It was probably 2 years ago, Nick Danger was having some real fun with him, until somebody told GE that FR didn't even exist until late '97.
Found it:
"Far from the truth, I have been here since around 95 (why my profile says 99 I have no idea, others probably have the same problem but since it's no real issue I haven't asked anyone to look into it and waste their valuable time)."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/950193/posts?page=285#285
From Jim Robinson:
"During most of the above time period (beginning sometime in '93 or '94) I had been following our new President's crimes and corruption spree by reading and posting to Prodigy's Whitewater bulletin board at night and on weekends. In September of 1996, I created the Free Republic website."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1011545/posts
Archive.org backs this up...they show the first spider hitting FR in December of 96.
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://freerepublic.com
I also noticed something else rather interesting. There's an almost 1 year gap (6/'02, to 5/'03) where there are no posts by GE at all (Oh, those must have been glorious days!).
Before that time, GE acted pretty much like a regular FR poster, talking about a wide range of subjects, from football to Osama Bin Laden. He also had a few tech threads thrown in here and there, but never had meltdowns the way he does now. The change in GE seems to coincide roughly with the commencement of the SCO vs. IBM case. After that year-long gap, his focus is almost entirely Linux, and his demeanor and manners go way downhill. The difference is like night and day.
Check it out yourself: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/user-posts?more=11997442;name=Golden%20Eagle Compare the posts before June of 02 with those after May of 03. A pretty scary transformation, if you ask me.
Regardless, the oldest post I can find for him is 9/12/2001, one day after the attacks on NYC & DC.
Nevertheless, it's one more for the "Golden Eagle Lie List".