Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right

by Jane Mayer

In the mid-1980s, as called for in the first phase of Fink’s plan, the Kochs also began to establish an academic beachhead of their own. Their particular focus was on George Mason University, a little-known campus of Virginia’s prestigious higher-education system, located in the Washington suburbs. In 1977, The Washington Post described the school as toiling in “the wilderness of obscurity.” By 1981, Fink had moved his Austrian economics program there from Rutgers, eventually naming it the Mercatus Center. The think tank was entirely funded by outside donations, largely from the Kochs, but it was located in the midst of the public university’s campus, so it touted itself, somewhat misleadingly, as “the world’s premier university source for market-oriented ideas—bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems.” Financial records show that the Koch family foundations donated some $30 million to the school, much of it going to the Mercatus Center. The Washington Post described Mercatus as a “staunchly anti-regulatory center funded largely by Koch Industries Inc.” This, however, raised questions about whether the Mercatus Center was in fact an independent intellectual center or an extension of the Kochs’ lobbying operation. Clayton Coppin, who taught history at George Mason and compiled the confidential study of Charles’s political activities for Bill Koch, describes Mercatus outright in his report as “a lobbying group disguised as a disinterested academic prog...