Triad Management Services

Triad Management Services is a Tom DeLay-affiliated organization that launders money from large corporations into congressional campaigns.

Among its recipients are Congressman Sam Brownback (R-Kan.).

Triad Management was a front group for the politically active, conservative oil billionaires Charles and David Koch, that they used to manipulate the outcomes of elections across the country for House and Senate races. Jane Mayer, a reporter for The New Yorker magazine, wrote about Triad Management in an August 30, 2010 article, saying

"In 1997, another Senate investigation began looking into what a minority report called “an audacious plan to pour millions of dollars in contributions into Republican campaigns nationwide without disclosing the amount or source,” in order to evade campaign-finance laws. A shell corporation, Triad Management, had paid more than three million dollars for attack ads in twenty-six House races and three Senate races. More than half of the advertising money came from an obscure nonprofit group, the Economic Education Trust. The Senate committee’s minority report suggested that “the trust was financed in whole or in part by Charles and David Koch of Wichita, Kansas.” The brothers were suspected of having secretly paid for the attack ads, most of which aired in states where Koch Industries did business. In Kansas, where Triad Management was especially active, the funds may have played a decisive role in four of six federal races. The Kochs, when asked by reporters if they had given the money, refused to comment. In 1998, however, the Wall Street Journal confirmed that a consultant on the Kochs’ payroll had been involved in the scheme. Charles Lewis, of the Center for Public Integrity, described the scandal as “historic. Triad was the first time a major corporation used a cutout”—a front operation—“in a threatening way. Koch Industries was the poster child of a company run amok."

Related SourceWatch articles

 * Citizens for the Republic Education Fund
 * Citizens for Reform
 * Koch Industries
 * Carolyn Malenick

External articles

 * Ruth Marcus, "Funds Consultant Helped Senator Behind Scenes," Washington Post, December 12, 1997.
 * Federal Election Commission, FEC v. Triad Management Services (02CV1237), August 2002.
 * Lou Dubose, "The Decay of DeLay," Salon, October 4, 2004.
 * Democratic Underground, Triad Management Services, Inc. in the Demopedia, accessed March 2005.

External resources

 * Lou Dubose, The Hammer (a DeLay biography).
 * Institute for First Amendment Studies, Profile: Triad Management Services, 1998.
 * Thomas Frank, What's the Matter with Kansas?: How conservatives won the heart of America, Metropolitan Books, June 2004. ISBN 0805073396 (Amazon.com profile).