COMPROMISED INTEL: Secret Dem Political Research For 12 2012 Contests

It could be one of the biggest political intelligence coups of the 2012 battle to control Congress. Media Trackers, a conservative investigative watchdog group, discovered nearly three-dozen Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee opposition research notebooks – extensive secretive manuals outlining anything that could be used against a political opponent. Several news outlets have reported that some of the files have been quietly published on the DCCC’s website to facilitate their use by independent expenditure groups. On Thursday, however, Media Trackers published a dozen opposition research books that Democrats have so far managed to keep secret.

The twelve unpublished manuals range in size from a few dozen pages to hundreds of pages, depending on the personal, business and civic record of the Republican target. Incumbent members of Congress, like Florida’s Allen West and California’s Dan Lungren, have long files, whereas the individual Republican candidates in North Carolina’s 7th Congressional District share a single book.

Democrats expanded the research division of the DCCC at the start of the 2012 cycle in an effort to create good political intelligence for their drive to capture 25 seats in the House and swing control of the majority away from Republicans. The D.C.-based newspaper Roll Call covered some of the meetings at which Democratic political staffers discussed ways to effectively gather information for the intel files they were building on Republicans. But the paper was granted access on the condition that they not publish the names of key targeted Republicans.

Read More at mediatrackers.org. By Brian Sikma.