But they though for over, and fd than 20 years of litigation, ugly, ugly fights, they were so tired to dig through his trash, pose the reporters point negative story about his brother. It created a real feeling of being a bottle in the siege mentality, in the 1990s david koch, i think Everybody Knows he passed away last week. He said it is been picked up by all sides of the media, im glad he is dead and i hope the end was painful. [laughter] good for you, what do people think of him and is probably hardcore from the left, he did not say that when president bush passed away. Outside of donald trump, i dont know that bill mark would say that about anybody. But it comes from the whole idea in a certain perspective that the Koch Brothers are the absolute enemy of the environment and everything starting with Global Warming. I see that a lot and it has made my job difficult to report on this company because there is an atmosphere of toxicity and hostility and bad faith and distrust and all the rest of it the first of all makes people inside the company extremely hesitant to share their story and extreme hesitant to talk. Thats one reason the book took so long to report in a guess i suppose as a reporter in general i think its extremely unethical for a general understanding how things work to have such rhetoric become such a commonplace thing. And i need to own my own role in this. And as it happened spending years people who know david koch and looking at his Business Empire and the operation that he saw those positive and critical but as a reporter the job is to tell people the truth and tell people what is going on in the truth it is often obscured intentionally because the political operations have grown from the business operations. They are taken from the exact same blueprint but politics is just as obscure in the Derivatives Market so its important to tell people this is what happened. And its very important and then Global Warming over the next 30 or 40 years or maybe longer. So did david koch this is a real sincere Investigative Journalism now that they have politicized Global Warming but how they did that i dont think that has really been fully understood with the theory or the truth. But it starts with the Koch Brothers. I started reporting the story for a simple reason bricco a few years ago i was interviewing a former senior lobbyist for Koch Industries and how they do what they do. When you were there what was the front burner issue . He did not hesitate he said carbon. Carbon was the preeminent political issue. So maybe we could take a minute to talk about Koch Industries and politics maybe that has gotten more attention publicly with important economic activities. Koch has had a very particular infrastructure he calls himself a Classical Liberal he describes the views that are not libertarian like hayek i read the book so you did not have to. [laughter] but anyway. [laughter] so this organized society the voluntary Market Exchange system and the actual sovereign that human set prices on things that they care about. And then it reflects that you have to honor that but with your price of healthcare and your roads or your education. You name it. And then to intervene in that system with government regulation and Government Programs if you take money and then give it to those who are losers then you distort the system according to charles koc koch. He has worked diligently and breathtakingly in a disciplined fashion since the seventies to make American Society reflect this view. He did it with think tanks he tried to stay away from corporate lobbying since the 19 nineties when a federal investigation came out and he realized if for. Washington in the big way then you cannot be on the menu. So since the nineties he builds a political apparatus that rivaled miss america. And when i started to report the book i thought i would be writing about super pack and Campaign Donations but i was wrong. That is the wrong area the real action starts the day after the election when you get into the business of governing down in the pipes with the expertise and that model so to do that he is a multifaceted machine one of the red largest registered lobbyist a bed in the white house very nice offices and they said Something Like true power lies in silence. That is awesome. So he has a corporate lobbying shot then constellation that charles koch has built at the Cato Institute and American Energy alliance, energy researc research. These things create and promote for washington dc that is a small town. And they mainstreamed the ideas that charles koch has then you have a network that he convenes twice a year to give us much money during a campaign for that Political Party that is huge money for politicians and then finally you have a network for americans for prosperity for the nationwide activist network they can fill buses full of angry voters from North CarolinaWest Virginia and ohio to come to washington dc get them loaded and the glossy protest signs and then give them lunch and then to specifically target and from that point of view as well. So what you see with the entire machine is the ability not just to influence policy but to write policy and create policy that is remarkably effective. One of the ways in the key elements is they have recognized for decades if regulations are ever put on Carbon Emissions they will have dramatically negative consequences for their business. Imagine having all of these billions of dollars invested in Oil Refineries or pipelines and the value of all of that could collapse the demand for fossil fuels diminishes. And not only to forestall and delay but any activity and Greenhouse Gas emissions. So i made it clear in your book with Investigative Journalism that even though the Koch Brothers are massive donors the Republican Party , this is not a religious fight they are not social conservatives this comes from the libertarian freemarket viewpoint. So do you think they have aligned with the republicans out of pragmatism for the best interest of their business and that ideology . Thats a hard question to answer. I got the letter charles koch wrote 1974 to donors of the Libertarian Party he says i have discussed it with the republicans they are just as Big Government liberals as the democrats. So if you have the view that i just described how the world should work with the Government Intervention and republicans have been frustrated for decades with charles koch now fastforward to the year 2005 i interviewed a guy he was one of the first on americans for prosperity he remembers going to one of the early events when charles koch said look the democrats are a lost cause we will never influence them or get on their agenda we all focus on republicans we need to remove the Republican Party to where we see the world strict libertarianism anti regulation scale back and stop government spending. So actually to focus the vast majority of their power on the Republican Party and to transform that and the reason is they see that as the only viable option. To be running as a Vice President ial nominee on the ticket in 1980 to go around the country getting many and giving speeches. Libertarianism doesnt bode well i dont think it ever really has and they realize we have to transform the Republican Party to achieve our policy ends. So there has been a strong relationship. And to strongly oppose president obama and strongly oppose now President Trump so in terms of social issues with the economy where do you feel that Charles Falls on the political spectrum quick. Social issues quick. Yes with the selfinterest of what theyve done with the Republican Party with the regulation and the viewpoints of libertarianism. Yes. That it must be frustrating because that has been in place since the seventies to create a free market utopia in the United States and they are consistently frustrated. At the beginning of 2015 charles essentially picked his top five candidates of the Republican Party rubio and cruzan bush and then this Reality Television star comes along. [laughter] and flips the game table and does it with the agenda that it is at odds with the koch agenda the America First agenda does not coincide with what they want at all. There is that they love that the Administrative State the epa for example. I have the transition document the trunk team went to the epa carbon carbon carbon. That is a christmas list but donald trump has shown he is willing to impose tariffs on trade deals that immigration rhetoric to the coke koch network so to change where they can and then help where they want to help that is appointing conservative judges and we could talk that they have tremendous influence. Asking about the culture of Koch Industries what comes a very clear that a fortune 500 Company Charles has aays put a premium on outside the box thinkers and entrepreneurs not just company men are Company Women to say yes sir that he wants people to challenge him always thinking ahead what happens in 30 years . Your book is the best example why are we doing corporate budget thats for publicly traded companies and just like that it was gone. Yes. With his astounding progression say this publicly but i thought i went to work for him. [laughter] and im sure everybody will hate me on twitter for that. But it is true. And i will get to the negatives and downsides later but he truly has built a subtle, adaptive, entrepreneuril organization and the example that you pick out in the seventies because they hit the budget numbers it was a waste of time if those publicly traded corporations and then they just said get rid of it. So they created this complicated specifically marketbased management and when you get hired at Koch Industries the first three days of your job are spent in an auditorium in the basement learning this philosophy of marketbased management and these people walk around speaking this language to each other that truly only they understand. And to have those points of view when she says humiliated humility that means cover your Downside Risk be ready for negative surprises it doesnt mean humble. And the corporate philosophy that charles himself has said you you are all in an marketbased management or you are all out. And like its own society your own ecosystem and your own country so now i think about the first time of coke and disco Koch Industries walking in the front door. And with those Corporate Headquarters one of the things is what surrounds the north side. Within the embrace of the Corporate Culture to be more invented every year that they continue to grow and it is pretty amazing. Koch industries there is no secret and they always had that culture with the unprecedented access. Why did they let you win quick. At first they said no way. [laughter] i said okay so i flew to wichita so i spent a miserable week knocking on peoples doors and the whole job is you knock on the doors and then you go talk to somebody and you learn and then you knock on seven more doors. And then eventually Koch Industries realized this reporting will happen. They told me stories that were truly amazing. And then to blow your mind. And with that position. And then to be more willing to tell their story. And with those thousands of pages of documents with government investigation and eventually over time. When book such as this come out not just the Koch Brothers but it falls into one or two categories. And then he said you are a true journalist. This goes right down the middle. In my third deep conviction nobody really cares what i think about Koch Industries but and then on their behalf to be described in a way that is easy to digest to walk around with a better understanding we want to know how these institutions are really operating in whats going on in the world. So this is simply to describe the institution so what is going on in America Today or to be structured of ten years of Economic Growth during that decade and to look at those questions. I think the job is to describe whats going on to get an accurate picture and get into the readers hands and then ultimately they will be in touch for that use of power. Where the economy is structured in this way. First well turn over to audience questions. I encourage you to come up and take two more questions we are selling a lot of copies that are nonfiction it was phenomenal. What was the reaction for you and your book as i described the relationship i said the Public Relations department 260 pages of material to give them a chance to respond. And i told them from the beginning this will be a portrait i went to show the blind spots at the downside so they had months to respond and they engage. Everybody would admit it got tense at times and there were phone calls i got heated. But now once the book has come out it has been mostly radio silence and what the pr team is trying to do is to get out the story that they see as possible you seen a lot of advertisement with the Positive Side of Koch Industries. They should get that story out it is important and the consequences of their action and the parts of the institution by people in politics and again the country is in desperately short supply and that is beneficial for anybody to read. And with that vitriol not to the extreme but certainly with that viewpoint if you look at the coke brothers work in the oil industry bills will not make any american popular are those the factors they have been vilified . Or do you think thats beyond that quick. It is complicated. First of all the media landscape is garbage today permanent hostility as the media guy fully agreed 100 percent. And the species that cannot survive and that paradox and physical thinking that is one reason i cannot tell you they say they are evil but listen. This organization has had dramatic effects on Public Policy in the United States. The book documents crimes that were committed in 1996 intentionally polluting the wetlands rather than shut it down and lose money. But that is not helpful so the question is why . I think there is a deep understanding in america right now that we hear the system is rigged and the statistics on the front page of the wall street journal the middleclass is swamped with debt. They have been tested by a very small population of people this is creating antagonism it helps trump and so i think that describes that vitriol all that is going on right now. And then dealing with the program what the problem and then think about it deep plea and then just to find villains. I know you want to ask questions. We have a microphone here. [applause] i genuinely dont know. This is a political question how much influence do they have on local politics in wichita . And topeka . And washington but i mean local in our area. Im not going to lie i did not report on wichita that much. So they are a huge Corporate Citizen in then there is a chapter in the book and there is a very conservative republican of how he came to support alternative Energy Sources with the growing industry but of course with senator brownback and then that tax structure that was very involved in that. Between trump and koch do you feel that would be a schism or a civil war or the religious right will cause a threeway brawl of the Republican Party . Then into the bowels of the Republican Party. So those political chapters office it one opposite of the Office Building and then for control of the Republican Party steering wheel. It is the intense back and forth. Koch wins when certain federal judges are appointed and Mitch Mcconnell is making sure he is happen 191 that is happening. That he imposes massive tariffs. And then the Global Energy system in global trade. And donald trump had a tremendous support of the Republican Party as you have seen many times and what it is interesting and then with those policies and if donald trump wins that he may redraw the Republican Party for generation generations. I have so many questions. So what i want to ask you about his treatment of his own workers and he didnt fall far from the tree he was one of the activists in the 19 fifties and those antiunion sentiments from the beginning and i remember a worker was killed because of being poisoned and Georgia Pacific and then tries to tell workers how to vote can you comment and what you ran across. This is so predictable that please read the book. The story of the labor unions and the workers they ended up playing a much more important role. And one of the first things they did was a ninemonth strike. And then over the years and then they battled out across the board. There is a cadre of people in the hardworking people have other workers we have spent years reporting and it is a rough picture. And then to analyze them they are working longer and harder hours they had never. These are negative consequences and it truly reflects the broader trends going on today. They had problems in the seventies and that is where it is today. And the consequences for middleclass workers. And that degree to which charles koch sets the tone for the company and has for half a century so is there an heir apparent . When charles koch goes to the great oil well in the sky. [laughter] so what happens when he steps away quick. Chapter 22 the education of chase koch is his son born 1977 they said welcome current prints when he was born. He has been given a fascinating education. That is a remarkably levelheaded guy who has forced his own way. We will see an interim ceo after he steps away i think eventually chase will run it but in the future how much of this explosive growth was attributable to the individual . And thats to what he wants to point to which is the Corporate Culture. Only time will answer the question. To say that this is deja vu all over again. The whole conversation is reminiscent of John D Rockefeller and William Rockefeller the history a Standard Oil Company and also to carry the burden of wealth of the Standard Oil Company but what you converse today that the parallels are unprecedented so my question to you is have you ever researched the gilded age of the robber barons carnegie and rockefeller and so forth cracks are we going to a second gilded age quick. I was really nervous when the question started. [laughter] what she did for Investigative Journalism in the early 19 hundreds with those interviews and that economic history of the United States and from the thirties this is the era of unbridled Corporate Power in america and then to emerge from that monopoly with income inequality of the thirties under fdr. That history repeats itself capitalism in the significant way there isnt enough time to talk about it what role should government play . Those entities that win time and time again which is just like Koch Industries where we go from here. Thank you. In your opinion does charles koch not understood and the foley magnitude of Climate Change are just profit. I will not pretend i have an answer for that they did not let me interview him on that topic. And then to acknowledge the reality that is a controversial statement. And what they really believes in his heart if the Market Solutions will solve they just dont know i could not interview him about it. But one thing that we can report is what that has done in and the real world consequences. With the rebellion with the attorney general that would invite koch that becomes more and more of a reality like Bernie Sanders quick. [laughter] i dont know the answer to that question. Charles. In any part that would happen it is very unpredictable. Do you feel as they come forward quick. I dont think it will affect their attitudes or the corporation but he was a partner with charles koch so you will not see a dramatic change. And then to take a larger role. It with that effort with the political contributions it with the state legislature candidate candidates. And talk about trading. And that pipeline network. And then the United States congress. And where to have the most impact in political power with the state legislature and to raise 50000 you have to hand it to the Political Network and the Exchange Council and to be way ahead with those american policies. [applause] and then be available to chat and then all the rest. And as a massive undertaking to have an idea who the Koch Brothers were so what is the biggest reparation on the other side . The analytical rigor that blew my mind. I have talked to people they are not focused on the shiny object so what strikes me most is that analytical rigor. [applause] [inaudible conversations]