MD4Bush Incident

The MD4Bush Incident refers to a Maryland political controversy involving indiscreet posts and personal e-mails from Joseph Steffen, an aide to the Republican former Governor of Maryland Robert Ehrlich, posting under the screen name "NCPAC" to an anonymous poster at Free Republic identified by the screen name "md4bush". Steffen was a long time Free Republic user, and in August 2004, had publicly posted on an online thread about the O'Malley rumor by filling in details of the woman linked to the rumor. "Md4bush" helped coax Steffen to acknowledge spreading rumors about O'Malley's private life. "Ehrlich and his aides tried to unmask md4bush and at one point accused a former Democratic Party official of being the Web poster, though they were never able to prove it," According to the Baltimore Sun.

In October 2004, an unknown person or persons created an account named "MD4Bush" on Free Republic to investigate the source of false rumors that Democratic Mayor of Baltimore Martin O'Malley had committed adultery. Using this alias, MD4Bush lured Steffen into contact, brought up the rumors, and baited Steffen into giving sensitive information and making admissions against interest.

Unaware of who he was corresponding with, Steffen's responses appeared to take credit for spreading the rumors. Steffen wrote, "...lot of what everyone knows about MO'M is because of work that has occurred. It's been a wild ride," and "A few folks put in a lot of effort to ensure the MO'M story got some real float." When MD4Bush asked for advice on spreading the rumors further, Steffen wrote that he would not "offer suggestions that may be considered unethical concerning what you should do, campaign-wise. This is especially true concerning MO'M's personal life."

Ehrlich fired Steffen when the contents of these messages were published in a Washington Post article by Matthew Mosk on February 9, 2005. Mr. Kristinn Taylor of Free Republic charged that Post reporter Matthew Mosk's access to the MD4Bush account was a violation of the Free Republic users agreement, and they were "looking into whether the Washington Post violated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act when Post reporter Matthew Mosk accessed the Free Republic account of MD4Bush."

The MD4Bush incident later became conflated with another controversy regarding Steffen's testimony that, before his dismissal, Ehrlich had instructed him to prepare a "hit list" of state employees who would be fired to make room for Ehrlich's political allies.

Timeline

October 2004: An anonymous user going by the name "MD4Bush" registered for the Free Republic internet messageboard and began posting rumors about O'Malley. MD4Bush's first post on October 8th stated "Yeah, he cheats on his wife. I heard he is not allowed in the house and is living in some new high-rise near City Hall."

October 15, 2004: MD4Bush made the first of several posts containing rumors about O'Malley directed at "NCPAC", the username of Ehrlich aide Joe Steffen. The two began exchanging private messages to each other via Free Republic's internal webmail system. MD4Bush and NCPAC discussed potential dirt on O'Malley in conversations where MD4Bush "fueled the rumor." Steffen wrote, "A lot of what everyone knows about is because of work that has occurred. It's been a wild ride." However, Steffen refused to provide advice on how to further spread this rumor, and, in fact, told MD4Bush "to stay away from the mayor's personal life." A complete reading of all Steffen's Free Republic postings shows he never once mentioned the contents of the rumor itself.

October 27, 2004: MD4Bush attempted to draw NCPAC/Steffen into a conversation about Maryland's Democratic Senator Barbara Mikulski. In this post MD4Bush circulated a rumor that Mikulski was a "lezbo." Steffen did not respond.

February 8, 2005: MD4Bush returned to the Free Republic site and published the contents of his webmail exchanges with Steffen onto the public section of the site and alerted the Washington Post to their contents and NCPAC's identity as Steffen. A front page story by reporter Matthew Mosk appeared in the Post the next day announcing Steffen's resignation for spreading rumors about O'Malley on the Free Republic site.

November, 2005: an investigation into the incident revealed that MD4Bush was posting using three email accounts, one of them an email account associated with the Democratic Party of Maryland. Republicans responded by stating that the incident was a set-up by Democrats to embarrass Ehrlich. Lower Shore Sen. Lowell Stoltzfus, R-District 38, that "there's real trouble" if the Washington Post reporters didn't identify themselves as such upon logging in, noting that the paper's reporters were given access passwords to the Free Republic site by MD4Bush to verify Steffen's webmail exchanges..

December, 2005: WBAL reported that the e-mail address used in October 2004 to open the MD4Bush account was: ryanrock2004@yahoo.com. Its sources said that e-mail address was later changed to rodoherty@mddems.org, then changed for a third time to brianwaverly@yahoo.com. That third e-mail address remained as the address registered on the Free Republic account.

According to Free Republic, anyone who has the password to the MD4Bush account could change the e-mail registration address at any time. It is not known how many people may have had access to that password. The e-mail address information obtained does not shed light on the actual users of the MD4Bush account, nor does it reveal whether someone attached the Ryan O'Doherty e-mail address to the account without his knowledge. WBAL report

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