In america, who have Strong Political views and taken their fortune over the last 40 years to influence america. They spend in very targeted ways and interesting ways to change the whole direction of american politics. Host what are their names and where are they located . Wikipedia charles koch and david koch. The ones they think of was that part brothers, charles is from wichita, kan. From where Koch Industries based and david lives in new york, the wealthiest residents in manhattan. There are two others Koch Brothers, people dont talk about the. Bill koch and fred koch. You hear about them in my book, but mostly you dont hear about them much in the headlines. Host why not . Guest they are not as political as charles and david allegiance some ways they are losers in a huge family struggles that took place over the years, an epic dynastic struggles for who was going to control but family company, Koch Industries, a huge privately owned company that the koches have jumped 4 years is the Biggest Company no one ever heard of. Company that almost every american probably comes into contact with. You dont know you do probably, but if you by dixie cups, staying after carpets, vanity fair napkins, Georgia Pacific lumber, so many of others, you are a consumer of Koch Industries, the epic fight among these four bullies who would have control of the company the father fred koch started. Two lost out, the ones you dont hear about very much, fred and bill. Host what did fred and bill do . Guest very interesting. Bill started his own business, also in fossil fuels, part of Koch Industries, the biggest part of it which is in fossil fuels. It refines oil and has coal and gas. Bill koch has his own company that sells a different kind of koch, different kind of refining oil. Fred is a kind of shy philanthropists who is very interested in the arts and gives money to all kinds of cultural institutions, but mostly anonymously which is very interesting because the other brothers are quite flashy, like to get attention and david kochs name is known to everybody in new york city because it is emblazoned on so many institutions. He likes to get attention. His older brother fred is quite quiet about it. Host when you refer to fred as autistic are you saying he is gay . Guest i am not saying i would know because fred has said himself that he is not gay. His brothers have accused him of being gay over the years and in fact tried one point according to a document that i described in this book, sealed Court Document that describes under oath testimony from bill koch, one of the british you dont hear about much about how he and his two other brothers tried to frame their older brother fred. They said they called them to a meeting they said was a company meeting, it was the king larue court, their older brother walked in in his 20s, they were too, they said they were going to tell their father he was. Unless he turned over his shares in the company to these other brothers. It was an attempt to blackmail him about what they claimed was his private life. His private life has remained private. I dont feel it is my role in life to try to out people who may be gay or may not be day. I give him the right to decide what zone of privacy wants to live in but i think it is too bad his own brothers didnt show that same respect. It is an insight into this family. This is a rough, tough, ruthless bunch of people. This is the story i tell in the book about these family members. They went against each other. The item and you might try blackmailing your own brother and say you will tell your father and their older brother, the father would disinherit him if he found out. The older brother didnt buckle under where he has grown up with him, he stood up and walked out of a room, and said i never want to hear about this again. He didnt get treated the same by the family in terms of inheritance. Walked out on that and in recent years david koch has said he was a supporter of gay rights even though people think of them as vastly conservative but they are not social conservatives, they are libertarian. Maybe david koch changed his views, many people in the country have changed their views about gay rights, but it is a brittle consultation between brothers over grabbing the family fortune. Host how does a reporter often get hold of sealed koch packages like this. With lots of trying. There are certain things i cant really talk about how i got the documents i have. You can see nobody has challenged the authenticity of it. There are new documents in this book and it took a long time to put this book together. I was up against the law to get the information but the Court Documents are one of the most unassailable facts you can bring to the host in dark money the Hidden History of the billionaires behind the rise of the radical right, were you able to interview any of the koch family . Guest i wish i could talk more about the people i was able to interview who did not want to be discussed. I can and talked about that the i can say neither david koch nor charles koch talked to me. I tried for five years, dropped an email to somebody who worked with them or talk to people who know them and try to get an interview. They have got a long history of secrecy. There is a family saying that says his father used to say it is when the whales spout that he get harpooned. For that reason he prefers to swim under the surface. The story itel here is mostly a story that these people did not want told. They certainly didnt want to help me tell it. Host oddly enough, you write in dark money the Hidden History of the billionaires behind the rise of the radical right, a fiercely libertarian koch family of part of its fortune to historys most famous dictator, Joseph Stalin and adolf hitler. Guest isnt that remarkable . The countrys for most libertarian influences, supposed to be anti authoritarian, yet the family fortune began when the father was a very bright man, early graduate of mit figured out a better way to crack oil, turn it into refine it, he had this breakthrough but he couldnt sell its in america because he felt Major Oil Companies were blocking him, they had a monopoly. He had to take it elsewhere if he was going to make money. Ironically the place he went first was the soviet union and he went to stalin and built Something Like 15 Oil Refineries for stalin in the first 5year plan of stalins soviet union. Then stalin realize he could get his own people to design these, they could copy it so fred koch came out of this there and looking for further for where he could go he helped design one of the most important refineries in nazi germany, he got the commission in 1933, started building in 1934, it was completed in 1935. By then, people watching the rise of hitler, himmler became the chancellor of the third reich in 1933. Hitler is in control of germany at this point and a lot of bad things are beginning to happen. Fred koch was making money and this refinery that was built there by koch called winkler koch and one other partner, personally green lighted by hitler. At first hitlers henchman said they didnt want this american refinery. Hitler said he wanted it. He okayed it and it became key to the nazi war effort. It was a refinery that could refine high octane fuel that was necessary for the air force. Hitler was trying to build up his military at this point and he saw the possibilities and this refinery became a very big part of the nazi war effort. The u. S. And allies bombed him several times because it was a key target during world war ii. According to reports that she after my book, in between bombings it was rebuilt by slave labor in the nazi concentration camps who had to put it back together again. It is a story, and erotic, interesting twist on one of a Hidden History, they didnt necessarily want the world to know. Host how important is it that Cox Industries is privately built . Guest is very important. I am not one of the worlds experts on business but i did start my career spending 12 years at the wall street journal so i covered business. The difference between a public and private company is first of all the private company is accountable mostly to its own ears. In this case principally almost exclusively these two brothers. They have been able to plow their money back into it over and over again instead of trying to show immediate gains for stockholders. This made it very successful. It is phenomenally successful, this company. It has been great for them financially and kept it out of the public eye. It is a Secretive Company that doesnt have to mentor to many people. Host how long did you work on this book, where did you get the interest the right . Guest i was working on this book, it started with a magazine piece for the new yorker where i am a staff writer and i did that in 2010. I suppose you could say it is in five years or Something Like that. I wasnt working exclusively on the book old time. The last three years i worked on it and my interests it is serendipitous. A reporter in washington in 1983 the wall street journal brought me to washington to cover the Reagan White House and i started in 1984, very beginning and reagans Reelection Campaign so i lived through this period and these were my sources. Many people in these books were the people i interviewed. What interested me and part of the reason i wrote dark money the Hidden History of the billionaires behind the rise of the radical right is when i started that many years ago, these people were on the fringe. Reagan was president but there are always these people on the far right fringe, who i call because they were interesting for a counterpoint and comments and ideas that they were way out there. An example, dont take my word for it, theres a quote in the beginning of dark money the Hidden History of the billionaires behind the rise of the radical right where william f. Buckley describes the movement the cocks kochs were part of. Totalitarian, they were what the conservatives were trying to courage because they thought they were the lunatic fringe. What interested me by the time i wrote this book is they gained so much power they in some ways have become the center of gravity in the Republican Party. There is a new study from harvard, another professor describe the koch affect, it it is a Magnetic Pull on the Republican Party that pulled the whole party with them. I was interested how did they get from way out there to the center of republican politics . In many ways the center of american politics . Host is the koch political networking your view stronger than the Republican National committee . Guest yes. They are in competition in some ways but also in some ways the koch network has subsumed the Republican Party. The positions republican candidates take are often positions the kochs take. They have the money and often Campaign Funding and other support from all different groups to candidates who Will Champion their positions. As an example, in the republican field of president ial primary candidates all of the major candidates have come to the kochs to as their financial backing. They are kissing their ring to some extent. There is one candidate who is the exception and that is donald trump. He has made the most of it. He called the others puppets and is playing to the crowd saying i own my soul. All the others are owned. It is dynamic and his host from dark money the Hidden History of the billionaires behind the rise of the radical right, what made the koch familys growing financial role in american politics extraordinary was the way that it merged all forms of political spending into one investment aimed at paying huge future dividends. Guest that is true. The kochs in particular have a of fire. It is not just that they are among the richest people in the world which in itself adds a certain clout to their political ambitions, but the families they write about, about using philanthropy. The idea that these wealthy families have private foundations, they can give money to end tax deductions, they are subsidized by the public treasury. With those foundations they push their ideology. The ideology they push pushes their interests. They are almost like lobbying operations but they are tax deductible. Each of the families i describe have done that in different ways. What you have got with the kochs is people give money to its Huge Corporation through a gigantic private family fortune and through a network of philanthropic groups that echo their message across the country. It is that third prong in some ways that made them so interesting and important. Host how is that different from a george soros on the left doing the same thing through their donations . Guest speyer got into counterbalance this. He is the johnny come lately. One thing he did is his money that he gives is disclosed money. Ebook is called dark money, is about money that is given behindthescenes by people who dont want you to see the fingerprints on it. To hide their money trail the kochs and others give their money to these philanthropic groups that dont show who the donors are. They are supposed to not be printed lee in politics, that is debatable. This is about that game in particular, how important it becomes. He gives that money in an undisclosed way to an organization as he has in the past, he is engage to some extent, i did do a piece about george soros. When you write about the kochs in this country inevitably what you hear about since they are on the right is people saying why dont you write about george soros . Get that on the table. I wrote about george soros, i wrote a piece in the new yorker in 2004 which was the year he truly started putting serious money into a local politics. I wrote all about him and after that election he was very disappointed. He was trying to defeat george w. Bush in reelection. The reason im focusing on the kochs they stepped up the roll on electoral politics. And the 2016 elections cycle. At its height. He spent 20 million of his own money. You are talking about the amount lot of money in a few hands and no one has seen in this country before. Host this is something you write about in your book. Very soon after i discovered there had been an Opposition Research project on me and the couple top people at Koch Industries in washington organized it. They hired a private eye who turned out to be the Police Commissioner in new york city, former Police Commissioner, not current exactly, with his son and daughter who had been in the fbi and the private firm in new york. Eventually pieced together the story as a reporter would and found a source who told me theyre looking for dirt and if they couldnt find it they would make it up. They made something up, they came, put together a story that i was a plagiarist and tried to peddle it to a couple news organizations neither of which would run it because it turned out not to be true, but it would have been pretty terrible if it had gotten into print and anybody believed it. Nobody ran with it. Host what was that about . Guest the kochs hiring, lets be careful about this. Top people at Koch Industries working in washington put together boiler room operation in which they worked with a private eye in new york city and spent quite a few months looking for anything they could use to discredit me. I am not alone in this. There are many instances of the kochs specifically hiring private eyes to take on people who challenge them. There are a lot of and accounted power. A huge private company trying to play a major role in American Public life but behindthescenes, they dont like it that is what i was trying to do. Host former congressman j. C. Watts. Guest some extra space in the back room. Eventually it took some time but eventually was able to get a picture of what was going on. I covered a lot of things, but as far as i know, hadnt been the target of an effort to discredit me like that, maybe i should be flattered on some levels that anyone would take a reporter so seriously. Could have been it was scary in a way. It felt like an effort to ruin me and if they had succeeded in convincing people i was plagiarizing, that is a crime of morals turpitude. Is something that could take me down. It was not a minor effort. It was a killer effort. I am very glad it didnt succeed. My colleagues from whom i was supposed to have plagiarize were fantastic, said this is not true. One of them looked at one of the stories i was supposed to have stolen, Washington Post reporter and he said not only did you you credited me in the next sentence. It was a badly done operation in some ways but it is unusual and gives you an insight into the hardball that these two brothers who won so much power over american politics have played. Host where did the title of the dark side the inside story of how the war on terror turned into a war on american ideals, your 2008 book, come from . Guest former Vice President dick cheney. He went on the air himself shortly after 9 11 and he said in order to win this war on terror we need to play on the dark side. It is unclear what he was talking about at that point what did the dark side mean . The book explains. What that title was talking about. Host did you meet Vice President cheney or interview him . Guest i met Vice President cheney and had a chance to talk to him. The interview on my bulletin board, in the next two years, the answer came back, unfortunately Vice President cheney will be very busy. That was a blanket no. I heard a chance to see him since. On abc to get there, the two of us having our makeup put on. A chance to talk to him, he had said, he commented on things in the book, that he had read some of it which was flattering and we talked about our labrador retrievers which we share a great love for. Host this is a inside story of how the war on terror turned into a war on american ideals. Guest is a very complicated story. All of these are complicated stories really. As i look back on these books, i think in a way they are efforts to kind of stop the clock. I am a reporter. We all see the headlines, we can read a story that is a few inches long in the newspapers, they are all efforts to say there is so much more going on here and the only way i can do is take a leave of absence from my day job and dig down deep and put the story together and explain what was really going on behind the curtain. That is what these books are an effort to do. Host you write the lead architect of the Bush Administrations idiosyncratic interpretation of american law is a tall and be speckled government lawyer with the look of an irascible sea captain. Guest that is david addington, a fascinating character. Its true believer in ala of characters i have written about here are people who kind of fit the quote Louis Brandeis talked about. They are zealots, men who are true believers. Even those they feel pure of heart, what brandeis says it is in some ways many of these people lied dangerous, more than the scoundrels, such true believers that take the country off the cliff. Adding 10 was a true believer in executive power and secrecy and was in a position to help guys the Bush Administration into authorizing a war on terror that was pretty much behind closed doors through covert operations using tactics that if they were public might have been very controversial. Host valerie claims scooter libbys story, was that a side show to all of this . Guest i dont think it was terribly much in this central area of all this. Scooter libby was an aide to Vice President cheney and was an important adviser but i dont think it was not the major story of what was going on in that period. Host strange justice the selling of Clarence Thomas, going to that book to you believe anita hill . Guest i wrote this with someone who i was friends with in high school, in the wall street journal, and i wasnt really sure you couldnt tell who was telling the truth. If you watched the hearings during that period, i spent the weekend. My Television Set completely floored. I covered courts beyond that in my career, it was a good trial where two lawyers on both sides you think they are right. And so convincing, i wasnt really a sure what we would find, i saw from the start, Clarence Thomas had more reason to lie because he was trying to get a job he wanted and it was hard to see what there was in this for anita hill. Wasnt trying to get something out of this. There could be more motive for one side but i thought both sides were very convincing when they did their first initial hearing. We drew up a list of many people needed to speak to a possible and the idea was to figure out if we could find out who was telling the truth. The conventional wisdom when we began was this is what they were calling he said she said story where you will never get to the bottom of it and you cant really tell who is telling the truth. It means accepting the idea that you cant get the truth and that is like waving a red flag, there is some way to get to the bottom of this and figure out what the truth is. Theres always some way and the truth comes out over time. We decided to see if we could find out and it took three years but we got close. Host a little bit from the hearing. Guest and national disgrace. From my standpoint as a black american as far as i am concerned, the hightech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think themselves to do for themselves caught that unless you kowtow to that order this is what happens. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured, by a committee on the u. S. Senate rather than hung by a tree. Guest it has a huge power. That was nuclear language. For a black man, white senators, your lynching day. Of trying to rise from a lowly position. The most powerful thing he could have come up with. Playing the ultimate victim died and if you look at it, what he is doing is not talking about the facts. He is just playing saying you are lynching. And the liberal Democratic Senators backed it up. Host heres a little bit of anita hill. We see for 103 days a most remarkable man and they scoured his every shred and nobody but you and another witness apparently is alleging no Sexual Harassment has come forward. Maybe, maybe it didnt seem to me it really intended to kill him but you might have. That is pretty heavy. Dont care if you are a man or woman. If what you say this man said to you occurred, why in gods name when he left his position of power, overview and you left it. Why would you speak to a man like that the rest of your life. Host former senator alan simpson. Guest trying to kill Clarence Thomas at least his reputation. Grillled in a way that was disgraceful when you look back on it. She was accused of being of a maniac, people who were trying to power reputation were digging for dirt on her that was very interesting. They were talking to psychiatrists, they talked to students she had taught had made a joke that her hair had fallen into her term papers and they thought was the the care. They acted as if it was a sexual thing she was doing. It is unbelievable when you look back to see what anita hill went through too. It was an important turning point when you look back to american politics. We are talking today about how far and the president ial campaign has gotten into the gutter with the language and things going on right now. You can see it down deep in the gutter during this period on the confirmation hearing of Clarence Thomas. We have been in the gutter before. People sometimes forget that. It was really ugly. Host what was your interview with anita hill like . Guest you asked in the beginning with their we thought we would exonerate anita hill and that was not the purpose of the book. People have to understand for Jill Ingraham son who became editor of the New York Times and myself as reporter, there is one agenda, to find out what is true. When we interviewed anita hill she had a backup because we were not there to say we are wonderful or right, we are there to find out what is true. We ask a number of tough questions and she was a little offended at some point, we are doing our jobs. It ends weighing all the evidence we could get and the evidence was very damning for Clarence Thomas and supportive of anita hill. Had gone the other way we would have gone the other way. Our reputation and our interests are all about telling the truth, the truth came out badly for Clarence Thomas, the truth comes out that the imf day. Host heres what you had to say about Jill Abramson and working with her. I am not surprised she became the editor of the New York Times. Judgment is amazing and she is a killer reportedly she gets right to the nub of it and knows what to look for. She has a great nose, tucker then i am. I sort of soften people attend worry how they feel. She just goes plane for the heart. Guest that is really true. She is amazing least march, i have to say. I have known who chill since high school she was the class ahead of me in new york state, she was also a really good dresser early on. She is great. We are very Close Friends and it was fun working with her. She held my reporting a lot because i learned a lot from her. Host i saw some people out and worry about that. Guest i suppose being an Investigative Reporter people expect you to be a tough person. I write tough stories. I dont write some in order to hurt peoples feelings and i dont like hurting peoples feelings. I feel my responsibility is to my readers, and telling what is true. Sometimes that means you have to put out stories that put people in a bad light. I dont enjoy hurting peoples feelings ever. My sense is my gift is to be able to help the democracy by getting a true and full information out to people and they can make a thorough line. It is a helpful job, not a hurtful job. Host jane mayer, often in stories, we look for good and evil, we look for characters who are bad and characters who are good and he rose and villains. I know that is a really broad brush but is it fair to say people are heroes or villains . Guest there are a lot of shade. Contrary to what i expected most people whose think i consider wrong, covered crimes too, they have a tendency to rationalize what they are doing. Or we are going to get away with it. I would imagine if you interviewed Clarence Thomas to a taught windchill and i wrote the book, and i imagine he did the right thing or did nothing wrong. I might differ how truthful he was but my guess is he is probably rationalizing. You dont find people who say i am going to lie. You find people who justify what they are doing so it makes it more at dark. You find real she rose i have to say and heroes are among the things that have really made me feel good about being a reporter, finding people who are doing the right thing and telling their stories. Indeed dark side the dark side the inside story of how the war on terror turned into a war on american ideals, there are a number of people i so admired. Fbi agents who really love the constitution and the bill of rights and said you wont torture people, we are not going to bent the rules to inflict cruel and unusual punishment on people, that is not who we are in this country. There were cia officers who felt the same way. There was the general counsel of the navy, very conservative, from a partly cuban family, general counsel to the navy appointed by george w. Bush, because of his knowledge of cuba, understood how important human rights are, it said we are not going down this path, throwing people into dungeons without any rights. Stood up again for the idea of the constitution. These are people who fall across the spectrum. Some on the left at the aclu who are very grave and early on to say no matter how bad those men in guantanamo might have been they deserve lawyers and human beings some legal rights. They won that argument in front of the Supreme Court, very unpopular argument that many people on the right agreed with them who were part of the process. They are very heartening to me and against the loss, who saw their careers endangered, there are heroes and often Little People and big people. Host the Koch Brothers, doing what is good for the country . Guest i think they fall into the category from the standpoint of zealots. People who have views that in many ways are out of the american mainstream. Sometimes they are willing to go outside democracy to get what they want to do. What are the connections between the dark side and dark money . In both cases these books are about what people do in the dark outside of the public view, behind closed doors where they dont disclose what they are up to and there is not the sunlight of the press following them, a lot of secrecy in peoples actions. So you have in the case of the kochs, they tried to democratic route to get what they wanted. On the libertarian ticket against Ronald Reagan from the right because the Koch Brothers felt Ronald Reagan was too liberal and was a sellout and they had much more radical views and they didnt win that election in 1980. Even though david koch spent millions of his own dollars to get elected they got 1 of the vote on the libertarian ticket. After that 1980 fiasco the Koch Brothers stop trying to run for office, that would have been the democratic way to win america to its cause, to keep running and try to convince the public but they didnt do that. After that election there was a description in the history of libertarianism, basically says he thinks politicians are actors end he is not interested in being an actor. What the Koch Brothers want to do is write the script. They decide from that point on that they are going to fund the whole machinery of american politics and political thinking to try to change the script in america from behind the scenes using philanthropic groups who fund think tanks, university professors, grassroots groups, of people going on in the streets, work from behindthescenes trying to gradually create a momentum for their point of view, much speedier process. In the case of dick cheney and what was happening during the war on terror what you see is a small group of people around president bush who felt we needed to go to the dark side, we needed to use methods america had not used, needed to do legal torture on people and they dont let everybody in on this secret, even the people in charge who should have been let in light colin powell who was kept purposefully in the dark because they know he wont support it but they cut people out. It is a back room cadre of people who are working to do things that they note wont be popular. Host good afternoon and welcome to booktv on cspan2, this is our monthly Index Program where we talk to one author and discuss his or her body of work, this month is after author and new york staff writer jane mayer, the author of four books, beginning in 1988 with landslide, strange justice the selling of Clarence Thomas in 1994, in 2008 the dark side the inside story of how the war on terror turned into a war on american ideals, those last two books we discussed were nominated for the National Book award. And dark money the Hidden History of the billionaires behind the rise of the radical right came out this year. Is your turn. We spend nearly an hour talking with jane mayer about some of her books, so you get an idea when our conversation will be about want to hear from you as well. 2027488202. If you live in the east and central time zones 7488203. For those in the mountain and pacific time zones. You can email us at booktv cspan. Org, post a comment on twitter at booktv, you can make a comment on our face book page facebook. Com booktv. Finally you concerned at text message to jane mayer as well. This is not for telephone, this is a text message 2027179684. If you want to send a text 2027179684. We will begin taking those calls in just a few minutes. Jane mayer, we need to touch on landscape the unmaking of the president , 19841988 with the passing of nancy reagan. You tell a story, two stories about nancy reagan. Red dress. The red dress, the story of reagan calling me. Host you wore it purposefully. Guest i was at the wall street journal calling the Reagan White House, we had heard he loved to read. Nancy often wore red. I wrote a little piece about how he usually calls on people wearing red, women wearing red. I did not wear a red dress that day and my bureau chief said go home and put on a red dress so i did. I went home and changed and reagan called on me right away and said there is the little girl in the red dress. I was young and i thought it was funny. I got called month at way. You could catch his attention. Nancy was a great character behindthescenes. When i was covering the Reagan White House she was the untold story. I do tell the story in the book about how Donald Reagan who became the chief of staff in the second term made a cardinal error, finding her a pain in the neck. She was always interfering, took her husbands business very seriously, reagan put an aid in place between himself and the first lady, tried to delegate nancy, having none of it and it was not long after that that reagan found himself fired, kicked out from being chief of staff, learned about it from the media, nobody even told him directly and nancy reagan as everybody knew was behind it. She played a gigantic roll in that white house. Host why did you not cover the 7 at reddick . Host even though i did cover the white house, back in those battles days there was a saying, women dont throw their weight which meant women reporters couldnt quite understand all the complications of Nuclear Warfare and do was too much for our little heads to wrap around. When i wanted to cover reykjavik imus told no, i had to stay home and they rescinding someone from the pentagon, one of the guys in the office to cover reykjavik. I was told when i was home i could do a story about Nancy Reagans favorite dress designer. Gives you a glimpse into how the world has changed. Back then you could be the White House Reporter but still couldnt manage dress designers were a better subject for you. Host what was it like to the White House Reporter . Guest i was so lucky to see reagan up close and to get to know wonderful access to the wall street journal during that period. I really of the people around reagan, but truthfully as a reporting job it is one of the worst because you dont really get to do get beneath the surface. You are constantly covering every bird, so busy all day you never get to find the real story. That is why i wrote the first book, how did this happen . We missed one of the biggest stories in the white house which was the irancontra affair. None of us knew what was going on. We were sitting there with no idea this incredible scandal had been unfolding and it was actually the attorney general, edwin meet, who gave us a briefing, you have got to be kidding me. At that point you have to realize, to catch the news and the white house when we are covering it. Host what was the theme of the book . Where did you get the title . Guest landslide the unmaking of the president , 19841988, the book, the idea was i looked at it again, a couple years since i looked at it. The story is how a president s second term unravel the. Is not unusual historically been second terms are tougher president s and in this case reagan had an theme, morning in america, didnt really get public consensus for the things he was trying to do, they didnt run on issues for the second term. It was how they went off course in the second term. Host 2092708782 at 2, 7488203 in the mountain and pacific. If you want to send a text message 2027179684. Jane mayer is our guest. Clyde in maine, you are up today. Caller good afternoon. I bought the book, it is a great book, i am a third of the way into it. Host caller dark money the Hidden History of the billionaires behind the rise of the radical right. Really appreciate to know, we have the smattering of details, never comprehensive or in depth like this person does. In the early pages of the book, Justice Thomas and Justice Scalia address the Koch Brotherss secret meetings in the early stages of trying to organize their conspiracy. I would like to know if she has any more information on that. Guest there have been a few more stories about both, there has been coverage of that. What happened, talking about the Koch Brothers have called meetings twice a year with taught donors they gathered around them, 400 to 500 of the richest conservatives in the country get together behind closed doors and they bring in important figures to talk to them and candidates to talk to them who are auditioning for support from this extraordinarily wealthy group. Overs the years, public figures who attended secret meeting this isoprene court justices, Antonin Scalia and Justice Thomas. What transpired, part of the reason i wrote this book, it is a secret it is hard, you cant get a list of all the people who go to meetings, but the donor list in one such meeting which gives us a guest list but basically it is a closely held secret and a koch will the koch back of try to keep secrets. They use white noisemakers, surrounded the parameters of one such meeting, the press couldnt eavesdrop or hear anything. I wish i could tell you more about exactly what transpired when Supreme Court justices work there, the public should know it is an important business, the sec hugely powerful people with tremendous interest in front of the u. S. Government, in front of their wealth and people design justices meeting with them. The public has a right to know about it. You dont really. We know they were there at least. Host you talk about the Bradley Foundation in dark money, who and what are they . Guest glad you brought this up. This book is partly about the Koch Brothers but also history of the founding families of the conservative movement, the founding families too. The foundation has been terrifically important in funding academia, particularly trying to balance the founder of the o and foundations taught was a leftwing liberal tilt in academia. He set out to use his fortune from his company to change that by having his Foundation Fund all kinds of Education Programs particularly in law school. There is something called the law and Economics Movement which is Foundation Funded which tries to make judges and lawyers think about not just what is just when they decide cases but whether it will cost business a lot of money and take that into consideration. And they have been quite successful, many law schools, particularly aiming for the ivy leagues and they make a lot head way in the Ivy League Law school and to miss a number of judges who very much support this point of view. John was an interesting man. His company was interesting. He liked the kochs, inherited the company from his father, it was a privatelyowned family company. They made firearms. It became quite big. I was interested in why he in particular became so conservative and why he got engaged when he did in american politics. What i discovered was his company produced a lot of chemicals that her accused of creating terrible pollution in the country. They created things that left towns polluted, mercury running into streams, one of the places that became the best toxic waste site when it was created, in many ways you can see it as a reaction against the 1970s environmental movement, the beginning of the Environmental Protection agency, it was thursday, it was a bipartisan movement at this point, environmentalism but some of a corporate captains accused of being a huge polluters. And the thinking of the country in academia. But in part the environmental movement, that was a big part of the cause. Put in his will that he wanted his money to run out . Guest he did. We did not want our virgins to run into other hands. You will