The author of Sons of Wichita, the new biography of the Koch brothers, never got the interviews he wanted with the archconservative billionaires. But he says the family nonetheless kept a close eye on his research, deploying the “very aggressive P.R. operation” they have used for years to silence media criticism.
“I had a senior person at [Koch Industries] basically tell me, ‘Yeah, that is our strategy, we hit back and over time because of doing this the mainstream press has sort of learned a lesson to be careful about what they say about us,'” said Daniel Schulman, the book’s author and a senior editor at the progressive Mother Jones magazine. “I would describe it as pugilistic, [which] is often their style in general.”
Despite the lack of support from its subjects, Schulman’s book is a fascinating portrait of the often bitter relationships between the four brothers — Charles, David, Bill, and Frederick — whose sprawling political empire has become a dominant force in the right-wing movement.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/05/29/the-pugilistic-way-the-koch-brothers-handle-the/199490
The Secular Jurist 