demeter cavhoco

As Holden discussed the Democracy Alliance's efforts, internal DA

documents were projected onto a screen at the front of the

bronze-chandelier-lit St. Regis ballroom, including a “portfolio

snapshot” featuring descriptions of 21 groups that the DA recommended

for funding and a breakdown of the “core functions of the progressive

movement.”

‘Like the CIA’

It is unclear precisely which documents Holden presented to donors

(though similar documents appear to have been published in the weeks

before and after his presentation by a <a href="http://freebeacon.com/politics/exclusive-democracy-alliance-network-revealed/" target="blank">handful of media outlets</a>, <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/inside-the-vast-liberal-conspiracy-108171" target="blank">including POLITICO</a>) or precisely how the documents were obtained.

Holden ― who sits on the board of Freedom Partners Chamber of

Commerce, which organized the St. Regis gathering and which oversees the

competitive intelligence team ― declined to comment.

The competitive intelligence team is run by a veteran Republican

researcher named Mike Roman, who is listed as Freedom Partners' vice

president of research on the <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/koch-brothers-990-filing-215979" target="_blank">tax filing that group publicly released</a> on Tuesday. That filing cites Roman's salary and benefits at $286,000 last year.

His team is part of Freedom Partners, but is managed through a

limited liability company called American Strategies Group LLC, or ASG

for short. ASG is set up as a type of corporate structure known as a

“disregarded entity”, which exists only as a part of its parent group ―

in this case Freedom Partners ― for the purposes of mitigating legal

risk and separating revenue streams for accounting and tax compliance

purposes.

ASG was the conduit for $13.3 million of Freedom Partners' cash between late 2012 and the end of last year, <a href="https://freedompartners.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/FreedomPartners-2013-990-Form.pdf" target="blank">according</a> to <a href="https://freedompartners.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/FreedomPartners-2012-990-Form.pdf" target="blank">tax filings</a> submitted to the Internal Revenue Service by Freedom Partners, including the <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/koch-brothers-990-filing-215979" target="_blank">filing publicly released</a>

on Tuesday covering 2014. It shows that ASG controls a holding company

called CAVHOCO, Inc., which received a capital contribution of $17.5

million from Freedom Partners last year. CAVHOCO sits at the center of a

confusing web of disregarded entities and holding companies, including

one called Demeter Analytics Services, Inc. That entity, which is the

holding company for the Freedom Partners-owned data firm i360, was paid

$11 million by Freedom Partners in 2014 for professional services,

according to the tax return. <a href="http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2014/452/691/2014-452691518-0b6fa132-ZO.pdf" target="blank">Separate tax returns</a> also listed Roman as trustee of a mysterious non-profit group called <a href="http://the-pegroup.com/" target="blank">Public Engagement Group</a> Trust, which appears to be dormant.

Roman, who did not respond to requests for comment, has worked to

keep himself and his activity low-profile even within the discreet Koch

operation.

One former network official said that when people were summoned to

meetings at ASG’s offices, they sometimes had trouble finding the suite.

“They told people that’s the way they liked it,” the official recalled.

“They act all cloak and dagger – like the CIA. There was a joke about

how hardly anyone ever met Mike Roman. It was like, if you wanted to

find him, he’d be in a trench coat on the National Mall,” said the

former official.

The regular intelligence briefings from Roman's team, which are sent from an address ending in “<a href="http://amersg.org" target="_blank">amersg.org</a>”

to high-ranking network employees, begin with a warning that “This

briefing contains information that is confidential and may be legally

privileged. If you are not an authorized recipient, you are hereby

notified that you are forbidden to read, disseminate, distribute or copy

any of the material contained within. Authorized recipients are hereby

notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this

briefing is strictly prohibited.”

One such briefing sent in the weeks before the 2014 midterm elections

and obtained by POLITICO contained highly detailed race-by-race

breakdowns of the activities of liberal campaigns and their big-money

supporters ― as well as conservative big-money groups ostensibly allied

with the Kochs. It’s the sort of granular briefing that could be used to

help the Koch network decide the most impactful ways to direct its own

election spending. And it bears the hallmarks of research that combines

close tracking of public information with original analysis of source

documents, and possibly a dash of on-the-ground intel like that which

could be gleaned by having an operative attend campaign events.<aside class="story-related">

    <article class="story-frag format-sm">
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                <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/republicans-working-together-finally-215998" target="_top"><img src="http://static2.politico.com/dims4/default/f6ba41b/2147483647/legacy_thumbnail/90x49%3E/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.politico.com%2Fc8%2Ff4%2F3d8ecbc14cc58e3abb6b3e74b1f8%2F151117-mitch-mcconnell-paul-ryan-1160-gty.jpg" class=" lazy-loaded" alt="151117_mitch_mcconnell_paul_ryan_1160_gty.jpg" /></a></div>
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                <p class="category">
                    <a href="http://politico.com/congress" target="_blank">Congress</a></p>
                <h3>
                    <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/republicans-working-together-finally-215998" target="_top">Ryan and McConnell confront their first big test</a></h3>
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        <p class="byline">
            By <span class="vcard"><a href="http://www.politico.com/staff/jake-sherman" rel="author" class="url fn" target="_top">Jake Sherman</a></span> and <span class="vcard"><a href="http://www.politico.com/staff/seung-min-kim" rel="author" class="url fn" target="_top">Seung Min Kim</a></span></p>
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</aside>

The briefing notes that in Arkansas, where there was a hotly

contested Senate race between Koch network favorite Tom Cotton and

Democratic incumbent Sen. Mark Pryor, Democrats were holding a statewide

get-out-the-vote training in Little Rock, as well as a college

organizing conference, while an immigrant rights group was “phone

banking regularly with the intent of registering voters.” But the

briefing also contains big-picture analysis flagging that <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/big-labor-donors-george-soros-tom-steyer-119454" target="_blank">union-affiliate Working America</a>

“has 400 paid canvassers knocking on 5,000 doors daily across 13 states

through Election Day, especially focusing on Senate races in AK, IA,

KY, MI, and NC. NRSC Vice Chair for Finance Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) said

the NRSC isn’t planning to devote any more significant resources to

shore up key candidates in the red states of Kansas, Kentucky and

Georgia.”

‘Scared to death of moles’

In addition to delving into the left, the competitive intelligence

team also monitors potential Koch network threats, according to sources

familiar with it. It tracks people deemed suspicious outside the offices

of Koch network groups, circulating be-on-the-lookout photos to

internal network email lists, while keeping an eye on the network's own

ranks for possible leakers or disloyal employees.

One former network executive remembers an email containing a photo of

a man identified as an operative with the environmental group

Greenpeace who allegedly had been spotted taking his own photos outside

the network’s cluster of offices in the Courthouse neighborhood of

Arlington.

Connor Gibson, a Greenpeace researcher who focuses on the Koch

network, said he visits its component groups’ offices once a year to

pick up their tax filings, and he speculated he could have been the

operative photographed by the competitive intelligence unit. While he

said he’s never sought to conceal his identity during such visits, he

added “If the Kochs consider me an opponent, I’m flattered.”

In another instance, sources say, Roman's team set out to identify an

IT contractor who was working for one of the network's groups and was

posting anonymous messages to Reddit, proclaiming that he worked for the

Koch brothers but despised their stances. Within 48 hours, the team had

sleuthed out the offender and his contract was terminated.

“They were scared to death of moles,” said the former executive.

A separate source ― an organizer who’s worked with the unit ―

described it as “a full opposition research operation, only at about

10-times the level of any political campaign.” The organizer added “my

guess is that most people inside the network don’t even know about it.”

Koch allies emphasize that the brothers and their network have been targets of regular <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/03/spying-koch-brothers" target="_blank">sleuthing by the left</a>.

A nonprofit group called American Bridge 21st Century ― which is

aligned with Hillary Clinton and the Democracy Alliance ― this year

launched a <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/secret-effort-to-sell-hillary-clinton-to-rich-liberals-118528" target="_blank">$3-million project</a>

dedicated to researching, tracking and attacking the Kochs. Its

staffers have been spotted recording the proceedings at Koch network

events and <a href="https://soundcloud.com/user-565006047-155535173/chamber-ofcommerce-annual-meeting-in-wichita-11215" target="blank">appearances by the brothers</a>, and it took credit for unearthing a trove of documents featured in a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/us/politics/quixotic-80-campaign-gave-birth-to-kochs-powerful-network.html?r=0" target="blank">New York Times</a><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/us/politics/quixotic-80-campaign-gave-birth-to-kochs-powerful-network.html?r=0" target="_blank"> story</a>

about David Koch’s 1980 Libertarian vice presidential campaign. The

group does not appear to be behind the untraceable recordings made from

inside closed-door Koch donor gatherings over the years ― like the one

of Holden’s dissection of the Democracy Alliance at the St. Regis.

Holden told the donors at the St. Regis that the big-money liberal

groups in the Democracy Alliance were pursuing a two-pronged strategy

that bears some similarities to the tactics of the Koch network. “What

they do is they try to build a permanent infrastructure to win

elections, and they obsess about us ― all of you,” Holden said. “And

it’s the old quote ― first they ignore you, then they mock you, then

they attack you, and then we win. We’re close to winning. I don’t know

how close, but we should be, because they can’t attack the ideas. They

don’t have the real path. All they do is target and they just try to

silence people. You know, they’re afraid of us. They really are. They’re

afraid of this room.”