Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America's Most Powerful and Private Dynasty

by Daniel Schulman

  There is no evidence to suggest David has ever attempted to sway coverage, though, as a major donor, he holds a certain indirect clout. This became clear after New York’s WNET, where David also served as a trustee, aired a documentary called Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream. The income equality–themed film, which debuted the week after the presidential election, focuses on 740 Park Avenue, the haven for New York’s ultrarich where David and his family reside. David is one of the film’s central characters, and it includes an interview with a former doorman who identified the billionaire as the 31-unit building’s stingiest resident. “We would load up his trucks—two vans, usually—every weekend, for the Hamptons… multiple guys, in and out, in and out, heavy bags. We would never get a tip from Mr. Koch. We would never get a smile from Mr. Koch. Fifty-dollar check for Christmas, too—yeah, I mean, a check! At least you could give us cash.”

  The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer reported that David was “apparently so offended” by the documentary that he decided against making a hefty contribution to WNET. Eventually, he resigned from the board outright. The fallout caused another Koch-related documentary in the PBS pipeline to get defunded. Called Citizen Koch, it explores the increasing influence of money in politics, following the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, and it centers in part on Governor Scott Walker’s battle with Wisconsin’s public employee unions. “It’s the very thing our film is about—public servants bowing to pressures, direct or indirect, from high-dollar donors,” the filmmakers told Mayer.

  When David donated $100 million to Lincoln Center in 2008 to underwrite the renovation of the New York State Theater (now the David H. Koch Theater) concerns about the political baggage of the Koch surname were of a different sort. One long-serving Lincoln Center board member said he worried that people would associate the theater with the former mayor of New York City, Ed Koch. “I said, ‘Oh, Christ. People are going to call this the Koch’ ”—pronounced like scotch—“ ‘Theater.’ ”

  “We were all aware of who he is and what he’d done and there were many who didn’t agree with his politics,” the board member noted, “but the fact of the matter is, he was very generous in his offer and, therefore, as a fiduciary, really, that was our sole consideration.” He added, “I hate his politics, but there’s no question of his genuine generosity in this area. It can’t be doubted.”

  David’s pledge for the New York State Theater coincided with a moment in Manhattan’s philanthropic evolution when several major cultural institutions marketed branding opportunities as if they were sports franchises. David’s friend and 740 Park Avenue neighbor Stephen Schwarzman set the financial bar, in early 2008, for the naming rights of a major cultural landmark with his $100 million donation to the New York Public Library. In recognition of his gift, the library etched his name onto the exterior of its iconic, flagship location at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue. Schwarzman’s contribution made Lincoln Center fund-raisers realize the true value of the status symbol they had to offer. Noticing David and his wife, Julia, making a conscious effort to raise their profile in New York, they zeroed in on the industrialist as their lead prospect.

  “There are some people who carry around with them a certain sense of guilt over how much money they have, or a certain unease about it—he was not one of those people,” said a former Lincoln Center official involved in the naming talks, who recalled the billionaire proudly showing off a model replica of his 25,000-square-foot Palm Beach villa during a meeting at his office. But he said that unlike other rich contributors, who give away money largely for reasons of self-aggrandizement, David wanted to ensure Lincoln Center remains a cultural mainstay for generations. The billionaire could have pressed for his name to remain on the theater in perpetuity—the deal granted to audio pioneer Avery Fisher, for whom another Lincoln Center venue is named—but he instead agreed to a term of fifty years (at which point his heirs will have the option to make another contribution to keep his name on the building). “In 50 years, you are going to need money again to fix this place up, and I don’t want to stand in the way of that,” David told Lincoln Center fund-raisers.

  “That struck me as being incredibly enlightened and putting his own personal grandeur aside for the benefit of the public in New York City,” the former official said.

  Yet no one slaps his name on a Lincoln Center theater—or the Met, the Smithsonian, and any number of museums and medical research centers—without consideration for how future generations will remember him. It is an act of legacy burnishing as old as the industrial world itself, the cleansing of an unfathomable fortune amassed through the most brutish of industries. Despite David’s motives, his philanthropy resembles the latest variation on Andrew Carnegie’s “Gospel of Wealth,” in which the tycoon who gives away his millions before he dies will find “no bar… at the gates of Paradise.”

  “Carnegie, Mellon—take any of these great philanthropists or these great industrialists of the late nineteenth or early twentieth century,” the former Lincoln Center official said. “They are not remembered for the rape and pillage of our environment or the way they mistreated people. They are remembered for the contributions they’ve made financially as philanthropists. There is a long history of people who profit through other people’s detriments and who also do a lot of good in different ways, and I think that’s what will happen with the Kochs.”

  On October 30, 2013, New York’s glitterati queued up in front of a headset-wearing event planner outside the David H. Koch Theater, located adjacent to two other Lincoln Center venues in a plaza featuring an elaborate fountain. She held a clipboard with a list of names, which she shouted over the rush-hour din as socialites took their turns mugging for the cameras in front of a Clinique “step and repeat” banner. When a bystander inquired about the glamorous, jewel-bedecked blonde who was presently posing for the paparazzi, a bearded photographer swiveled his head. “Don’t know, don’t care,” he replied. “She’s probably just married to some rich guy.”

  That evening the American Ballet Theatre was opening its fall season with the world premiere of The Tempest, the ballet company’s adaptation of William Shakespeare’s play, choreographed by Alexei Ratmansky, the former artistic director of Russia’s famed Bolshoi Ballet. The performance, largely underwritten by David Koch, marked the American Ballet Theatre’s return to this venue after nearly forty years. David played a behind-the-scenes role in making that happen. When he negotiated the naming rights of the theater, he expressed his desire—a wish, not a precondition—that the American Ballet Theatre might someday find a home in the newly rechristened David H. Koch Theater. “That was always his hope that we would perform there,” said Rachel Moore. David later helped Moore’s company negotiate a three-year contract to perform an annual two-week run at the Koch Theater.

  As the 6:30 p.m. curtain approached, the celebrities began to trickle in. Down the red carpet sauntered Sigourney Weaver in a dark green sequined gown. Actress Bebe Neuwirth glided past wearing a red strapless dress, followed shortly by heiress Nicky Hilton in purple lace. Actor Alan Cumming wore a white cravat and Louboutin sneakers, stopping to flash a peace sign at the photographers before continuing on to the theater.

  Finally, a six-foot blonde stepped in front of the cameras, wearing a turquoise floor-length gown. “Julia, look this way!” one of the paparazzi shouted. The photographers knew her by sight. The hostesses who had once thrown up speed bumps to Julia Koch’s social ascent were now mere footnotes. Julia had started out fitting society ladies for events like these when she worked for Adolfo; now she was one of Manhattan’s doyennes.

  Julia arrived alone. Avoiding the red-carpet fanfare, her tuxedo-wearing husband, looking slim and tanned, joined her later in their balcony seats. Two short performances preceded The Tempest’s premiere, and as the orchestra played Tchaikovsky’s Suite No. 3, David watched the ballerinas of the American Ballet Theatre dance en pointe in the George Balanchine–choreographed “Theme and Variations.” H
e admired as usual the graceful athleticism of the dancers, one of the reasons that David, an old jock himself, enjoyed this form of theater over others.

  Meanwhile, elsewhere in the Koch empire, far less graceful performances were playing out. At that moment in central Texas, cleanup crews worked to contain 17,000 gallons of oil that had spewed from a pipeline owned by a Koch Industries subsidiary. In the political wing of Koch world, Americans for Prosperity was unleashing attack ads against two Democratic senators whose 2014 races could decide control of the upper chamber of Congress.

  Julia was cochairing the Tempest-themed gala that would follow the premiere. During intermission, the wait staff stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the theater’s second-floor promenade, encircling the tables that had been set for the after party, which ballet benefactors had paid as much as $5,000 a person to attend. Event designer Bronson Van Wyck had transformed the space into a brooding seascape, which included a series of forty-foot pillars crafted to evoke tornadoes, a nod to the violent storm that opens the first act of Shakespeare’s tale. A soundtrack rumbled with the low growl of approaching thunder, and smoke machines billowed a light fog that clung around David’s feet as he clasped the hands of well-wishers and huddled in conversation with Peter Martins, the Danish dancer and choreographer who heads the New York City Ballet (the company that calls the Koch Theater home for the majority of the year). David may have been considered a conservative pariah in other parts of the country, but here he and Julia were royalty.

  The curtain came up a short time later on Prospero, the sorcerer protagonist of Shakespeare’s tale, preparing to exact revenge against the brother who usurped his throne by summoning a tempest. The story is one of power, betrayal, retribution, and redemption—themes that David understands better than most.

  The maelstrom that consumed his family had lasted twenty years. At the eye of their storm was the love and legacy of a father who taught his sons to be tough and competitive, to stand their ground and land their punches, never realizing that his boys would one day turn these attributes to the destruction of one another.

  After putting some distance on their feud, Bill reflected that one of the final sticking points that had prevented him from achieving peace with his brothers was an item that held nothing more than sentimental value. It was the portrait of their father, painted by a little-known Southwestern artist named Herman de Jori, which hung in the family home under the glow of a display light. Bill ultimately let it go. The contested painting remains in Wichita, where it hangs in Charles Koch’s office to the right of his desk, the patriarch looking down on his son with his lips frozen in a tight smile.

  Bill, Charles, and David Koch in Lincoln, Massachusetts, in 1968, the year after their father’s death. Charles was then running the family company. Bill was earning a Ph.D. and overseeing a family venture capital fund, and David was working in New York City for the chemical company Halcon International. Photo Credit: ©Mikki Ansin

  Patriarch Fred C. Koch’s biographical entry in a John Birch Society pamphlet from the 1960s. Curiously, the bio only mentions Fred having three sons, leaving out his namesake Frederick.

  A 1935 Russian-language advertisement for the Winkler-Koch Engineering Co. His work in the Soviet Union made Fred Koch a millionaire, but his experiences there convinced him of communism’s evils.

  The cover of his 1960 anti-communist polemic.

  A compilation of home movies and photos was introduced as evidence in a 1991 legal battle over the will of the family matriarch, Mary Robinson Koch. Mary with David, Charles, Bill, and Frederick at the family compound in Wichita. Credit for film stills: Courtesy of Michael Oliver

  The box shows Bill, Charles, David, and Frederick as boys. Credit for film stills: Courtesy of Michael Oliver

  David lands a punch on his twin brother Bill. Briefly captain of the MIT boxing team, Fred taught his sons the finer points of pugilism. Credit for film stills: Courtesy of Michael Oliver

  Charles, the second-born son, grew Koch Industries into America’s second-largest private company. Photo Credit for Charles photo: © Bo Rader/Wichita Eagle/MCT via Getty Images.

  Frederick, seen here with his mother in 1990, had little interest in the family business, and became a patron of the arts. Photo Credit for Frederick photo: Courtesy of Michael Oliver

  When he was a bachelor, David Koch threw legendary parties. Here he rings in New Year’s Eve in Aspen. Credit for David photo: ©Dafydd Jones.

  Twin brother Bill celebrates his 1992 America’s Cup win in San Diego, California. Credit for Bill photo: ©Vince Bucci/AFP/Getty Images

  David, who ran as the Libertarian Party’s vice presidential candidate in 1980, appears on stage in Los Angeles with the party’s presidential nominee Ed Clark. David Libertarian Party photo: ©AP Photo/Randy Rasmussen.

  David, seated with Koch Industries top political advisor Richard Fink, at a November 2011 Americans For Prosperity summit. David and Richard Fink: ©Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

  David and wife Julia at the January 2013 groundbreaking of the David H. Koch Plaza at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. David and Julia at the Met: ©Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images

  On August 24, 1996, teenagers Jason Stone and Danielle Smalley drove into a cloud of butane leaking from a Koch Industries pipeline. Both were killed in the explosion. This is what remained of Smalley’s truck.

  Greenpeace’s airship circles over Rancho Mirage, California, in January 2011 ahead of a private meeting of Charles and David’s political donor network. Photo Credit for Greenpeace photo: ©Gus Ruelas

  Acknowledgments

  Sons of Wichita is my first book, and when I began this project, in the fall of 2011, my editor John Brodie cautioned me that the process would feel a bit like summiting Everest. There’s no question that there were times in the two years that followed when I wished someone would hand me an oxygen mask. Thankfully, John was with me every step of the way, spurring me on with advice, insight, and encouragement. This book is better in every way because of him, and he has my gratitude for seeing the promise in this project and in me. Thanks also to John’s wonderful colleagues, in particular Grand Central Publishing’s president and publisher, Jamie Raab; Hachette’s senior vice president of legal and business affairs, Karen Andrews; production editor Yasmin Mathew; production associate Melissa Mathlin; plus the marketing and PR team including Brian McLendon, Amanda Pritzker, Amanda Brown, and Andrew Duncan, who were fantastic to work with from start to finish. Thanks, as well, to Liz McNamara.

  Equally vital to this endeavor was my agent, Howard Yoon, who helped me transform a kernel of an idea into a biography and was key to shaping the vision for this book. Howard’s partner, Gail Ross, was indispensable, and I feel extremely fortunate to have both of them in my corner. I’m also indebted to my friend Bruce Falconer, who read an early draft of the book and provided feedback that greatly improved the final product, sparing readers some terrible clichés.

  A number of outstanding young journalists assisted me, and they have my sincere appreciation. Ryan Brown, now an author in her own right, contributed research and conducted a handful of interviews. Andy Kroll, my Mother Jones colleague, pitched in with some great reporting that appeared in “Out of the Shadows” and “The Mother of All Wars”; I hope our bull sessions about the Byzantine workings of Charles and David Koch’s political network continue long into the future. Molly Redden tracked down hard-to-find court records—some stored in a literal salt mine—and arranged for me to view them. Noah Shannon helped with fact checking. Thanks, as well, to Matt Corley, Victoria Rossi, Perry Stein, and Chris Heller.

  David Corn is Mother Jones’s Washington bureau chief, and I’m lucky to have him as a boss and to count him as a friend. David was the first person I consulted when I was considering writing a book, and he introduced me to my agent. Along with my thanks, I owe David an orca platter at the Old Ebbitt Grill. Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery, the magazine’s brilliant, indefatigable, and award-winning co
-editors-in-chief, were incredibly supportive of this project from the outset and gave me the time to see it to fruition. Special thanks to Nick Baumann, who did double duty when I took book leave—and a shout-out to the rest of the MoJo family.

  There were many fellow journalists who helped me at various stages of the reporting process. Among them is the phenomenal Leslie Wayne, formerly of The New York Times, who was one of the first reporters to pull back the curtain on the Koch clan. Her previous work was an incredible resource, and Leslie herself was a source of invaluable insight. She also generously shared with me her research materials, which this book benefited from greatly. Thanks to Carol Ann Whitmire, editor of the Quanah-Tribune Chief, for her hospitality when I visited Fred Koch’s birthplace on an early reporting trip. At The Wichita Eagle, Sherry Chisenhall and Jean Hays provided me with access to the paper’s “morgue”; the Eagle has done a tremendous job of covering Koch Industries and the Koch family over the years, and its archives were an important source of background material. The work of Bryan Burrough, who profiled Bill Koch for Vanity Fair in 1994, was another great resource, and I thank him for indulging my questions about obscure matters nearly two decades in the past. Last, a hat tip to Jeff Riggenbach, who patiently dug through old audiotapes and photos to unearth some gems from the early days of the Libertarian Party.