All they had to do, if they did not want to bother Fencer, is tell you that there might be something on this board worth looking at, and then you could have 'bothered' Fencer, and he could have looked for himself, without any rules being broken.

Sending this message to you because they did not want to bother Fencer sound dubious to me...it DOES sound like someone wanted to 'cause trouble with it', and it worked...unfortunatly for them, they broke the rules in doing so.
This obviously was not handled to descretely as far as Mad and Steve were concerned, why should this other rule breaker have the luxury or breaking the rules without public scrutiny for it? If what they did was so rightous, then why the big cover up?