Obama Campaign's Intense Effort To Combat E-Mail Smear

For over a year, largely out of the media glare, Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign has been fighting a determined, low-intensity conflict against the viral e-mail that forwards the myth that Obama is a crypto-Muslim Manchurian candidate.

Among the campaign's first hires in January 2007 were two opposition researchers who didn't begin with the traditional round of research into their boss's past, or his rivals' records. Instead, they were immediately assigned to debunk the widely circulated anonymous set of e-mails.

"We've been bird-dogging it from the beginning," said Devorah Adler, Obama's research director. "The first research document that I put together was a response to the 'Who is Barack Obama?' e-mail."

The e-mails aren't a well-funded, faux-grassroots smear like the attacks on John Kerry's war record.

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