The Cato Institute says that Charles Koch's Republican activism threatens its reputation for independent research.

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WASHINGTON — From its perch in a spacious brand-new headquarters blocks from the White House, the Cato Institute has built on its reputation as a venerable libertarian research center unafraid to cross party lines.

Now, however, a rift with one of its founding members — the billionaire conservative Charles Koch — is threatening the institute's identity and independence, its leaders say, and is exposing fault lines over Mr. Koch's aggressive and well-financed brand of Republican politics.

The rift has its roots, Cato officials said, in a long-simmering feud over efforts by Mr. Koch and his brother David Koch to install their own people on the institute's 16-member board and to establish a more direct pipeline between Cato and the family's Republican political outlets, including groups that Democrats complain have mounted a multimillion-dollar assault on President Obama. Tensions reached a new level with a lawsuit filed last week by the Kochs against Cato over its governing structure.

"We can't be perceived as a mouthpiece of special interests," Robert A. Levy, chairman of Cato's board, said in an interview. "The Cato Institute as we know it would be destroyed."

At a tense meeting in November at Dulles Airport outside Washington, David Koch and two family emissaries laid out what they described as the "intellectual ammunition" they envisioned that Cato could provide by supplying its brand-name research and scholars to Koch-financed political advocacy groups, according to Mr. Levy.

The one Koch-financed group mentioned by name at the meeting was Americans for Prosperity, which played a major role in the Republicans' 2010 takeover of the House and is now preparing for the November election. Structured as a nonprofit, the group does not have to disclose its donors. It has backed Tea Party groups, organized rallies and paid for negative advertisements, drawing criticism from campaign finance watchdogs and Democrats over the flow of secret money to political causes.

Charles Koch, chief executive of Koch Industries, a chemical and refining company in Kansas, said he had no intention of taking over the institute. "We support Cato and its work," Mr. Koch said in a statement. "We are not acting in a partisan manner, we seek no 'takeover,' and this is not a hostile action."

But Mr. Levy said he balked at tightening ties between Cato and the Kochs' advocacy groups, expressing concern that the brothers might try to select Cato's research topics and the timing of its studies. Any perception of political influence could compromise Cato's nonprofit status and stain its credibility, he said in an interview.

Over the years, Cato has successfully injected libertarian views into Washington policy and political debates, and given them mainstream respectability.

http://www.nytimes.c...l?_r=1&emc=eta1

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Without Cato as it's been, things would definitely be different.

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Cato? Who cares? Must like the CBPP, they are a joke.