No, it went the other way around. Joseph Steffen was well known in his Public office for being a GOP activist. He was also tasked with the non-political job of firing bureaucrats in Maryland's government downsizing effort (somebody has to do it)...but this would clearly make him unpopular.
Steffen posted here on FR that people at his office had been seen using his computer (obviously unauthorized to so do), so the reasonable speculation is that they found out that he was NCPAC and set up a sting to target him (e.g. looked at his browser's History file or set up a keylogger or both or more).
This is further confirmed by viewing MD4Bush's posting history here, as he trolled NCPAC's threads and made his only posts on threads where NCPAC had been. In fact one of his first four posts was to NCPAC directly.
So newbie MD4Bush knew to target NCPAC prior to coming onto FR.
But it goes to reinforce the fact that you shouldn't use your work PC to surf Free Republic.
Don't be dumb.
I haven't followed the case, but it just made sense that MD4Bush targeted Steffen. Thanks for the details confirming it -- it was just simple logic.