Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America's Most Powerful and Private Dynasty by Daniel Schulman Page B
Authors: Daniel Schulman
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Jerome Livschitz had faced a firing squad in 1936 for allegedly plotting with Stalin’s nemesis, Leon Trotsky.
Fred suspected Stalin’s assassins had struck even closer to home. In 1930, Winkler-Koch trained a Russian engineer by the name of Hachatouroff, who while en route back to the Soviet Union, received word that his life was in danger. He returned to Wichita, where Fred gave him a job. But a few months later, Hachatouroff was found dead after falling from a hotel window. The authorities ruled his death a suicide. When Charles was old enough to hear the gruesome tale, Fred told him about Hachatouroff and about the brutality of the Soviet regime, where a man’s life was not his own and where almost any transgression was punishable with death. Fred said that he didn’t buy the official explanation of the Russian engineer’s demise. He believed the KGB had murdered him. “He was always convinced that they pushed him out,” Charles remembered.
Only as dusk fell on that first day in Indianapolis did Welch unveil his vision. Defeating this many-tentacled monster, Welchexplained, required its own multipronged approach: the establishment of Christian Science–like reading rooms and bookstores, to educate people on “the true history of events and developments of the past two decades”; the organizing of front groups (“little fronts, big fronts, temporary fronts, permanent fronts, all kinds of fronts”); and support for conservative news outlets—Welch’s
American Opinion
, but also William F. Buckley’s
National Review
(then a mere three years old), the
Dan Smoot Report
, and
Human Events
.
Additionally, Welch’s movement would make prodigious use of the “letter-writing weapon,” causing a “continuous overwhelming flood” of correspondence to descend on everyone from Washington lawmakers and executive agency heads to newspaper editors, TV sponsors, and educators. Welch intended to place their weight onto “the political scales in this country as fast and as far” as possible.
It wasn’t until the following day that Welch gave a name to his movement: the John Birch Society. For those unfamiliar with Birch, Welch handed out packets containing copies of the 1954 biography he had written of the young Baptist preacher and Army captain, who was shot dead by Chinese communists in August 1945, a week-and-a-half after V-J Day. Welch considered Birch the first martyr of the Cold War. “It is my fervent hope that the John Birch Society will last for hundreds of years and exert an increasing influence for the temporal good and spiritual ennoblement of mankind throughout those centuries,” Welch told the men seated in front of him.
Over the course of the two-day retreat, Welch succeeded in stirring the patriotic instincts of his guests, who had needed little convincing that the nation was on a destructive path. Before Welch even concluded his presentation, Hussman Refrigerator Company’s W. B. McMillan scratched out a check for $1,000: “Here, Bob, we’re in business.” Fred Koch enthusiastically signed on, too,later joining the John Birch Society’s National Council, along with most of the other attendees.
After Indianapolis, Fred threw himself more vigorously than ever into the fight against communism. He besieged lawmakers with letters demanding they address the peril facing the nation, writing to one congressman that “inaction means in a very few years Red Chinese and Red Russian soldiers will be marching in our streets. In that event the dead will be the lucky ones.” And in 1960, Fred self-published a short tract called
A Business Man Looks at Communism
, which warned of an impending communist takeover. The pamphlet was an outgrowth of a talk on communism he’d given to Wichita Rotarians, and which he was subsequently asked to reprise on local radio station KFH. So many listeners called in asking for copies that Fred decided to expand on his remarks in a 39-page booklet.
He produced a
Fred suspected Stalin’s assassins had struck even closer to home. In 1930, Winkler-Koch trained a Russian engineer by the name of Hachatouroff, who while en route back to the Soviet Union, received word that his life was in danger. He returned to Wichita, where Fred gave him a job. But a few months later, Hachatouroff was found dead after falling from a hotel window. The authorities ruled his death a suicide. When Charles was old enough to hear the gruesome tale, Fred told him about Hachatouroff and about the brutality of the Soviet regime, where a man’s life was not his own and where almost any transgression was punishable with death. Fred said that he didn’t buy the official explanation of the Russian engineer’s demise. He believed the KGB had murdered him. “He was always convinced that they pushed him out,” Charles remembered.
Only as dusk fell on that first day in Indianapolis did Welch unveil his vision. Defeating this many-tentacled monster, Welchexplained, required its own multipronged approach: the establishment of Christian Science–like reading rooms and bookstores, to educate people on “the true history of events and developments of the past two decades”; the organizing of front groups (“little fronts, big fronts, temporary fronts, permanent fronts, all kinds of fronts”); and support for conservative news outlets—Welch’s
American Opinion
, but also William F. Buckley’s
National Review
(then a mere three years old), the
Dan Smoot Report
, and
Human Events
.
Additionally, Welch’s movement would make prodigious use of the “letter-writing weapon,” causing a “continuous overwhelming flood” of correspondence to descend on everyone from Washington lawmakers and executive agency heads to newspaper editors, TV sponsors, and educators. Welch intended to place their weight onto “the political scales in this country as fast and as far” as possible.
It wasn’t until the following day that Welch gave a name to his movement: the John Birch Society. For those unfamiliar with Birch, Welch handed out packets containing copies of the 1954 biography he had written of the young Baptist preacher and Army captain, who was shot dead by Chinese communists in August 1945, a week-and-a-half after V-J Day. Welch considered Birch the first martyr of the Cold War. “It is my fervent hope that the John Birch Society will last for hundreds of years and exert an increasing influence for the temporal good and spiritual ennoblement of mankind throughout those centuries,” Welch told the men seated in front of him.
Over the course of the two-day retreat, Welch succeeded in stirring the patriotic instincts of his guests, who had needed little convincing that the nation was on a destructive path. Before Welch even concluded his presentation, Hussman Refrigerator Company’s W. B. McMillan scratched out a check for $1,000: “Here, Bob, we’re in business.” Fred Koch enthusiastically signed on, too,later joining the John Birch Society’s National Council, along with most of the other attendees.
After Indianapolis, Fred threw himself more vigorously than ever into the fight against communism. He besieged lawmakers with letters demanding they address the peril facing the nation, writing to one congressman that “inaction means in a very few years Red Chinese and Red Russian soldiers will be marching in our streets. In that event the dead will be the lucky ones.” And in 1960, Fred self-published a short tract called
A Business Man Looks at Communism
, which warned of an impending communist takeover. The pamphlet was an outgrowth of a talk on communism he’d given to Wichita Rotarians, and which he was subsequently asked to reprise on local radio station KFH. So many listeners called in asking for copies that Fred decided to expand on his remarks in a 39-page booklet.
He produced a
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