EXPOSING THE CROOKED SHYSTER JOURNALISM OF THE WASHINGTON POST

"The biggest lease holder in the northern Alberta oil sands is a subsidiary of Koch Industries, the privately-owned cornerstone of the fortune of conservative Koch brothers Charles and David," began a lengthy story in the Washington Post March 20.

"The finding about the Koch acreage is likely to inflame the already contentious debate about the Keystone XL Pipeline," said reporters Steven Mufson and Juliet Eilperin.

Which was the purpose of a two page "report" issued by the International Forum on Globalization, on which the Post story is based.

"IFG’s intention is to demonstrate the Koch-Keystone connection," Executive Director Victor Menotti  told the Post reporters. 

Which exists only in the feverish imagination of the far left group.

Koch Oil Sands Operating LLC holds leases on 1.1 million acres, "an area nearly the size of Delaware," Mr. Mufson and Ms. Eilperin inform us in their 2nd paragraph. The tar sands comprise 35 million acres, a fact they don’t mention until the 10th graph. Koch leases are less than 3 percent of the total.

"Koch’s oil production in northern Alberta is ‘negligible,’ according to industry sources and quarterly publications of the provincial government," the Post reporters acknowledge.

"Moreover, Koch has not reserved any space in the Keystone XL pipeline, a process that usually takes place before a pipeline is built.  The pipeline also does not run anywhere near Koch’s refining facilities. And TransCanada, owner of the Keystone routes, says Koch is not expected to be one of the pipeline’s customers."

Koch Industries would be harmed, not helped, if the pipeline is built.

Currently, tar sands oil is shipped primarily to the Midwest, where there is a surplus of supply, which permits Koch to buy crude for its refinery at Pine Bend, Minnesota at favorable prices.

The Keystone XL pipeline would carry oil from Canada to the Gulf coast. Koch industries would have to compete with refineries in Texas and Louisiana for Canadian crude. Prices would rise.

The IFG report features a chart which compares the Koch acreage with that leased by Conoco, Exxon and Chevron — big oil companies, but minor players in the tar sands.

"The IFG folks apparently were too lazy to check on any other companies’ leaseholds," said attorney John Hinderaker, who did.

He posted on his blog, Power Line, a Province of Alberta map which indicates Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. is by far the largest leaseholder. Two other firms – Cenovus Energy (1.5 million acres) and Royal Dutch Shell (1.3 million) — also may have larger holdings than Koch, the Post reporters later acknowledged.

Never heard of Cenovus Energy? It’s a relatively small Canadian firm. There are dozens of leaseholders, mostly companies like Cenovus Energy. Five of the six largest producers are Canadian firms. The other is French.

If the Koch brothers have nothing to do with the Keystone XL pipeline, nothing to gain from it, why write a 1,996-word story implying they do?

The Post story appeared as Democrats prepared to launch an ad campaign demonizing the Kochs, bete noire to liberals for their financial support of libertarian causes, to Democrats for financing ads in which seriously ill victims of Obamacare  tell their stories.

"With Obamacare cratering, a sluggish economy, and the possibility of a wave election shaping up, Democrats can’t run on their records. So they are already gearing up to run against the Koch brothers as an external threat that is buying the GOP," said Mark Hemingway in the Weekly Standard.

"Environmental groups have already made opposing the pipeline their leading cause this spring and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has called the Koch brothers Charles and David ‘un-American’ and ‘shadowy billionaires,’ " Mr. Mufson and Ms. note.

But they made no mention of billionaire hedge fund manager Tom Steyer, much of whose fortune has come from government subsidies for "green" energy projects, which the Keystone XL pipeline threatens, Mr. Hinderaker noted. Mr. Steyer has pledged to give $100 million to Democrats — if they oppose the pipeline.

The fact that the IFG report is old news – it essentially recycles a debunked IFG "report" from October – suggests the story was timed to coincide with the smear campaign.

"The Washington Post published a false story about support for Keystone because it fit the Democratic Party’s agenda," Mr. Hinderaker said. "It covered up a similar, but true story about opposition to the pipeline because that, too, fit the Democratic Party’s agenda."

Ms. Eilperin, he noted, "is married to Andrew Light, who writes on climate policy for the Center for American Progress. The Center for American Progress is an Obama administration front group headed by John Podesta, who is a "special advisor" to the Obama administration. CAP’s web site, Think Progress, has carried out a years-long vendetta against the Koch brothers that has focused largely on the environment."

"Maybe it’s a coincidence that this particular reporter is blowing the Koch brothers influence all out of proportion on a hot button environmental issue, right as the Democratic Party is ramping up a multi-million dollar ad campaign against them," Mr. Hemingway said. "Maybe it’s also a coincidence that Tom Steyer sits on the board of the Center For American Progress where her husband works."

But he didn’t think so.

What former Fox News anchor Brit Hume described as Mr. Hinderaker’s "evisceration" of their story prompted this response from Mr. Mufson and Ms. Eilperin:

"The Powerline article itself, and its tone, is strong evidence that issues surrounding the Koch brothers’ political and business interests will stir and inflame public debate in this election year," they said. "That’s why we wrote the piece."

That defense did not impress Mr. Hinderaker.

"So in the Post’s view, it is acceptable to publish articles that are both literally false (Koch is the largest tar sands leaseholder) and massively misleading (the Keystone Pipeline is all about Koch Industries), if by doing so the paper can "stir and inflame public debate in this election year," he  summarized.

Others also were underwhelmed.

"Even the inane motive they ascribe to themselves for writing the article is an obvious falsehood," said attorney Scott Johnson, Mr. Hinderaker’s colleague at Power Line.

The Post reporters claim justification "because the outrage their shoddy attack provoked proves the relevance of the Kochs," said an amused Jonah Goldberg of National Review. "By this logic any unfair attack posing as reporting is worthwhile when people try to correct the record. Why not just have at it and accuse the Kochs of killing JFK or hiding the Malaysian airplane?"

If Jeff Bezos, the Washington Post’s new owner, wants to run a newspaper rather than a propaganda sheet for the Democratic National Committee, he has some housecleaning to do.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

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