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It is known in American politics as the October surprise - and it has a long and ugly history.
This year it came on November 1.
On Saturday one of America's largest and oldest news services, Associated Press, reported that Barack Obama has a Kenyan aunt living illegally in Boston. The story has the potential to damage his bid for the US presidency in the eleventh hour of campaign which does appear likely to give America its first black president.
It is not simply that Obama has an illegal immigrant in his family. His campaign has been found to have accepted financial contributions from his aunt, 56-year-old Zeituni Onyango. Only American citizens and green card-holders are allowed to make financial contributions to candidates in US elections.
The unanswered questions include who leaked the information to the Associated Press and why. Naturally great suspicion is falling upon the Republican Party whom some commentators are suggesting will suffer an enormous defeat in Tuesday's Presidential election.
The Obama campaign questioned the timing of the disclosure just days before Tuesday's election.
"I think people are suspicious about stories that surface in the last 72 hours of a national campaign," David Axelrod, Obama's chief media strategist told reporters. "And I think they're ... going to put it in that context."
The Associated Press attributed its story to two unnamed sources, one a federal law enforcement official, but said it could not establish whether anyone at a political level in the Bush administration or the McCain campaign had been involved in its release.
Democrats, however, are far from the sole targets of the October surprise.
One of the biggest came in the 2000 Presidential election when the Republican George W Bush beat Al Gore. It was revealed shortly before election day in 2000 that then Texas governor and presidential candidate was arrested in 1976 for drunken driving. Bush survived the scandal, quickly admitting the charge and explaining that he had kept the incident secret because he did not want his twin daughters, then 18, to find out.
The October surprise in 1992 was an effort to portray Bill Clinton as disloyal to America because he had allegedly renounced US citizenship in the 1960s and sought the citizenship of another country to avoid being drafted into the army to fight in Vietnam.
Clinton, like Obama now, was then leading in opinion polls against his opponent, President George Bush, the current President's father.
Clinton's passport file was illegally searched for information that could have damaged him in the final weeks of the campaign.
The effort backfired and George Bush Snr was forced to dismiss the assistant secretary of state for consular affairs. Another state department official, who was involved in the search resigned.
News that Obama has an aunt living in Boston was broken by London's The Times newspaper two days ago. However, the paper did not know that she was an illegal alien.
The Times story focused on the tough life in America that faced relatives of the black presidential candidate and very likely to have aroused interest in the American media on Obama's Aunt.
It is possible, therefore, that this year's October surprise was by accident and not design.
But try telling that to an Obama fan.
Photo / AP
