Secret Memo Displays Corporate and Media Tentacles of
the Kochtopus

     Fresh evidence of the New York billionaires'
     midterm campaign implicates journalists as well as
     fat cats

By Joe Conason
Oct 21, 2010
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joe_conason/

Is there a vast corporate conspiracy behind the Tea
Party and the midterm resurgence of the far right? The
most suggestive evidence involves the well-documented
role of the billionaire Koch brothers, their Americans
for Prosperity front group and other Koch-funded
entities - but now a secret letter from Charles Koch
shows that the tentacles of the "Kochtopus" include a
high-level "network" of corporate, lobbying, nonprofit,
and media organizations that meet regularly to plot
right-wing strategy. The letter and accompanying
documents first appeared on Think Progress in a post by
Lee Fang that is well worth reading in full.
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/10/20/beck-koch-chamber-meeting/

Dated September 24, 2010 and signed by Koch himself on
company stationery, the letter urges recipients to join
"our network of business and philanthropic leaders, who
are dedicated to defending our free society" - and
specifically to attend the group's next meeting at a
Palm Springs resort in late January. Most revealing is
an attached brochure about the network's most recent
meeting, which occurred in Aspen last June 27-28.

According to that document, the Palm Springs meeting
attracted such corporate and financial titans as
Stephen Schwartzman of the Blackstone Group, Philip
Anschutz of Anschutz Industries, and Steve Bechtel of
Bechtel Corp., as well as representatives of Bank of
America, Allied Capital, Citadel Investment, among many
others - all of whom gathered to learn how to "elect
leaders who are more strongly committed to liberty and
prosperity" with a "strategic plan to educate voters on
the importance of economic freedom."

Explaining the network's plan for November and beyond
were David Chavern, second in command at the US Chamber
of Commerce; Tim Phillips, the president of Americans
for Prosperity; Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus
Center at George Mason University; and Gretchen Hamel,
the former Bush administration official who runs Public
Notice, a group launched last spring under mysterious
auspices to attack government spending.

But conservative journalists were the true stars of
that June meeting, notably Washington Post columnist
and Fox News pundit Charles Krauthammer (who spoke at a
mountaintop dinner on "What's Ahead for America?"), the
National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru, syndicated columnist
and author Michael Barone, and Stephen Moore of the
Wall Street Journal editorial board. Glenn Beck of Fox
News - who has lately been defending the Chamber of
Commerce as advocates of "the little guy" - is also
listed as a "presenter."

Nobody was supposed to talk about the meeting, as the
brochure's "Confidentiality and Security" section
emphasizes, so nobody was meant to know that
Krauthammer, Ponnuru, Barone, Moore and Beck were flown
out to Aspen, lodged in luxury accommodations, and
presumably paid a handsome honorarium by Koch to
entertain and enlighten the would-be saviors of the
Republic. But now we know. So where are the guardians
of media integrity, who made so much noise about the
innocuous jawing of the liberals on Journolist?

Still more troubling is the same brochure's boast that
Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia have addressed past
meetings of the Koch network. Why would two Supreme
Court justices show up at a secret conclave of far-
right activists and corporate lobbyists, impairing the
transparency and impartiality of the nation's highest
court? This is a much more important story than that
harebrained harassing phone call by Virginia Thomas to
Anita Hill.

Joe Conason blogs in Salon several times a week and
writes a weekly column for the New York Observer. His
latest book is "It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril
in the Age of Bush."

_____________________________________________

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