Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America’s Most Powerful and Private Dynasty
DEMOCRACY NOW interview with author Daniel Schulman at link.
Daniel Schulman, senior editor at Mother Jones magazine. His new book is Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America’s Most Powerful and Private Dynasty. . . .
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DANIEL SCHULMAN: OK. Well, their father, Fred Koch, in the 1920s develops a process for refining oil. His firm ends up getting sued by the major oil companies of the era, and in order to find work, he ends up having to look for contracts overseas. That leads him to work in Stalin’s Soviet Union in the early 1930s, where his firm makes $5 million helping to modernize the Soviet oil industry. He’s horrified by what he sees there. And when he returns home, he vows to do everything he can to fight communism. He ends up becoming a founding member of the John Birch Society, ultraconservative group whose leader, Robert Welch, considered Dwight Eisenhower to be literally an agent of the communist conspiracy. Fred Koch is in the room, literally, when the John Birch Society is founded. Charles Koch becomes a member of the John Birch Society as a young man. His three brothers—his three other brothers—
THE REST (including video):
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/5/21/behind_the_koch_brothers_new_book
