On January 1, CNN re-aired Campaign Killers: Why Do Negative Ads Work?, an hour-long special in which CNN anchor Campbell Brown described MoveOn.org as “American insurgents.” As Media Matters for America noted after the special first ran on November 28, 2007, Brown said: “General David Petraeus made his reputation taking on insurgents in Iraq. But when he came to Capitol Hill in September, he was confronted by American insurgents, a liberal anti-war group called MoveOn.org.”

Moreover, during the special, Brown asserted that a MoveOn.org advertisement headlined "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?" “became a huge news story because it questioned the loyalty of a wartime commander, implying he was a traitor.” But as Media Matters also noted, in asserting that the content of the advertisement generated news coverage, Brown did not point out the claim by several commentators that the ad “became a huge news story” because Republicans preferred to talk about it rather than Petraeus' testimony before Congress about the situation in Iraq.

Brown is married to Republican strategist Dan Senor, who served as a senior adviser to Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, the former presidential envoy in Iraq. According to Senor's bio on the Bush White House website, “Senor traveled to Baghdad in mid-April [2003] in one of the first civilian convoys to enter Iraq following the fall of the former regime. He advised Amb. Bremer on a variety of policy and communications issues.” More recently, Senor reportedly served as an adviser for the 527 organization Vets for Freedom, which exists to support the Iraq war. The group put Senor “on retainer to help with fundraising,” according to National Journal. Vets for Freedom led the right-wing assault on MoveOn in September, denouncing the Petraeus ad a day before it even ran. Senor is also an unpaid adviser to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

From the January 1 rebroadcast of the CNN special Campaign Killers: Why Do Negative Ads Work?, part of CNN's "Broken Government" series:

BROWN: General David Petraeus made his reputation taking on insurgents in Iraq. But when he came to Capitol Hill in September, he was confronted by American insurgents, a liberal anti-war group called MoveOn.org. MoveOn bought this full-page ad in The New York Times. It accused Petraeus of betraying us by cooking the books on progress in Iraq.

MoveOn's executive director, Eli Pariser.

PARISER: The goal was not to necessarily persuade, you know, lots of voters, it was to get the ad talked about and get that critique of what the general was saying, talked about.

BROWN: But what the general said on Iraq was overshadowed by what MoveOn said about the general.

PRESIDENT BUSH [video clip]: I thought the ad was disgusting.

BROWN: The ad became a huge news story because it questioned the loyalty of a wartime commander, implying he was a traitor.

BUSH [video clip]: I felt like the ad was an attack not only on General Petraeus, but on the U.S. military.

BROWN: Many Democrats, too, were embarrassed by the ad and distanced themselves from MoveOn, the left wing of their own party.

SEN. CARL LEVIN (D-MI) [video clip]: I hope we all condemn the ad in The New York Times.

SEN. HARRY REID (D-NV) [video clip]: An unwarranted personal attack on General Petraeus.

LEVIN [video clip]: I thought it was a disgraceful ad.

SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R-TX) [video clip]: It is not OK.

BROWN: But as congressional Republicans engineered landslide votes to condemn MoveOn, the organization says its anti-war membership was sending in cash, a million and a half dollars. MoveOn made no apologies.

PARISER: Sometimes you have to just lay the issues out in very clear, stark terms and fight the fight.