Media Glosses Over New Kent State Smoking Gun

For the past four decades the truth has been sought as to exactly how and why four students were gunned down by National Guardsmen at Kent State University in 1970 during an anti-war protest that has been written into the history books.

Evidence newly released this week goes a long way to providing that truth yet as per usual the mainstream media has either received shut up orders or decided it is not worth analysing because it points directly toward a government conspiracy and subsequent cover up.

After 37 years of official denial and whitewashing, an audio tape, that has been in the possession of the FBI, has finally been made public via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The tape proves definitively that there was a direct military order leading to the unprovoked assassination of unarmed students.

The tape was released last Tuesday by Alan Canfora who was one of nine students wounded in the 1970 shootings. He played two versions of the tape, the original and then an amplified version in which a Guard officer issues the command, "Right here! Get Set! Point! Fire!"

The tape was given to Yale in 1979 for its Kent State archives by an attorney who represented students in a lawsuit filed against the state over the shooting. It was originally recorded by a student named Terry Strubbe who put a microphone at the window of his dorm, which overlooked the rally.

Canfora said he found out about it six months ago while researching the shooting.

Aside from this AP report and other straight news items like it, there has been very little analysis of this evidence in the mainstream, leading many activists, still angered by the event, to allege an intentional media blackout is in force.

The media's apparent decision to gloss over such a huge smoking gun once again shows that the shareholders consider it more important to keep the government sweet rather than report the truth.

For those unfamiliar with the Kent State shootings, here is a brief contextual re-cap courtesy of Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman:

It is difficult to overstate the political and cultural impact of the killing of the four Kent State students and wounding of nine more on May 4, 1970. The nation's campuses were on fire over Richard Nixon's illegal invasion of Cambodia. Scores of universities were ripped apart by mass demonstrations and student strikes. The ROTC building at Kent burned down. The vast majority of American college campuses were closed in the aftermath, either by student strikes or official edicts.

Nixon was elected president in 1968 claiming to have a "secret plan" to end the war in Southeast Asia. But the revelation that he was in fact escalating it with the illegal bombing of what had been a peaceful non-combatant nation was more than Americans could bear.

As the ferocity of the opposition spread deep into the grassroots, Nixon's Vice President, Spiro Agnew, shot back in a series of speeches. He referred to student demonstrators as Nazi "brownshirts" and suggested that college administrators and law enforcement should "act accordingly."

On May 3, 1970---the day before National Guardsmen under his purview opened fire at Kent State--Ohio Governor James Rhodes echoed Agnew's remarks by referring to student demonstrators as "the strongest, well-trained militant revolutionary group that has ever assembled in America They're worse than the brownshirts and the Communist element and the night riders and the vigilantes. They are the worst type of people that we harbor in America."

Rhodes told a reporter that the Ohio National Guard would remain at Kent State "until we get rid of them" referring to a demographic group that was overwhelmingly white, middle class and in college.

The next day, Rhodes, the administration and the FBI sent those students a lethal message.

After an initial investigation, the case was reopened in 1973 when a grand jury indicted eight Guardsmen. They were acquitted of federal civil rights charges the next year.

For 37 years the official line has been that a mysterious shot rang out and the young Guardsmen panicked, firing directly into the "mob" of students. This despite the fact that not one of the numerous investigations and court proceedings has ever contended any of the students were armed, or that the Guard was under threat of physical harm at the time of the shooting. One student was killed as far as 900 feet away from the rally.

The day has been immortalized in the history books and even in musical history via Neil Young's impassioned song Ohio. The lyrics "Four dead in Ohio" became an anthem to a generation. The single was released with the Bill of Rights on the cover yet in some parts of the country the song was banned from playlists because of it's "anti-war" and "anti-Nixon" sentiments.

Now Canfora and others are hoping that new investigations will be conducted and that the truth will finally be brought to bear in order that history be re-written and we never again see soldiers gunning down innocent and peaceful Americans on US soil just because they disagree with their government's war agenda.

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Inconsistencies and evidence of a conspiracy

Inconsistencies and flaws in the official explanation of the shootings and mysterious circumstances surrounding the deployment of the Guard have long pointed towards a government conspiracy.

Some writers and activists have suggested that authorities colluded to allow the campus ROTC building to be burned on the night of May 2 in a "Reichstag fire" strategy to justify calling in the National Guard, pointing to the fact that numerous student attempts to set the building ablaze failed and how local authorities didn't seem to put much effort into stopping the students. The fire then suddenly erupted later in the day and was attributed to a mysterious "biker" who appeared with a canister of gasoline.

Furthermore, Kent State Police Detective Tom Kelley gave an interview to the Akron Beacon Journal, published on August 8, 1973, in which Kelley admitted speaking with an NBC camera crew on the afternoon of May 2 as they were preparing to leave campus. "Don't pack your cameras,” Kelley told them, “we are going to have a fire tonight."

Alan Canfora has also pointed out that many students suspected that the government had undercover agents on campus attempting to infiltrate and monitor Kent State's Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) activities. Canfora has made specific mention of part-time Kent State student Terry Norman, stating that Norman would attempt to come to SDS meetings and, “some people in the group would invariably stand up and say, ‘we’re not gonna start this meeting until that (MFer) gets out of here.’”

In his book on the event, William Gordon notes that Norman came to be known as an undercover informant for both campus police and the Akron office of the FBI. Gordon notes speculation by some that Norman may have acted as an agent provocateur on the day of May 4 and possibly on the night of May 2.

Some believe that it was Ohio Governor James Rhodes that gave the order to shoot prior to the protest and that his close connections to Hoover and Nixon indicates he was acting under orders from the very top. The fact that the Guard were, contrary to law, supplied with live ammunition also suggests that the action was premeditated and that the order came from the Governor's office.

Rhodes initially denied that he made contact with the White House during the week preceding May 4. But in 1975 trial testimony, Rhodes admitting that he did have two private conversations with the White House in the week preceding May 4, 1970.

Public records have also revealed that Rhodes was a virtual stooge for the FBI because of the agency's files tying Rhodes directly to organized crime.

Weeks after the shooting the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification concluded that “As the Guardsmen reached the crest of Blanket Hill…the Guard was ordered to turn and face…Commands…such as, ‘if they charge, shoot them’ had previously been given…A number of Guardsmen stated they heard an order to fire and began firing.”

In a May 18, 1970 story in Time magazine Kent State journalism professor Charles Brill said that contrary to repots of Troop G, the guardsmen, being young, panicked and inexperienced, "the Guard looked like a firing squad". An Army veteran who saw action in Korea, Brill was "certain that the Guardsmen had not fired randomly out of individual panic," said the Time article. "They were organized," he said. "It was not scattered. They all waited and they all pointed their rifles at the same time. It looked like a firing squad."

This was corroborated by two other sources, a former member of Troop G, who was kicked out of the Guard in 1969 who described them as "experienced killers." and also by U.S. Senator Stephen Young in the Akron-Beacon Journal on July 27, 1966 where he referred to the Guardsmen involved as being, "trigger happy." It was also confirmed by both that Troop G had controversial involvement in quelling the Cleveland riots where many were killed.

Evidence of a subsequent cover up was also found by Charles A. Thomas, who worked for twelve years at the National Archives and was selected to study films of the Kent State shootings.

In "Kent State/May 4", edited by Scott L. Bills (KSU Press), Thomas reported that, "it looked very much as if someone had doctored the evidence to minimize any impression of the Guard's brutality and to plant the spurious notion that the soldiers had been confronted with a raging student mob."

The US Justice Department summary of FBI investigation in 1970 concluded:

"...we [the FBI] have some reason to believe that the claim by the National Guard that their lives were endangered by the students was fabricated subsequent to the event...[a Guardsman] admitted that his life was not in danger and that he fired indiscriminately into the crowd. He further stated that the Guardsmen had gotten together after the shooting and decided to fabricate the story that they were in danger of serious bodily harm or death from the students..."

Many many more inconsistencies have been uncovered along with evidence of a direct cover up. More research can be found at www.may4.org.