In america, who have Strong Political views and taken their fortune over the last 40 years to influence america. They spend in very targeted ways and interesting ways to change the whole direction of american politics. Host what are their names and where are they located . Wikipedia charles koch and david koch. The ones they think of was that part brothers, charles is from wichita, kan. From where Koch Industries based and david lives in new york, the wealthiest residents in manhattan. There are two others Koch Brothers, people dont talk about the. Bill koch and fred koch. You hear about them in my book, but mostly you dont hear about them much in the headlines. Host why not . Guest they are not as political as charles and david allegiance some ways they are losers in a huge family struggles that took place over the years, an epic dynastic struggles for who was going to control but family company, Koch Industries, a huge privately owned company that the koches have jumped 4 years is the Biggest Company no one ever heard of. Company that almost every american probably comes into contact with. You dont know you do probably, but if you by dixie cups, staying after carpets, vanity fair napkins, Georgia Pacific lumber, so many of others, you are a consumer of Koch Industries, the epic fight among these four bullies who would have control of the company the father fred koch started. Two lost out, the ones you dont hear about very much, fred and bill. Host what did fred and bill do . Guest very interesting. Bill started his own business, also in fossil fuels, part of Koch Industries, the biggest part of it which is in fossil fuels. It refines oil and has coal and gas. Bill koch has his own company that sells a different kind of koch, different kind of refining oil. Fred is a kind of shy philanthropists who is very interested in the arts and gives money to all kinds of cultural institutions, but mostly anonymously which is very interesting because the other brothers are quite flashy, like to get attention and david kochs name is known to everybody in new york city because it is emblazoned on so many institutions. He likes to get attention. His older brother fred is quite quiet about it. Host when you refer to fred as autistic are you saying he is gay . Guest i am not saying i would know because fred has said himself that he is not gay. His brothers have accused him of being gay over the years and in fact tried one point according to a document that i described in this book, sealed Court Document that describes under oath testimony from bill koch, one of the british you dont hear about much about how he and his two other brothers tried to frame their older brother fred. They said they called them to a meeting they said was a company meeting, it was the king larue court, their older brother walked in in his 20s, they were too, they said they were going to tell their father he was. Unless he turned over his shares in the company to these other brothers. It was an attempt to blackmail him about what they claimed was his private life. His private life has remained private. I dont feel it is my role in life to try to out people who may be gay or may not be day. I give him the right to decide what zone of privacy wants to live in but i think it is too bad his own brothers didnt show that same respect. It is an insight into this family. This is a rough, tough, ruthless bunch of people. This is the story i tell in the book about these family members. They went against each other. The item and you might try blackmailing your own brother and say you will tell your father and their older brother, the father would disinherit him if he found out. The older brother didnt buckle under where he has grown up with him, he stood up and walked out of a room, and said i never want to hear about this again. He didnt get treated the same by the family in terms of inheritance. Walked out on that and in recent years david koch has said he was a supporter of gay rights even though people think of them as vastly conservative but they are not social conservatives, they are libertarian. Maybe david koch changed his views, many people in the country have changed their views about gay rights, but it is a brittle consultation between brothers over grabbing the family fortune. Host how does a reporter often get hold of sealed koch packages like this. With lots of trying. There are certain things i cant really talk about how i got the documents i have. You can see nobody has challenged the authenticity of it. There are new documents in this book and it took a long time to put this book together. I was up against the law to get the information but the Court Documents are one of the most unassailable facts you can bring to the host in dark money the Hidden History of the billionaires behind the rise of the radical right, were you able to interview any of the koch family . Guest i wish i could talk more about the people i was able to interview who did not want to be discussed. I can and talked about that the i can say neither david koch nor charles koch talked to me. I tried for five years, dropped an email to somebody who worked with them or talk to people who know them and try to get an interview. They have got a long history of secrecy. There is a family saying that says his father used to say it is when the whales spout that he get harpooned. For that reason he prefers to swim under the surface. The story itel here is mostly a story that these people did not want told. They certainly didnt want to help me tell it. Host oddly enough, you write in dark money the Hidden History of the billionaires behind the rise of the radical right, a fiercely libertarian koch family of part of its fortune to historys most famous dictator, Joseph Stalin and adolf hitler. Guest isnt that remarkable . The countrys for most libertarian influences, supposed to be anti authoritarian, yet the family fortune began when the father was a very bright man, early graduate of mit figured out a better way to crack oil, turn it into refine it, he had this breakthrough but he couldnt sell its in america because he felt Major Oil Companies were blocking him, they had a monopoly. He had to take it elsewhere if he was going to make money. Ironically the place he went first was the soviet union and he went to stalin and built Something Like 15 Oil Refineries for stalin in the first 5year plan of stalins soviet union. Then stalin realize he could get his own people to design these, they could copy it so fred koch came out of this there and looking for further for where he could go he helped design one of the most important refineries in nazi germany, he got the commission in 1933, started building in 1934, it was completed in 1935. By then, people watching the rise of hitler, himmler became the chancellor of the third reich in 1933. Hitler is in control of germany at this point and a lot of bad things are beginning to happen. Fred koch was making money and this refinery that was built there by koch called winkler koch and one other partner, personally green lighted by hitler. At first hitlers henchman said they didnt want this american refinery. Hitler said he wanted it. He okayed it and it became key to the nazi war effort. It was a refinery that could refine high octane fuel that was necessary for the air force. Hitler was trying to build up his military at this point and he saw the possibilities and this refinery became a very big part of the nazi war effort. The u. S. And allies bombed him several times because it was a key target during world war ii. According to reports that she after my book, in between bombings it was rebuilt by slave labor in the nazi concentration camps who had to put it back together again. It is a story, and erotic, interesting twist on one of a Hidden History, they didnt necessarily want the world to know. Host how important is it that Cox Industries is privately built . Guest is very important. I am not one of the worlds experts on business but i did start my career spending 12 years at the wall street journal so i covered business. The difference between a public and private company is first of all the private company is accountable mostly to its own ears. In this case principally almost exclusively these two brothers. They have been able to plow their money back into it over and over again instead of trying to show immediate gains for stockholders. This made it very successful. It is phenomenally successful, this company. It has been great for them financially and kept it out of the public eye. It is a Secretive Company that doesnt have to mentor to many people. Host how long did you work on this book, where did you get the interest the right . Guest i was working on this book, it started with a magazine piece for the new yorker where i am a staff writer and i did that in 2010. I suppose you could say it is in five years or Something Like that. I wasnt working exclusively on the book old time. The last three years i worked on it and my interests it is serendipitous. A reporter in washington in 1983 the wall street journal brought me to washington to cover the Reagan White House and i started in 1984, very beginning and reagans Reelection Campaign so i lived through this period and these were my sources. Many people in these books were the people i interviewed. What interested me and part of the reason i wrote dark money the Hidden History of the billionaires behind the rise of the radical right is when i started that many years ago, these people were on the fringe. Reagan was president but there are always these people on the far right fringe, who i call because they were interesting for a counterpoint and comments and ideas that they were way out there. An example, dont take my word for it, theres a quote in the beginning of dark money the Hidden History of the billionaires behind the rise of the radical right where william f. Buckley describes the movement the cocks kochs were part of. Totalitarian, they were what the conservatives were trying to courage because they thought they were the lunatic fringe. What interested me by the time i wrote this book is they gained so much power they in some ways have become the center of gravity in the Republican Party. There is a new study from harvard, another professor describe the koch affect, it it is a Magnetic Pull on the Republican Party that pulled the whole party with them. I was interested how did they get from way out there to the center of republican politics . In many ways the center of american politics . Host is the koch political networking your view stronger than the Republican National committee . Guest yes. They are in competition in some ways but also in some ways the koch network has subsumed the Republican Party. The positions republican candidates take are often positions the kochs take. They have the money and often Campaign Funding and other support from all different groups to candidates who Will Champion their positions. As an example, in the republican field of president ial primary candidates all of the major candidates have come to the kochs to as their financial backing. They are kissing their ring to some extent. There is one candidate who is the exception and that is donald trump. He has made the most of it. He called the others puppets and is playing to the crowd saying i own my soul. All the others are owned. It is dynamic and his host from dark money the Hidden History of the billionaires behind the rise of the radical right, what made the koch familys growing financial role in american politics extraordinary was the way that it merged all forms of political spending into one investment aimed at paying huge future dividends. Guest that is true. The kochs in particular have a of fire. It is not just that they are among the richest people in the world which in itself adds a certain clout to their political ambitions, but the families they write about, about using philanthropy. The idea that these wealthy families have private foundations, they can give money to end tax deductions, they are subsidized by the public treasury. With those foundations they push their ideology. The ideology they push pushes their interests. They are almost like lobbying operations but they are tax deductible. Each of the families i describe have done that in different ways. What you have got with the kochs is people give money to its Huge Corporation through a gigantic private family fortune and through a network of philanthropic groups that echo their message across the country. It is that third prong in some ways that made them so interesting and important. Host how is that different from a george soros on the left doing the same thing through their donations . Guest speyer got into counterbalance this. He is the johnny come lately. One thing he did is his money that he gives is disclosed money. Ebook is called dark money, is about money that is given behindthescenes by people who dont want you to see the fingerprints on it. To hide their money trail the kochs and others give their money to these philanthropic groups that dont show who the donors are. They are supposed to not be printed lee in politics, that is debatable. This is about that game in particular, how important it becomes. He gives that money in an undisclosed way to an organization as he has in the past, he is engage to some extent, i did do a piece about george soros. When you write about the kochs in this country inevitably what you hear about since they are on the right is people saying why dont you write about george soros . Get that on the table. I wrote about george soros, i wrote a piece in the new yorker in 2004 which was the year he truly started putting serious money into a local politics. I wrote all about him and after that election he was very disappointed. He was trying to defeat george w. Bush in reelection. The reason im focusing on the kochs they stepped up the roll on electoral politics. And the 2016 elections cycle. At its height. He spent 20 million of his own money. You are talking about the amount lot of money in a few hands and no one has seen in this country before. Host this is something you write about in your book. Very soon after i discovered there had been an Opposition Research project on me and the couple top people at Koch Industries in washington organized it. They hired a private eye who turned out to be the Police Commissioner in new york city, former Police Commissioner, not current exactly, with his son and daughter who had been in the fbi and the private firm in new york. Eventually pieced together the story as a reporter would and found a source who told me theyre looking for dirt and if they couldnt find it they would make it up. They made something up, they came, put together a story that i was a plagiarist and tried to peddle it to a couple news organizations neither of which would run it because it turned out not to be true, but it would have been pretty terrible if it had gotten into print and anybody believed it. Nobody ran with it. Host what was that about . Guest the kochs hiring, lets be careful about this. Top people at Koch Industries working in washington put together boiler room operation in which they worked with a private eye in new york city and spent quite a few months looking for anything they could use to discredit me. I am not alone in this. There are many instances of the kochs specifically hiring private eyes to take on people who challenge them. There are a lot of and accounted power. A huge private company trying to play a major role in American Public life but behindthescenes, they dont like it that is what i was trying to do. Host former congressman j. C. Watts. Guest some extra space in the back room. Eventually it took some time but eventually was able to get a picture of what was going on. I covered a lot of things, but as far as i know, hadnt been the target of an effort to discredit me like that, maybe i should be flattered on some levels that anyone would take a reporter so seriously. Could have been it was scary in a way. It felt like an effort to ruin me and if they had succeeded in convincing people i was plagiarizing, that is a crime of morals turpitude. Is something that could take me down. It was not a minor effort. It was a killer effort. I am very glad it didnt succeed. My colleagues from whom i was supposed to have plagiarize were fantastic, said this is not true. One of them looked at one of the stories i was supposed to have stolen, Washington Post reporter and he said not only did you you credited me in the next sentence. It was a badly done operation in some ways but it is unusual and gives you an insight into the hardball that these two brothers who won so much power over american politics have played. Host where did the title of the dark side the inside story of how the war on terror turned into a war on american ideals, your 2008 book, come from . Guest former Vice President dick cheney. He went on the air himself shortly after 9 11 and he said in order to win this war on terror we need to play on the dark side. It is unclear what he was talking about at that point what did the dark side mean . The book explains. What that title was talking about. Host did you meet Vice President cheney or interview him . Guest i met Vice President cheney and had a chance to t