so the one thing i disagree with manu statement, i don t see it as a cut out. i see them as consultants hired by the campaign to do research and report back to the campaign as they see fit. i think that jeffrey is right that if they knew about this, they should have been a little bit more transparent about it. but i don t see this as cutouts and deceitfulness on the part of the clintons or the dnc. i see it as normal consultants being hired to do work to develop work product, and then give it to their client if relevant. so in the world, in the dark world of opposition research, which is key to any campaign, and you know candidates very often start by having people do opposition research on themselves so they will know what s coming at them, for example. what you want to do, i assume, is establish an awful lot of distance between the candidate and the people close to the