Why do you think Adam Lanza destroyed his computer?

[ck4829]

So, one of the latest stories out is that Adam Lanza took a hammer to his computer hours before he decided to murder over two dozen people.

This may very well explain the motive, but the FBI has apparently already thrown in the towel, but the company that managed to get data off the computers from Shuttle Columbia and is currently retrieving data from home and business computers from the victims of Hurricane Sandy wants to take a whack at it. Hopefully they'll be able to get access to it and if they do, retrieve something from it.

But I have to ask, why?

* Another latest story is that Adam was on the verge of being committed and managed to somehow catch wind of it, did his mother put in a note of what could have been obsessive computer usage?

* He destroyed his computer but made sure to leave his collection of video games behind.

* Was it all as one last middle finger to the world?

* In another article, it's stated that he may have done this to prevent investigators from discovering if he spoke to someone about the upcoming massacre, but I don't know if that sounds right. We got this socially awkward kid who is isolated and he manages to find someone who won't go to the authorities or is actually one of the authorities themselves. Possible, but possibly not.

* Do we really know if it was Adam who destroyed his computer? Everywhere, we just assume it was Adam who did it. Maybe, but maybe not, Miss Lanza tried an unorthodox solution to get her son off the computer and may have the inadvertently triggered one of the deadliest temper tantrums in US history.

* Was there something of a disturbing or illegal nature on his computer and that he simply wouldn't be able to delete in a small amount of time. He wouldn't have wanted to end up like James von Brunn, who wanted to be remembered for shooting up the US Holocaust Museum, but is now remembered for forgetting to delete his mountain of illegal porn from his computer before he carried the shooting out. May also explain how comfortable he was with killing children, if he could abuse and exploit them, then he could certainly murder them.

All in all, wild mass guessing. But I'm just tired of hearing about atheism, mental illness, video games causing this when we haven't even scratched the surface. Hopefully someone will recover something.

[hobbit709]

1. Crazy is not stupid. Obviously there was something on it he wanted hidden.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

2. Did not want to leave a trail behind for people to pick apart

He was also smart enough to know how to wipe them electronically which would have taken some up front work. Its why I think he snapped vice preplanned it.

[RZM]

3. I see two possiblities

One is that he knew he would soon be dead and didn't want people nosing through his personal stuff on there.

Another is that he smashed it out of anger/frustration, etc. He was obviously prone to violent and destructive behavior, so perhaps it happened in a fit of rage.

[godai]

4. It seems that he actually opened the hard drive & destroyed the disks inside.

Don't think his mother know how to do this. I think it requires a special screw driver. For the shuttle and storms, the hard drives remained sealed, contents easier to get to.

Why did he do this? He wanted to destroy what was on the drive. Why would you care about this if you're about to commit suicide? Some guilt over something that was on there?

[Aerows]

9. They don't require that special of screw drivers

Most use a Torx 7 or 8, which is something that nearly everyone that works on PCs has. Something had to be going on with him that he was ashamed of, or guilty of.

[godai]

14. Have you done this? I haven't.

That's somewhat of a special screw driver.

[Aerows]

19. Not really

And no, I don't regularly open hard drives because even the most minute particle of dust can ruin the platters/head. Data recovery centers typically use HEPA filters that remove even the most tiny bits of dust before they reset a platter.

In other words, if you don't know what you are doing, don't do it because it will trash the drive. But I don't think Torx or Star screwdrivers are that odd these days? Maybe it's because I've been in the business for so long. I have at least two of each size in my toolkit.

[lapislzi]

22. We have them at home.

My husband refurbishes laptops for a living. Anybody with middling hardware experience will have these. Most computer stores (Micro Center, etc.) carry them.

[Aerows]

24. Exactly

You need them to crack open most laptops, which I do with regularity.

[hifiguy]

70. Yep. An uber-geek buddy of mine has a complete set

of all the various drivers needed to pop open anything in any PC and has had them for years. Micro Center sells the driver sets for 10 bucks or so IIRC. Nothing high tech there.

[FSogol]

29. We have those screwdrivers too. Someone gave me a nice kit of specialty screwdrivers one Christmas.

[Dash87]

35. Many drives also require a certain tension for the screws.

Any more or less will toast the drive.

[Aerows]

41. That too

It's not for an amateur. If you even dream of undertaking such a thing, you have to have all of the specs and be prepared.

[JHB]

82. I got one as part of a computer tool set...

...for about $35 dollars at a nearby electronics place. I was just replacing the default drive my computer came with for one with more capacity: clone the contents onto the new drive, swap them, keep the old one for additional storage space in an external enclosure. No particular training, just keeping track of what I was doing so that I'd know what happened if I screwed up. If you keep what you're trying to do simple, it's actually pretty easy.

Add to that the fact that these days a number of drives are built to be able to simply "plug in" the drive so it can be easily removed and transported ("hot swappable" drives).

Don't know if he had the latter type, but a bright kid of the sort who would be in a tech club at school (as Lanza apparently was) would be able to do this sort of minor tinkering easily.

ON EDIT: Ok, upon rereading I realize I'm talking about removing the drive rather than opening it, but if he opened the drive with intent to attempt to render it unreadable, he didn't necessarily need the skill to do so properly. When you're trying to break it, your options get wider.

[Aerows]

84. I think that illustrates how detached from reality he was

He opened the drive to watch the platters get destroyed. And yes, I've swapped many a drive, but swapping platters or messing with the interals of a hard drive isn't something you can do without MAJOR preparations, knowing the specs of what you are working on, and a clean room.

[sir pball]

120. Yes I have and no, it isn't.

I have a set I did buy specifically for electronics work, but I also have a generic "do-everything" screwdriver with about 60 interchangeable bits that includes every size of Torx, $15 at Sears.

[ywcachieve]

63. Ashamed of what was left on a computer? BUT he shot his mother in the face 4 times,

then went to a school and slaughtered 20 babies, and 6 school staff.
I just can't see him being the type of person to be ashamed of anything, after what he did to his mother, and what he did to those babies and school staff.

[Aerows]

66. Might not be shame

He could have been so delusional (or psychotic?) that he thought he had come up with the cure for cancer and gave a middle finger to the world.

He was nuts. I don't pretend to be a psychologist. There are probably any number of reasons why he did it.

[ywcachieve]

76. I mentioned ashamed because someone posted he might have destroyed

his computer because possibly something on it, he might be ashamed of. And I say to that, no way would a person who committed the most heinous of crimes against women and children would be shamed of anything.

[Aerows]

77. I don't believe so

But then again, if you are sane, you don't do what he did. He wasn't right in the head in one way or the other. He was obviously a very angry and disturbed young man. We need to make sure people get help before they flip out and do this sort of thing, and keep the tools to do it - assault rifles and high capacity magazines - out of their hands.

[Initech]

117. Here's what I'm thinking with this:

OK so it's kind of known that his mom was planning to have him committed.

Mom was friends with the elementary school principal who was a key witness.

Mom finds something on his computer that he didn't want her to see. She was going to tell the principal and the judge what exactly was on his computer. And that was the final straw. That's what set him off.

He finds the stash of guns and ammo, kills her, completely destroys his hard drive, then proceeds with the shooting.

Am I missing anything so far?

[ck4829]

10. Other news sites makes it sound more crude, like he just took a hammer to the tower

[godai]

15. Everything is stored on the hard drive.

He seems to have opened it and destroyed the insides.

[bemildred]

26. A good single jack will do the job just fine.

Just make sure the disks are beaten well.

[Aerows]

59. That's definitely the quickest way

if you aren't paranoid as hell and want to actually open it up and confirm that the platters are toast.

[bemildred]

65. A good single jack will definitely open it up just fine too.

Disk drives are not particularly robust.

[Aerows]

69. That's what I'm saying

Whack the hell out of it with a heavy object, and it's gone. I just said sledgehammer because while I've never taken one to a disk drive, I've had a few computers that it was a fondest fantasy to obliterate them because they were so annoying to work on .

That doesn't mean I didn't fix them properly, however, I just got a brief idea in my head of smashing the offending piece of hardware then went about my day.

[ywcachieve]

68. I destroyed my old computers harddrive with a hammer, out on my patio,

after I had bought a new computer.

[Aerows]

71. Not really a bad idea

if you keep a lot of personal information around. I keep my drives, though. I probably have about 20 ranging from 40GBs to 500GBs. Ah the days when everything didn't fit on a flash drive the size of a fingernail.

[bemildred]

74. That's what I'm talking about, the direct approach, don't leave it to someone else.

It's just a little piece of metal and plastic, and sensitive to impacts too. I must confess I've never had anything I felt a desire to obliterate on my disk drives, so I've only done it to experiment. Mostly I just wipe them clean and recycle them.

[Catherine Vincent]

91. I need to do that to my old pc

I'll have time next week after Christmas so I'll do just that.

Thanks for the reminder.

[ywcachieve]

121. It is an energetic way to get rid of personal info.

[Xithras]

97. Yep, and it'll even remove the top without a screwdriver.

Place the hard drive on its side. Hit it with the hammer along the narrow edge. The compression will bow out the top, allowing you to peel it off with your bare hands and get to the platter.

Screwdrivers are only needed if you plan on putting it back together.

[JaneyVee]

5. I read somewhere that he was part of a LAN club, where members got together with their computers

and did something, what it was I don't remember, maybe play games or build a website, I forgot. So it does seem either strange or symbolic in some way. Was he kicked out & took his anger out on his computer? I hope we get some answers for a motive so we can study the causes.

[leftyohiolib]

6. child porn?

[Walk away]

7. way to speculate!nt

[ck4829]

13. Thanks. I'd rather have endless speculation than jumping to conclusions.

[madinmaryland]

108. At least you are not casting asparagus!

[LiberalEsto]

118. Did someone say asparagus?

With hollandaise sauce?

[Rex]

8. Did he take a hammer to the harddrive?

.

[godai]

11. I think that he actually opened it.

Not very easy to do, but possible with the right tool. Maybe he shot at it?

[Rex]

17. Very hard to do, I did so myself once and it took

a long time just to crack the cover (without destroying the insides). Must have been trying to hide information on his HDD.

[Aerows]

21. Not that hard

with a Torx or Star, depending on who manufactured it. The main thing is that if you are trying to NOT destroy it, you have to be exceedingly cautious about dust/hair/particles and be very careful with the platters.

You also should know the configuration of the heads, etc. if you plan on getting data off of a drive that has electrically failed or has a bad head.

[Rex]

30. No, this was just a test to see how hard it was to get into

a WD harddrive. I was curious and it took a long time, (I had no torx or star) without any platter damage. Just some pliers is all I had. The HDD was trash, so became the obvious candidate.

[Aerows]

52. Back your shit up

That's far easier . We all learn that the hard way at some point!

[Rex]

102. NP I have access to a harddrive shredder.

[godai]

50. So, that's likely what he did. Then demolished the disks inside. n/t

[Aerows]

54. Demolishing the platters once you get it open

is pretty much the easiest thing to do to make sure no one ever gets information off of the drive. You can low level format, fdisk, reformat, encrypt, but all of those take time. Smashing the platter guarantees the data is gone and no one can access it.

Or, just whack it several times with a sledgehammer and don't bother opening it.

[ck4829]

12. This article makes it sound like just that

http://abcnews.go.com/US/adult-survivors-connecticut-school-shooting-key-witnesses/story?id=17998071#.UNIIEXfeVNg

[Rex]

16. Hiding information.

[godai]

18. Screw driver is also mentioned in the article. n/t

[arthritisR_US]

60. Yes, I had read that. I would think they had found

the hammer and fingerprinted it to determine that it was Adam who had destroyed the computer.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

20. I've always been told to only way to really be sure no one has access to your private data from a HD

Is to smash the platters into a million tiny pieces. Deleting is useless reformatting as well.

People say he was private. He obviously planned the murders. If he didn't want people looking into his private life after he had killed himself, it makes sense he'd destroy his hard drive.

[EOTE]

44. Reformatting is NOT useless, especially if it's a low level format.

Think of it this way. A hard drive's capacity to store information is finite. If you put enough new, random information on a hard drive, there will no longer be any room for any of the previous data stored there. That's basically what a low level format does. A standard format, which just rewrites the FAT (file allocation table) is pretty much useless for deleting data. But whenever I hear that hard drives must be destroyed to get rid of the data, I wonder which laws of physics the hard drives are violating.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

61. True, but that takes a lot of time.

It's faster to just destroy the platters if you're not trying to reuse the harddrive.

I do get your point though. A full rewriting of the drive removes all previous data.

[EOTE]

79. With most hard drives it can be done in under an hour.

Also, once that's done, the hard drive can still be used. Seems easier and more practical than using a microwave or hammer.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

85. I've never heard of the microwave method.

That's...creative, to say the least.

The last time I did full format was to remove all traces of Windows ME. It took me more than two hours. Maybe it was just a really slow drive, or maybe ME refused to die. Dunno.

[redgreenandblue]

81. With a tool such as CCleaner you can actually wipe your hard drive pretty clean.

Delete plus overwrite the memory regions three times with random noise. The probability of someone reversing this is non-zero
mathematically, but small enough that the DOD considers this "safely destroyed" information.

If you are really paranoid you can overwrite more times, but it takes longer.

[Xithras]

98. I use DBAN. It's a little slow, but it's free, easy, and solidly reliable.

AKA, Dereks Boot And Nuke. I use it whenever I'm selling off an old computer, or wiping a desktop or server before they're disposed of at work. DBAN is so effective that the NSA itself can't recover data from a wiped drive. DBAN Twister makes the DoD spec look quaint.

Then again, it can also only do about 10GB per hour, so modern drives can take a few days to wipe. It's not a tool for the impatient.

[riverwalker]

23. where did he learn "jungle taping"?

he wouldn't have learned that at a shooting range. From online? Is it a gaming thing, can you do that to your guns when playing those games? How did a mentally ill recluse learn a guerilla warfare technique?

The gunman, who is responsible for the death of 20 students and six adults, reportedly taped two cartridge magazines to his .223 caliber rifle so he could reload as quickly as possible and continue his killing spree, the Telegraph reported.
Wayne Carver, the Connecticut medical examiner, said the technique is known as "jungle taping" and explains how Lanza managed to kill 26 victims at a school in a matter of minutes.

http://www.ibtimes.com/adam-lanza-planned-shooting-rigged-bushmaster-maximum-killing-destroying-hard-drive-950842

[DireStrike]

28. Yes, this is present in games.

Also, the internet can provide information, even to recluses.

[Rex]

33. Internet, movies, video games, TVEE.

Don't have to be a vet to know that imo.

[ck4829]

34. He may have been to talking to someone

And no, I've played plenty of shooting video games, you don't go in depth when it comes to reloading your weapon, you press the circle button on your controller or the R button on your keyboard, he might have picked it up from someone with experience.

But I'm also considering if he was able to acquire a legitimate contact who could tell him about this and have a relationship intimate enough where this person didn't inform the police of his activities. He may have really lucked out, but we won't know unless we recover something.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

37. It's also talked about on gun forums.

If he had been planning this for awhile, I'm betting he did his research.

[Fumesucker]

40. He'd been to the gun range quite a bit, that's the sort of thing that gets discussed there

You even see it in the movies from time to time.

I knew the technique, didn't know the modern term.

[allrevvedup]

56. With a gun that was locked in his trunk too.

Don't forget they found his mother's Bushmaster in her car at the scene. And the IBT article says he shot his way into the school. All this mayhem and still no plausible motive.

Am I still the only who thinks this 20-year old could not have possibly pulled this off by himself, and had no reason to anyway? At the very least it looks like he had help.

[frylock]

78. it doesn't really seem that complicated..

in what respect do you believe that he received help?

[allrevvedup]

99. Firing a gun that was locked in a trunk seems complicated.

But I guess I just expect things to make sense.

[riverwalker]

104. the Bushmaster was with him in the school

CNN) -- Adam Lanza brought three weapons inside Sandy Hook Elementary school on December 14 and left a fourth in his car, police said. Those weapons were a Bushmaster AR-15 rifle and two handguns -- a Glock 10 mm and a Sig Sauer 9 mm.

In the car he left a shotgun, about which police have offered no details. Lanza used one of the handguns to take his own life, although police haven't said whether the gun was the Glock or the Sig Sauer.

[allrevvedup]

107. "A .223 Bushmaster rifle was found in his car."

The gunman, identified as Adam Lanza, was reportedly wearing black, a mask and a bullet-proof vest while carrying Glock and Sig Sauer 9mm handgun. A .223 Bushmaster rifle was found in his car.

http://www.businessinsider.com/sandy-hook-shooting-gundman-2012-12

Of course, this was last week, when his mother was still "a kindergarten teacher at the school."

[DireStrike]

25. Maybe he didn't want his beliefs/lifestyle associated with a massacre.

The media would definitely go over it with a fine toothed comb. "He played THIS game! He posted on this forum, and had THESE political views!"

This would also back up the idea that mass shooters are very conscious of media coverage.

[loyalsister]

27. The easy answer

They say he was a loner. To me that implies he was somewhat intentionally isolated. A person who rejects interpersonal interactions probably doesn't want people to know much about them. Someone who is willing to plan and carry out a murder is as much suicidal as homicidal. Getting rid of stuff is a form of getting one's affairs in order.

[ck4829]

39. You are right. It could have been as simple as that

Not even purposeful mystery to it, just getting rid of yourself.

[gollygee]

80. This seems to be most likely the case

much much more likely than some of the silly stuff in this thread.

[spanone]

31. he hates windows.

[TexasProgresive]

45. In that case-wouldn't he have LINUX or MAC?

[bemildred]

32. Habit is my guess, "no footprints" gets to be a habit.

And he was clearly a guy that kept some things close to his vest. If he wanted us to know about him, he would have left a message.

[Tom Ripley]

36. Because he didn't have a girlfriend to kill?

And I don't mean that completely flippantly

[dipsydoodle]

38. Conspiracy theories abound.

At present nobody has any notion of WHEN he did that.

[global1]

42. I Like The Theory That His Mother Smashed His Computer.....

Perhaps she was fed up with his continual usage of it and went to drastic measures to stop him - and she smashed the computer. This could have enraged him enough to then kill her. On the other hand it looks like his excursion to the school was premeditated and preplanned. So maybe that's not what happened.

[ck4829]

46. I don't know what you've heard of Nancy Lanza's state before this all happened

I've read in some places here that she was a loving and committed mother, other places say she was a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Both on this site BTW. But that might be very well a behavior you could see from the latter.

[LeftinOH]

64. And *maybe* the computers were not recently smashed.. it could

have happened several days earlier. Maybe there was some serious drama going on there over a period of time leading up to Friday Dec 14th. Like everything else.. just more speculation.

[librechik]

43. Perhaps just another way to kill "himself"

who can ever know? It's not like anything he did will ever makes sense. He was clearly not thinking rationally.

[Dash87]

47. This could also be from delusions.

For example, thinking the CIA is after him, and trying to destroy some perceived secret evidence he collected that they might be after. Who knows what he was making on there?

He might also have had incriminating evidence against others (for example, being part of a hacker network).

[ck4829]

48. As with everything else here, possible.

[melissaf]

51. Definitely a possibility

My money's on paranoia as well.

[Aerows]

55. Highly likely

He was crazy, clearly, so delusions aren't anywhere out of the realm of possibility. His final middle finger to the world "You won't get my stuff" sort of thing.

[HooptieWagon]

49. Several possibilities.

Someone upthread posited the mother did it. That is certainly possible, but probably unlikely. The mother would have simply taken away his computer if she no longer wanted him to use it.

More likely, is he had information on there he didn't want discovered. This could have been a personal journal, which mave have revealed his plans or deteriorating mental state. It could have been websites he visited for information used in planning his attack. Or it could have revealed online or gaming acquaintences/friends he wanted to protect from potential blame or scrutiny.

[ellisonz]

53. Covering up his participation in right-wing political organizations. n/t

[libodem]

57. yep

[ellisonz]

58. He's clearly highly intelligent...

...and all circumstantial evidence to date suggests the mother was in with the gun crowd.

[libodem]

94. I'm sure Faux has a dog in this race, too

Wager, the Chanel never changed off Faux or am stations like Glenn Beck, & Michael Savage. Bet they are hacking the father and brother as we speak. They need to slant this away from themselves. I'll bet all rightwing hate sites and gun porn.

[Little Star]

72. Can his ISP retrieve his internet postings? Just been wondering about that.

[ellisonz]

73. Probably not

They might be able to tell you what sites he visited though - I'm sure the FBI is looking at every option here.

[Little Star]

75. Thanks

[Zoeisright]

62. Planning and forethought.

[WI_DEM]

67. It's one thing to murder 26 people in cold blood but another to have the world

know your addicted to porn? Who knows why? and frankly who cares?

[demokatgurrl]

83. to your fourth point

You can meet ALL kinds on the internets

[Chorophyll]

86. I don't care. I honestly do not care. There is no "motive" for what he did

and looking for one won't bring those 27 lives back. He was a sick person with access to assault weapons. And it's done.

[JimDandy]

87. Possibly to erase all traces of his mother trying to commit him to a mental facility.

If he considered it a betrayal, he wouldn't have wanted that knowledge to be found and make impotent his public legacy as a mass murder.

[LisaL]

88. There is no evidence his mother was trying ot commit him to a mental facility.

Fox news published an article based on hearsay.

[JimDandy]

92. My info was from a HuffPost article that now has an update:

Adam Lanza's Motive: Did Fear Of Being Committed Lead To Sandy Hook Elementary Shooting? (UPDATE)

"Nancy Lanza, the mother of the Sandy Hook shooter, was in the process of having her son committed to a psychiatric facility when he went on the mass shooting spree, a lifelong family acquaintance told Fox News.

A senior law enforcement official also confirmed that 20-year-old Lanza's anger over his mother's plan is being investigated as a possible motive for the Newtown shooting.

"From what I've been told, Adam was aware of her petitioning the court for conservatorship and (her) plans to have him committed," said Joshua Flashman, 25, who grew up not far from where the shooting took place. "Adam was apparently very upset about this. He thought she just wanted to send him away. From what I understand, he was really, really angry. I think this could have been it, what set him off."

...UPDATE: The New York Daily News reports that an unidentified friend claims Adam was withdrawing from his mother -- and the world -- in the days leading up to the killings. The person, who claims to be close to Nancy Lanza, said that the mother took Adam to a psychiatrist, but wasn't planning on committing him to a facility. Neither report has been confirmed by named police sources.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/19/adam-lanza-motive_n_2329508.html

[no_hypocrisy]

89. It's akin to burning a diary I suppose.

You destroy evidence of your state of mind.

[kwolf68]

90. I wonder

if the mother's own delusions were often discussed with her child. She was obviously living a paranoid life herself.

So here she has a kid with some severe mental issues, teaches him to shoot guns, assembles a small arsenal at her home and then maybe prattles on about how the nation is going to collapse and whatever other doomsday stuff these people manifest.

It's sad as the mother paid with her life and many account her as a good mother, but I am not sure she doesn't have a larger role in this than we may initially suspect.

[cthulu2016]

93. Windows 7

[FarCenter]

95. He probably did it to hide his contacts with other people and groups online.

He was smart enough to have wiped the drives using software first and then smashed them.

So it is doubtful whether magnetic force microscopy would recover useful data. Besides, it is not straightforward to go from a map of magnetic domains to actual data on modern high density drives.

Oh for the old days of looping mag tape through the ferrofluid and reading the bits with an optical microscope.

[Auntie Bush]

96. If his Mother did it she would probably have just smashed the computer. But the person

who destroyed it didn't seem to want anyone to know what was on the hard drive...sounds more like the shooter. Don't even want to say his name.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

100. I have seen it before,

No further details necessary, but every data containing device in the home destroyed in spectacular fashion.

[MzShellG]

101. There is info out there that his father & the father of.....

The Colorado movie theater massacre are both involved in that international LIBOR scandal & both fathers were set to testify in a hearing before congress. Not to mention the guy who went public with LIBOR. His kids were mysteriously "killed by their nanny". Coincidence? It all seems odd to me.

[morningfog]

103. How do you connect those dots?

[Brother Buzz]

106. Yes, the info out there....

and the genesis of all that crap comes from right wing wackadoodle conspiracy sites. Bottom line: There is no there there.

[MzShellG]

109. We don't know that for a fact.....

There's a lot we don't know. The bottom line is that one father is a top scientist at FICO & the other father is a top executive at GE Financial. They both are involved in the scandal LIBOR in some way. Those are the facts. And I definitely did not get that info from a right wing source. Do your fact checking if necessary.

[Brother Buzz]

110. There are known knowns.

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know. - Rumsfeld

There is no there there. There, I said it. YMMV

[coalition_unwilling]

116. In the words of the great DUer Alcibiades_Mystery:

There once was a Sec of Defense
Whose prose was Excessively Dense
His Philosopher's Stone
Was an Unknown Unknown -
I'll Be Damned If It Made Any Sense

From the dusty DU2 archives:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2642693

Scroll down on the page for more great Rumsfeld limericks. I'm particularly partial to the ones by Orrex and alcibiades_mystery.

[MzShellG]

119. Ok, Brother Buzz......

I did some further research & fact checking myself and found that the whole LIBOR scandal connection is said to have been a hoax. This article was posted on another DU thread about the LIBOR connection: tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/12/newtown-libor-hunger-games-theories.php?ref=fpb

[Dawson Leery]

105. To destroy information he wanted no one to know.

[jsr]

111. Windows 8

[Initech]

115. Really?

[cynatnite]

112. In his mind, the less people knew about him, the better...

That's what I think. He was isolated from people as much as possible. I don't think he wanted anyone to know anything about him and took it to an extreme.

[Fearless]

113. Plans or journals I'd say

Personal thoughts he didn't want others to see. In lieu of that gay or underage porn perhaps. Fuck forbid.

[Initech]

114. I'm really wondering what the link between his computer and his mom is.

I'm wondering if his mom found what he had really been hiding on his hard drive, he killed the mom, destroyed his computer then proceeded with the shooting. I'm sure it was something that shouldn't be seen by anyone.