The Billionaire's Party

From:  New York Magazine 

                                                                        

The Koch Family   (Photo: Clockwise from top left, Courtesy of Koch Industries (3); Newscom; Courtesy of Koch Industries; Alan Klein)

Fred Koch, a native of North Texas and son of a Dutch immigrant, liked to say that he didn’t want his sons “to turn into country-club bums.” Fred graduated from M.I.T. in 1922 with a degree in chemical engineering and, like David, excelled in sports, in Fred’s case as a boxer. Fred moved to Wichita, where he became a partner in an engineering company called Winkler-Koch, made a fortune building oil refineries around the world, and bought a 160-acre horse farm outside of town, across the street from the Wichita Country Club. 

Early on, Fred’s company was nearly destroyed by litigious competitors. He and his partners had developed a new method for thermal cracking, a process that helps convert oil into gasoline; major oil companies tried to block him in court for years. Koch developed a fierce independent streak, and advised his sons never to sue: “The lawyers get a third, the government gets a third, and you get your business destroyed,” he told them.

Between 1929 and 1931, Fred Koch built fifteen oil plants in the Soviet Union, where he bore witness to the lead-up to Stalin’s Great Purge. Thirty years later, Koch published a pamphlet called A Business Man Looks at Communism. His list of “potential methods of communist take-over in U.S.A. by internal subversion” begins: “Infiltration of high offices of government and political parties until the President of the U.S. is a Communist, unknown to the rest of us of course, when as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy he could control us. Even the Vice Presidency would do as it could be easily arranged for the President to commit suicide.” Koch became a founding member of the John Birch Society. “Father was paranoid about communism, let’s put it that way,” says David.  MORE

The Koch Family   (Photo: Clockwise from top left, Courtesy of Koch Industries (3); Newscom; Courtesy of Koch Industries; Alan Klein)

Fred Koch, a native of North Texas and son of a Dutch immigrant, liked to say that he didn’t want his sons “to turn into country-club bums.” Fred graduated from M.I.T. in 1922 with a degree in chemical engineering and, like David, excelled in sports, in Fred’s case as a boxer. Fred moved to Wichita, where he became a partner in an engineering company called Winkler-Koch, made a fortune building oil refineries around the world, and bought a 160-acre horse farm outside of town, across the street from the Wichita Country Club.
Early on, Fred’s company was nearly destroyed by litigious competitors. He and his partners had developed a new method for thermal cracking, a process that helps convert oil into gasoline; major oil companies tried to block him in court for years. Koch developed a fierce independent streak, and advised his sons never to sue: “The lawyers get a third, the government gets a third, and you get your business destroyed,” he told them.
Between 1929 and 1931, Fred Koch built fifteen oil plants in the Soviet Union, where he bore witness to the lead-up to Stalin’s Great Purge. Thirty years later, Koch published a pamphlet called A Business Man Looks at Communism. His list of “potential methods of communist take-over in U.S.A. by internal subversion” begins: “Infiltration of high offices of government and political parties until the President of the U.S. is a Communist, unknown to the rest of us of course, when as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy he could control us. Even the Vice Presidency would do as it could be easily arranged for the President to commit suicide.” Koch became a founding member of the John Birch Society. “Father was paranoid about communism, let’s put it that way,” says David.

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