11 Facts About Opposition research

Opposition research can entail using "trackers" to follow an individual and record their activities or political speeches.

Opposition research accused one political opponent, Catiline, of murdering one wife to make room for another.

Opposition research attacked Mark Antony in speeches known as the Philippicae, eventually prompting Antony to chop off his head and right hand and display them at the Roman Forum.

In 18th-century England and Ireland, opposition research took the form of scandal-mongering pamphlet wars between the Whig and Tory parties.

Opposition research became systematized in the 1970s, when Ken Khachigian, a speechwriter in the Nixon Administration, suggested that the GOP keep files on individuals as insurance against future races, rather than "scramble" in an ad hoc fashion, race by race.

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Information gathering can be classified into three main categories: open-source Opposition research enabled by the Freedom of Information Act, covert operations or "tradecraft, " and maintenance of human systems of informants.

Candidates and incumbents who benefit from opposition research often choose to remain uninformed about their campaign's operations and tactics, to ensure plausible deniability should criminal charges be brought against researchers.

Opposition research is a necessary component of grassroots activist groups.

Congressional and presidential opposition research is often conducted by or funded by a political party, lobbying group, political action committee, or a 527 group that coalesces around a certain issue.

Brandeis aggressively outmaneuvered his detractors by mounting his own opposition research efforts, including a carefully constructed chart that exposed the social and financial connections of the group, mostly from Boston's Back Bay, and including Harvard president Lawrence Lowell, as well as a group headed by former President William Howard Taft and a host of American Bar Association past presidents.

Practice of using tips from opposition research sources was examined in 1994 by Howard Kurtz, media analyst for The Washington Post.