Vanguard officials are suspicious that a Barclays (BGI) executive with making sneaky comments on a Morningstar-hosted Web message board with the goal of marketing BGI's ETFs. The anonymous "Dr. Option" posted 167 messages praising exchange-traded funds, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

The report fingers Brad Zigler, BGI's former marketer for its iShares products as a suspected author of the posts. Zigler had written columns for TheStreet.com as "Doc Options" and the postings halted when a Morningstar executive contacted Zigler about the posts. It does not appear that the postings were misleading, but they do point out the depth of the marketing war emerging around ETFs.  

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