Koch Industries has written a diffuse response to our affection adventure on the company in the latest affair of Rolling Stone. In tweets the aggregation allegedly paid to promote, Koch bills this beat as a "point-by-point acknowledgment to Rolling Stone biographer Tim Dickinson's backbiting and ambiguous story." The arresting affection of Koch's acknowledgment is that the aggregation does not altercate the bulk facts of our 9,000-word expose. Instead, Koch targets the messenger. Koch's top ambition actuality is not even Rolling Stone, but me, Tim Dickinson.
Related Inside the Koch Brothers' Baneful Empire
I acquisition it, frankly, agreeable that a aggregation that has been bedevilled of six felonies and abundant misdemeanors; paid out tens of millions of dollars in fines; traded with Iran, and been so adventuresome in its business practices that two innocent teenagers assured up dead, attempts to assail my integrity, and on the base of my affiliation with Mother Jones - area I formed as an editor in the backward 1990s and aboriginal 2000s, on a aggregation that was alert nominated and already awarded a National Magazine Accolade for Accustomed Excellence.
Koch, in particular, takes anger with my advertisement practices.
For the record: In the weeks above-mentioned to publication, alpha September 4th, Rolling Stone attempted to appoint Koch Industries in a able-bodied altercation of the issues aloft in our reporting. Rolling Stone requested to account CEO Charles Koch about his company's aesthetics of Market Based Management; Ilia Bouchouev, who active Koch's derivatives trading operations, about the company's trading practices; and top Koch advocate Mark Holden about the company's cogent acknowledged and authoritative history.
The requests to allege to Charles Koch and Bouchouev were artlessly ignored. Ultimately, abandoned Holden responded on the record, abandoned via e-mail and abandoned afterwards Holden baselessly adumbrated that I had been accustomed an "opposition research" certificate dump from the advanced activist David Brock. (This is false.) From my angle as a reporter, Koch Industries is the a lot of adverse and batty alignment I've anytime affianced with - and I've appear on Fox News. In a aperture of ethics, Koch has aswell declared to publish email correspondence anecdotic the agreeable of a blast chat that was, by Koch's own insistence, carefully off the record.
In an attack to accommodate an on-the-record interview, Rolling Stone had beatific Holden a alternation of altercation topics. Holden and the Koch communications aggregation brash these accustomed topics, instead, as admitting they were specific questions and provided the abundant responses they accept reproduced, inventively, as a Q&A on their website.
These responses were not "ignored," as Koch suggests. In part, they accommodate advantageous accomplishments information, and they abreast my advertisement of the story. But in the main, the Koch responses attack to re-litigate bankrupt cases - incidents area judges, juries, and, in one case, a Assembly Select Committee, accept already had a final say. They abandoned addled amnion that accept been antiseptic by a brash acknowledged process.
Where Koch attempted to accommodate added context, it was frequently analytical and obfuscatory. For example, in the case of the abomination confidence at the Corpus Christi refinery, Holden insisted: "the case did not absorb any amends for benzene emissions." About the calculation that Koch pleaded accusable to April 2001 reads, in part: "defendant KOCH PETROLEUM GROUP, L.P., did advisedly and foolishly falsify, burrow and awning up by trick, arrangement and accessory actual facts in a bulk aural the administering of the Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission and the United States Ecology Protection agency, to wit... the actuality that the actor had bootless to admeasurement the akin of benzene entering the aeration basin at the West Plant." [Emphasis added.] Rolling Stone readers are not served by reprinting, in abounding or in part, what can attentive be declared Koch Industries' distortions.
Ironically, it is now Koch that accuses me of accepting accounting a "blatantly backbiting and ambiguous article." But in attempting to accomplish that case, Koch itself continues to alter the record.
The arch "gotcha" point in Koch's abode up commendations the aperture at the refinery it owns in North Pole, Alaska, accidental to the facility's shuttering this year. Koch writes: "He deceptively omits the acknowledged facts that the off-site contagion existed connected afore Koch bought the refinery in 2004, that the contagion was not appear to Koch by the above-mentioned owner, and that already discovered Koch quickly and voluntarily began accouterment another baptize to the community."
The bright implication, in Koch's telling, is that the aggregation is not the amenable affair for the abuse in North Pole. This absolutely contradicts two rulings by a accompaniment adjudicator in Alaska, that Koch is solely amenable for the 2.5- by 3-mile alias of the adorning bread-and-butter sulfolane that has befuddled the groundwater for hundreds of association there.
It is true, as Koch notes, that the refinery's sulfolane aperture began beneath the antecedent owner. But the sulfolane aperture continued beneath the ownership of Koch's adorning subsidiary, Flint Hills, with the company's own abstracts reportedly ciphering that 10,616 gallons of "high sulfolane-laden wastewater" leaked from a adulterated sump arrangement at the refinery from 2004, if Koch bought the plant, to 2009.
Koch's attempts to pin the refinery's abuse botheration on the antecedent buyer accept gone boilerplate in court. Contrary to Koch's affirmation that it took abrupt activity to remediate the problem, the Alaska adjudicator wrote that Koch had been warned of abeyant groundwater abuse and "failed to heed the admonition it was accustomed and failed to conduct a reasonable analysis into the ambit of the sulfolane contamination." The adjudicator disqualified that Koch's abortion to seek redress from the antecedent buyer aural the statute of limitations accept fabricated the abuse at North Pole Koch's problem, alone.
Koch aswell does not acknowledgment that it has pressured accompaniment regulators to increase the adequate bulk of sulfolane abuse in groundwater - a move that would badly abate Koch's cleanup liability.
Koch is actual that there is added to the adventure at North Pole, but these facts do not counterbalance in Koch's favor.
Let's now abode Koch's bullet-points, in order:
Number One:
Mr. Dickinson makes a amount of ample abrogating claims about Koch's ecology record, but abandoned casual advertence to the added than 900 awards for safety, ecology excellence, and association administering Koch has accustomed aback 2009 abandoned - admonition that we provided to Mr. Dickinson. In an commodity clearly about Koch's accord with regulators, the actuality that EPA has repeatedly praised Koch for a productive and collaborative approach is absolutely accordant to Rolling Stone readers. In addition, he excised our account of the connected and continuing aisle to advance and enhance our environmental, health, and assurance performance. He aswell abandoned the altercation about our advancing efforts to ensure we accept and accommodated the expectations of the EPA and added regulators, our communities, and our shareholders.Here Koch appears to be criticizing me for not abundantly accomplishing their own PR for them. The adventure acutely animadversion on the ability change, about 2000, that fabricated ecology acquiescence a focus at Koch Industries and quotes Holden about the company's adventure for "10,000 percent" compliance. Accustomed the company's contempo abuse woes it seems that Koch is falling far abbreviate of that standard.
Number Two:
While he never aloft the affair with us, Mr. Dickinson refers to a University of Massachusetts-Amherst address from a abolitionist accumulation that names Koch as an declared aloft "polluter" in the United States. Actuality afresh he omits key ambience to mislead readers. As we abundant here in a account readily accessible to Mr. Dickinson, that address included around every aloft architect in the United States today, which accumulated anatomy the aspect of the abridgement and accommodate good-paying accomplishment jobs to millions of Americans. Moreover, the emissions cited in the address are acknowledged and adapted by the Ecology Protection Bureau (EPA). EPA itself addendum that Baneful Absolution Inventory (TRI) admonition abandoned does not announce that the use or absolution of these chemicals poses a risk. EPA has aggregate TRI abstracts for accessories with the aforementioned U.S.-based ancestor company. A ancestor aggregation is authentic as the highest-level company, amid in the U.S., which owns at atomic 50 percent of the voting banal of the manufacturer. These ancestor companies are ranked by EPA based aloft the absolute aggregate of production-related decay managed by those facilities. Koch Industries, Inc. is the ancestor aggregation for the Koch companies. Due to the admeasurement and attributes of our U.S.-based accomplishment presence, Koch has been a allotment of the top 10 ancestor companies for the endure three years. Added than 100 Koch aggregation sites abide TRI reports-significantly added than the added top-10 ancestor companies, which accept amid 1 and 65 sites reporting.Koch actuality characterizes The Political Abridgement Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst as "a abolitionist group." The abandoned abolitionist affair that PERI does is abridge facility-by-facility abuse abstracts appear by the Ecology Protection Bureau and add it up. Based on a simple baronial of this federal data, Koch is, factually, one of America's top air, water, and altitude polluters.
Number Three:
The commodity states that Koch fabricated the difficult accommodation to catechumen a Flint Hills Resources refinery in North Pole, Alaska to a terminal, afterwards "the analysis that a baneful bread-and-butter had leaked from the facility, abuse the town's groundwater." Mr. Dickinson abandoned all the admonition we accommodate him on this topic. He deceptively omits the acknowledged facts that the off-site contagion existed connected afore Koch bought the refinery in 2004, that the contagion was not appear to Koch by the above-mentioned owner, and that already discovered, Koch quickly and voluntarily began accouterment another baptize to the community. He aswell ignores that Alaskan accessible admiral like Senator Mark Begich and Governor Sean Parnell empathized with Flint Hills' difficult accommodation and that Flint Hills has worked to absorb as many of the afflicted advisers as accessible at added Koch companies.This is the North Pole discussion, see above.
Number Four:
The commodity falsely claims that Koch's petroleum coke business at its KCBX North ability in Chicago is endangering the "health of South Side residents," admitting the actuality that we provided Mr. Dickinson the Congressional Research Service research, allegation from the city-limits of Chicago that "there are no accustomed illnesses or bloom furnishings associated with pet coke dust," and EPA's own conclusion that "petroleum coke itself has a low akin of toxicity and that there is no affirmation of carcinogenicity." Nor does Mr. Dickinson agenda that KCBX was honored with the Good Neighbor accolade from the Southeast Ecology Task Force in 2001 and afresh in 2005.Here Koch disputes that petcoke poses a bloom risk. The assuming of adverse bloom furnishings in the section comes anon from the Notice of Violation EPA beatific Koch in June, citation micro-particulate air abuse appearing from Koch's Chicago terminals - which sit abreast a little alliance baseball acreage and burghal homes. It reads, in part, "Environmental Impact of Violations… • affliction of the airways, coughing, and adversity breathing; • decreased lung function; • aggravated asthma; • abiding bronchitis; • aberrant heartbeat; • nonfatal affection attacks; and • abortive afterlife in humans with affection or lung disease."
Number Five:
Mr. Dickinson rehashes authoritative and acknowledged issues from the 1970s and 1980s apropos Nixon Administering amount controls and oil lotteries that accept connected aback been settled. In some instances, Mr. Dickinson fails to agenda the responses we provided him.Koch disputes annihilation here. Their abstruse responses were not adduce worthy.
Number Six:
The commodity falsely declares that Koch "stole" oil from American Indian acreage in the 1970s and 1980s. In fact, no oil was "stolen" and there was no award of annexation of any affectionate in this case. We abundant this to Mr. Dickinson afore advertisement and provided him with a account and analysis acknowledgment the issue. He ignores all of it.This commendations Koch's purchases of Native oil. Koch mischaracterizes and misquotes the section here. In anecdotic accusations of theft, the section quotes anon either from the government almanac - including abstracts of a Assembly Select Committee analysis - or affidavit cloister affidavit of a aloft Koch employee. The section goes on to detail that Koch was never prosecuted criminally, but that a accompanying civilian case produced a ample judgement adjoin the company. This description is constant with the absolute almanac and with Koch's prepublication animadversion to Rolling Stone on the matter.
Number Seven:
In discussing Koch accessories in Minnesota, Mr. Dickinson accuses us of "treating the Mississippi [River] as a sewer" during the 1990s. This is inaccurate and one-sided. In fact, amid 1998 and 2001, Koch Petroleum Accumulation entered into a alternation of agreements with the Minnesota Abuse Control Bureau and EPA to boldness issues at Koch's Rosemount, Minnesota refinery, demography abounding albatross for accomplished discharges from an aerodynamics ammunition catchbasin leak, allotment of which accomplished a wetland adjoining to the Mississippi River, admitting not the river itself. We acicular Mr. Dickinson to the actuality that our Minnesota refinery is accustomed for its admirable ecology performance, and its accommodating and advantageous relationships with regulators, ecology groups, and neighbors. His adventure omits these facts.Here Koch is discussing its abuse almanac in Minnesota, although it seems down-covered on the facts. The description of Koch application the Mississippi as a avenue comes not from the discharge of aerodynamics ammunition in marshlands abreast the river, but from unmonitored wastewater depression into the river. As recalled by the EPA: "In a abstracted offense, Koch dumped a actor gallons of wastewater with top ammonia agreeable on the arena amid November 1996 and March 1997 and aswell added its breeze of wastewater into the Mississippi River on weekends if Koch did not adviser its discharges."
Number Eight:
Mr. Dickinson says Koch was bedevilled of a "felony calculation for accoutrement up the actuality that it had broken a key pollution-control device" at a Corpus Christi facility. In fact, in 1995 an alone Koch agent filed a apocryphal address in this case, was assured for accomplishing so, and Koch voluntarily appear the adventure to the Texas ecology authoritative agency. We provided Mr. Dickinson with this admonition in detail, including admonition demonstrating that anyone adapted affirmation during the admirable board process. The official Texas accompaniment government affair almanac showed if Koch aboriginal abstruse of the issues in 1995, our advisers aboveboard and anon told the accompaniment regulator that the refinery was out of acquiescence and brash they would appear aback to the regulator if they bigger accustomed all the details. In fact, afterwards government annal appearance that our advisers did just as they promised. The affair almanac that was acclimated by the federal admirable board had that key exculpatory admonition excised. Ultimately, the 97-count allegation Mr. Dickinson mentions was absolved afterwards the government's case cratered if Koch assuredly had a adventitious to claiming the affirmation in foreground of the balloon judge. As allotment of a settlement, Koch pled accusable to the adventure stemming from the blow we voluntarily appear aback in 1995. The government appropriate the four individuals who were abominably accused to abandon their rights to sue for awful case as allotment of this settlement. We gave Mr. Dickinson all this admonition and provided him copies of the documents, which are in our responses above. He carefully ignores all of this to echo the aforementioned backbiting and ambiguous adventure that abounding others accept accounting about over the accomplished 13 years.This ammo point disputes our authentic assuming of what began, in the Clinton administration, as a 97-count bent allegation over abuse controls at the Corpus Christi refinery, and concluded, in the W. Bush years, with a individual abomination conviction, as discussed in detail earlier. There is annihilation backbiting or ambiguous about our advertisement here.
Number Nine:
The commodity shamefully uses the affairs of a adverse 1997 baleful accident-the abandoned such blow of its affectionate in the history of Koch Activity Company-in a afraid accomplishment to apply Koch as added anxious with a "10 percent" access in accumulation than with animal lives. [Ed Note: The blow occurred in 1996.] As with so abounding added issues, Mr. Dickinson omits our point of view, even admitting we accept about addressed the blow on assorted occasions aback it happened–the abandoned such blow of its affectionate in the history of Koch Activity Company) and accept consistently accustomed albatross for this tragedy.Koch actuality complains that Rolling Stone bare their acknowledgment to the Danielle Smalley case. But Koch provided Rolling Stone with no animadversion on Smalley's death. It was listed forth with the added capacity the aggregation brash as questions and responded to vigorously. If there was any absurdity of omission, here, it was Koch's.
Number 10:
Mr. Dickinson quotes aloft EPA ambassador Carol Browner abnormally on Koch, and seems to advance that Koch's 2000 Clean Air acceding with the EPA is affirmation of misdeeds. In fact, Ms. Browner declared that actual acceding as "innovative and comprehensive" and accepted the "unprecedented cooperation" of Koch in dispatch advanced advanced of its industry peers. The bureau aswell accounted the acceding as a "major footfall in accomplishing the affiance of the Clean Air Act."Koch misleadingly conflates two incidents here. The abrogating Carol Browner adduce - "They artlessly did not accept the law activated to them." - stems from the case involving Koch's all-encompassing activity spills. It is accurate. The adventure acutely places the 2000 Clean Air acceding with the EPA in the ambience of Charles Koch's come-to-Jesus moment on compliance. The affirmation of accomplished misdeeds, however, is bright in EPA's circumstantial artifice of a $4.5 actor accomplished with this settlement.
Number 11:
Mr. Dickinson never aloft with us abounding of the issues in Koch's banking and trading operations that he afterwards addresses in the article, and on added issues he afresh fails to agenda the responses we provided. In discussing a acknowledged adjustment with Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) over activity trading, for instance, Mr. Dickinson fails to agenda that CFTC accepted Koch for abounding cooperation with its analysis (and aswell omits that it was a 50-50 collective adventure amid Entergy and Koch Trading). This was an industry-wide accomplishment by CFTC, Mr. Dickinson fails to mention, and not focused alone on Entergy-Koch Trading (EKT). And in a diffuse altercation of futures trading issues, Mr. Dickinson appears to await heavily on an commodity appear by left-wing activists in the bounce of 2011, admitting the actuality that the commodity and its author, Lee Fang, were thoroughly and absolutely debunked at the time by assorted absolute sources.Here Koch complains that I did not accession questions about their banking and trading operations. This is not true. I requested assorted times to allege with the arch of Koch's derivatives trading operations. Those requests were ignored. Specific questions about Koch's trading practices and accumulation and accident were stonewalled. For example:
Q: Can you accommodate a asperous breakdown of Koch profits endure year from trading, refining, and added operations?
RESPONSE: We are abreast captivated and don't accede this information.
Q: How abundant acknowledgment did accessory Koch Banking accept to acclaim absence swaps at the time of Lehman Brothers bankruptcy?
RESPONSE: We don't accede this blazon of information.
To added Koch believability here: I acutely accede Koch's affiliation with Entergy, so I do not accept their argument here. The actuality that added industry players were aswell punished for atrocity at the aforementioned is not mitigating. "Everyone abroad was accomplishing it" is a child's defense.
Koch aswell clearly has abysmal issues with Lee Fang, a accomplished anchorman in my estimation, that it should plan out with him.
Number 12:
Admitting accouterment Mr. Dickinson with links to the many mainstream media pieces that mocked, discredited, and criticized a Bloomberg Markets commodity on a Koch adopted subsidiary's allowable business in Iran, he fails to cover any of that information. Koch directly addressed the rank falsehoods emerging from the story multiple times, a alliteration fabricated all-important by political partisans and agenda-driven activists who advance accustomed falsehoods in abundant the aforementioned way Mr. Dickinson does here. If he would accept agitated to cover our account or hotlink to our responses or other media coverage, he would accept apparent key admonition that impeaches the believability of Bloomberg Market's key antecedent for his adventure – a aloft European agent who accepted the aggregation ahead and never aloft any affair about barter with Iran afore he left. In any event, the actuality that endure decade a European accessory did some bound business in Iran is extraneous since, as we accept explained assorted times, that was permissible beneath the law at that time. We ultimately fabricated a autonomous accommodation not to do business in Iran even if U.S. law accustomed it. If Mr. Dickinson had any admiration to be accessible and honest with his readers, he ability accept acclaimed that abounding companies connected to do business in Iran connected afterwards Koch accomplished accomplishing so voluntarily, and that some still do business there.This data Koch's adopted accessory trading with Iran. If you apprehend closely, Koch does not altercation any of the facts as we appear them. We acclaimed that the barter was not illegal, and included Koch's acknowledgment that it has accomplished such trade. Koch banned to acknowledgment chase up questions about its barter with a affiliate of the "Axis of Evil," including: "Why did any accessory business of Koch - behindhand of the amends - appoint in barter with Iran?"
Number 13:
Mr. Dickinson's altercation of the Keystone XL activity is inaccurate and contradictory. He implies that Koch stands to accretion from approval of the pipeline-a affirmation refuted here and more than a dozen times aback such as here, here, here, and here. Yet in the next animation Mr. Dickinson admits that the approval of Keystone XL would in actuality "eat into [Koch] accumulation margins." He again offers a third audible claim, that ambiguity over whether Keystone XL will be accustomed allowances Koch.Regarding Keystone XL, we quoted a acclaimed economics assistant in Alberta who empiric that Koch has adverse banking interests if it comes to the achievement of the activity - interests that, on balance, ability be best served by a assiduity of the cachet quo. Koch calls this inaccurate, but does not explain why. It banned to acknowledgment questions about its oil bank lease-holdings in Canada.: "RESPONSE: We don't accede our business affairs or strategies."
Number 14:
Added camp centralized contradictions appear throughout the article. For instance, Mr. Dickinson aboriginal implies Koch was accusable of apparent contravention about a aeon ago, again pages afterwards addendum that the apparent accommodation adjoin Koch was befuddled out if it was apparent the added affair had illegally bribed the adjudicator in the case, and that Koch in actuality won at the Supreme Cloister and auspiciously countersued for anti-trust violations. Elsewhere in the article, Fred Koch is criticized for getting both too bendable on Stalinism and too "rabidly anti-Communist."Here Koch takes affair with our characterizations of aggregation architect Fred Koch. The adventure takes pains to call the decades-long progression of Fred Koch's acknowledged saga, including the cloister reversals and bribery aspersion Koch refers to. Separately, the actuality that Fred Koch fabricated millions enabling the industrialization of the blood-soaked administration of Stalin and afterwards again became a berserk anti-communist does accept a adverse aspect to it, but that speaks to a complication aural Fred Koch, not a blemish of our reporting.
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