[conservative in nyc]

I was searching through the Michelle Lane-related posts and found a reference to this statement by the Washington Post about how Mosk found out details about Steffen's life for an biographical piece that ran in the Style section on 03/21/05. Note that it was printed as a correction to the article:

Between the first and second March 21 editions, a paragraph was dropped from a Style article on Joseph F. Steffen Jr., a former political aide to Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. The story described e-mails posted on the Web site FreeRepublic.com under the name NCPAC, which is short for National Conservative Political Action Committee. The paragraph that should have appeared said:

"Steffen confirmed to The Washington Post last month that he is NCPAC (pronounced 'nik-pak'). He canceled a meeting scheduled for this article and did not respond to further requests for comment. No one else could post messages as NCPAC without NCPAC sharing his password, according to a spokesman for FreeRepublic.com. NCPAC posted about a thousand messages between January 2004 and early last month. They were sprinkled with autobiographical asides that a reporter independently verified as facts of Steffen's life."

[conservative in nyc]

Actually, the article was by David Montgomery, with help from WaPo staff researcher Bobbye Pratt. IIRC, Pratt helped Mosk with the original 2/9/05 article, too. It's not clear whether "a reporter" applies to Montgomery or Mosk.

[Alia]

That's how the press claims to have identified Buckhead; same method.