Shortly after authorities identified their suspect in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting Wednesday, the world began searching for traces of James W. von Brunn online. Those who Googled immediately were able to find him: a personal Web site claiming Jewish "conspiracies," diatribes posted on message boards. But those who started their hunt just a few hours later would have found only empty holes -- information that was scrubbed away as Web sites figured out how to address the fact that they had once hosted the words of an accused murderer.
Searching the Internet became an elusive chase, both for information about von Brunn, and for an answer to whether it's possible to shred online history.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, which resulted in the death of one security guard, several items were unearthed online that appeared to be written by von Brunn: a piece titled "Obama Is Missing," which questioned the president's citizenship, on conservative forum FreeRepublic.com. A Wikipedia user bio page (von Brunn had edited only sporadically), in which he wrote that Judaism is "the Enemy of Mankind." A long-stagnant personal site, HolyWesternEmpire.org, which included links to a novel.
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Throughout Wednesday afternoon, these links began to disappear. Clicking on the personal site resulted in an error message. The Wikipedia user page vanished. The Free Republic link was also removed -- at least for a while. Current events Web site Daily Kos remarked on the removal, and a few hours later, the post reappeared.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/11/AR2009061104031.html
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