I was one of those. I believe Drudge’s link to FR was called “Whitewater Files”.
Good ol’ days. Looks like I lurked longer than you. I think I posted on FR back in the BBS days, not really sure.
It might have been “Whitewater Pages,” but regardless it brought me to FreeRepublic after a family member mentioned it. I also remember Drudge, Coulter and Lucianne Goldberg (“Trixie”) being at the March for Justice in Washington, D.C. not long after. What went wrong with these people? And Drudge is no journalist. He broke one story, albeit a big one, but he did not do the leg work on it. But for many years the Drudge siren was part of our lives.