In 2011, Jane Mayer of the New Yorker published, "Covert Operations," an article that purported to "expose" the well-known fact the Koch Brothers were financially supporting a lot of libertarian and conservative causes. The trouble is, the article had some pretty serious factual problems and misrepresentations. (For more on that, see here, here, and here.) Nonetheless, despite being unfair and misleading, the article made a splash and succeeded in turning the Koch Brothers into public enemy one as far as Democrats and liberals were concerned.
Now Jane Mayer is out with an entire book about the Koch Brothers, and New York Times reporter Nicholas Confessore rushed to print with this shocking revelation from Mayer's book headlined, " Father of Koch Brothers Helped Build Nazi Oil Refinery, Book Says." So there you have it; the Koch Brothers aren't just evil right-wingers, they're actual Nazis!
However, there's more than a few problems with the piece, starting with the fact that Confessore's and the New York Times's conflicts of interest are such that they shouldn't have run it without making some detailed disclosures. (More on that in a bit.) Even worse, Koch Industries's response to this ludicrous charge against the Kochs is far more compelling than the sensationalist accusation undergirding Confessore's article:
Between 1928 and 1934, Winkler-Koch Engineering handled more than 500 projects. Of these, 39 involved signed contracts to build cracking units. One of those units was included in a refinery in the port area of Hamburg, Germany, built for Foreign Oil Co. of Boston. During this period, Winkler-Koch worked on hundreds of other international projects, including work in England, Scotland, France, Canada, Romania, the Soviet Union, Persia and India. Winkler-Koch also worked on similar projects throughout the United States, including in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Wyoming, Illinois and Ohio. Winkler-Koch's contract with Foreign Oil was signed on Sept. 8, 1933, and the refinery became operational March 23, 1935. That signing was nearly six years before Germany invaded Poland. Meanwhile during that same period, many iconic U.S. companies were doing business in Germany, including Coca-Cola, General Motors, Ford and IBM. While this was Winkler-Koch's one and only project in Germany, some of those companies continued to do business in Germany throughout World War II. Simply put, this cracking unit was just one element in the composition of a single refinery. To state that Fred Koch was "hired to build the third-largest refinery in the Third Reich, a critical industrial cog in Hitler's war machine" is an outrageous assertion. To cherry-pick one project among hundreds during this time frame and then use it out of context in order to further an agenda-driven storyline is grossly inaccurate.
Indeed, the Sulzberger family, which owns the majority stake in the Times, has far more to answer for regarding the paper's coverage of the Holocaust than the Koch brothers's father does for doing a business deal in Germany in 1933. Faced with a slew of criticism, Confessore published the follow-up " Koch Executive Disputes Book's Account of Founder's Role in Nazi Refinery." The when-did-you-stop-beating- your-wife headline is a nice touch for what is passive-voiced garble that doesn't quite concede the premise of the original article was absurd.
Yet, still missing from any of this is any disclosure from Confessore that Mayer has a very close relationship with the Times. Confessore initially made it sound as if he got his hands on Mayer's not-yet-published book and the scandalous revelations therein by dumpster diving or through some great effort:
We got our hands on Jane Mayer's new book on the Kochs and the rise of the right. Details here: https://t.co/tONQCEXoR2
— Nick Confessore (@nickconfessore)
January 11, 2016
If a New York Times political reporter got his hands on a pre-publication copy of the book, that might have something to do with the fact that Mayer's Husband, Bill Hamilton, is the New York Times's Washington editor. Or perhaps he got it from her directly? Confessore is thanked by name on page 380 in the book's acknowledgments. And for what it's worth, the Times also recently ran a glowing review of Mayer's book without making any disclosures. It sure seems like the Times is basically running dubious advertorials to goose book sales for the wife of one of their top editors.
(Now for my own disclosure: Yes, I have worked for and been affiliated with a couple of organizations that have received Koch money. Suffice to say, this does not mean I agree with the Kochs on everything. At least progressives can be happy that President Obama finally came around to adopting the position on gay marriage that the Kochs held for decades prior.)