VERY slimy, no matter which side you are on. The most interesting part of
this article is the description of the proper way to use negative information:
If you have a big story that's going to hit in the middle of September, middle of October, what you really want to do is build several things that come off of the story so that it's not just a one-day hit. If the story runs on the front page of a major paper, you also want to set it up so that it hits some of the television morning shows, and from there you want to have surrogates [friendly talking heads] out the next day, so that you get a second hit. On the third day, ideally, you have some additional information you've been holding back that you can feed into it [to prompt] another round of stories. On the fourth or fifth day you try to hold your candidate back from saying anything, so that eventually, when he does say something about the issue, you get another round of stories. If you do it effectively, you can basically wipe out a guy's entire week—he'll spend the entire week responding to a story that showed up on a Monday.
Also interesting is the fact that one of the opposition researchers has boxes of information stacked in his basement, ready to go if hillary clinton decides to run for president.
I know that negative campaigning is political necessity--it's a shame the process been analyzed and perfected into such a science though. This HAS to be the slimiest job ever.