How the Tea Party story broke It is strange how people in Moscow can be better informed than people in Washington D C The Tea Party movement funding by Koch Industries was first exposed by Mark Ames and Yasha Levine of the eXile a Moscow based English language former tabloid and current Internet newspaper The first article appeared on Playboy com in about February 2009 Here is the copy at the eXile In August 2009 The Washington Post runs a similar story Mark Ames comments on the story the same day In April 2010 Yasha Levine exposes new details of the story bring in grandpa Fredrick C Koch and Uncle Joe In July 2010 Rachel Maddow on her show calls Koch the tea party s puppet master Looking at the version history of this article it seems that the story only hit the mainstream American media last week with the article by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker magazine I will repost the link here as it seems to be under constant edit warring in the article