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TechnoratiThe 1970 killings by National Guardsmen of four students during a peaceful anti-war demonstration at Kent State University have now been shown to be cold-blooded, premeditated official murder. But the definitive proof of this monumental historic reality is not, apparently, worthy of significant analysis or comment in today's mainstream media.
After 37 years of official denial and cover-up, tape-recorded evidence, that has existed for decades and has been in the possession of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), has finally been made public.
It proves what "conspiracy theorists" have argued since 1970---that there was a direct military order leading to the unprovoked assassination of unarmed students. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) documents show collusion between Ohio Governor James A. Rhodes and the FBI that aimed to terrorize anti-war demonstrators and their protests that were raging throughout the nation.
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--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.
Rhodes was the perfect messenger. Bumbling and mediocre, with a long history of underworld involvement, Rhodes was a devoted admirer of Nixon, and of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Public records reveal that Rhodes was a virtual stooge for the FBI because of the agency's files tying Rhodes directly to organized crime.
When Kent's ROTC building was torched on May 2 under suspicious circumstances (student protestors couldn't get it to light until a mysterious "biker" showed up with a canister of gasoline) it provided the perfect cover for Rhodes to dispatch the National Guard.
But contrary to law, they were supplied with live ammunition. On May 4, in the presence of a peaceful, unthreatening rally, the Guard was strung along a ridge 100 yards from the bulk of the protestors. Earlier, rocks and insults had been hurled at the Guard. But not one of the numerous investigations and court proceedings involving what happened next 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.
For 37 years the official cover story has been that a mysterious shot rang out and the young Guardsmen panicked, firing directly into the "mob" of students.
This week, that cover story was definitively proven to be a lie.
Prior to the shooting, a student named Terry Strubbe put a microphone at the window of his dorm, which overlooked the rally. According to the Associated Press, the 20-second tape is filled with "screaming anti-war protectors followed by the sound of gunfire."
But in an amplified version of the tape, a Guard officer is also heard shouting "Right here! Get Set! Point! Fire!"
The sound of gunshots follow the word "Point." Four students soon lay dead. Two days later, two more would die at Jackson State University, as police fired without provocation into a dorm.
Strubbe gave a copy of the Kent tape to the FBI soon after the shooting (he has kept the original in a safe deposit box). Eight Guardsmen were later tried for civil rights violations, and acquitted. Neither their officers, nor Nixon, nor Agnew, nor Rhodes, nor the FBI, were ever brought to trial. But massive volumes of research---including an epic study by James A. Michener and William Gordon's Four Dead in Ohio---strongly imply an explicit conspiracy to intimidate the national anti-war movement.
After 37 years, Strubbe's tape got its first widespread public perusal last week. Six months ago, Alan Canfora, 58, one of the nine wounded Kent students, learned it had been given to Yale University's archives. Last week he played it to a group of students and reporters at a small university theater.
The fact that the Guard got direct orders to set, aim and shoot flies directly in the face of the official cover story that they were responding in panic to a random shot fired at them, or that they were defending themselves from some kind of student attack.
In fact, it seems highly likely no shot ever rang out prior to the order to fire. Nor could the Guard, who killed a student as much as 900 feet away from the rally, say they were under any serious attack from the students.
The Kent State killings are now prominently featured in virtually every history book of the United States used in American schools. The accounts often include the famous photo of an anguished Mary Ann Vecchio crying for help next to the dead body of student protestor Jeffrey Miller. (They were 265 feet away from where the shot that killed Miller was fired.) Rendered into song by Neil Young's classic "Ohio," there are few more definitive moments in the history of this nation.
But meaningful analysis of the implications of this tape has been mysteriously missing from the American media. The Associated Press did carry a widely-runstory about the surfacing of this evidence, as did National Public Radio. But the Columbus Dispatch, in Ohio's capital, buried the report on page A-5 under the innocuous headline "Victim shares audio tape of Kent State shootings." Virtually absent from the major US media has been a concerted examination of the fact that the keystone in this monumental American saga has been re-set.
For we now know that a premeditated, unprovoked order was indeed given to National Guardsmen to fire live ammunition at peaceful, unarmed American students, killing four of them. The illegal order to arm the Guard with live ammunition in the first place could only have come from the governor of Ohio. The very loud, very public nod to shoot some "brown shirt" students somewhere in order to chill the massive student uprising against the Southeast Asian war was spewed all over the national media by the second-highest official in US government.
Now the magnitude of Kent State's impact on American politics and culture, already immense, has been significantly deepened.
Alan Canfora intends to use this tape to re-open investigations into what happened at Kent State 37 years ago.
But the media's apparent unconcern about confirmation of the official order to carry out these killings may bear a simple message: that we should be prepared for them to happen again.
Bob Fitrakis's forthcoming book, The Fitrakis Files: Cops, Coverups and Corruption, containing further background information on James A. Rhodes, is at www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared. Harvey Wasserman's History of The United States is at www.solartopia.org.
33 Comments so far
Show AllOn the night of May 4th, 1970, I climbed onto my DePeyster Street house roof and painted "IT WAS MURDER" in white house paint 10 feet tall, while a National Guard helicopter hovered above. I flipped them off. I have never wavered from that sentiment. I was there. It was Murder.
According to Myth, the god Chronos ate/devoured his own children. In modern astrology, Chronos is equivalent to the planet Saturn, and the dark-father-god who operates by punishing rebellious children. This IS the prototype of Richard Nixon who was born under Saturn's ruling sign, Capricorn; and in my view (there are PLENTY of enlightened Capricorns like Ben Franklin, Lewis Lapham-former editor of Harper's, Phil Donahue, ML King, Gandhi) Nixon embodied a modern enactment of the myth. These authoritarians (so aptly described by John Dean that I plan to use his analysis as partial research for a book I am working on that involves Saturn and why cycles of repression recur) cannot stand the thought that youth might rebel. They cling to values where father knows best (George Lakoff describes this as the strict father family model that often leads to conservative voting patterns) and children must OBEY; and women, too. It's top down hierarchy, the antithesis of democracy and truly a danger to our nation and its Constitutional mandates. Not only did I despite Nixon, but as a professional astrologer, I took it as MORE than an omen that he resigned on my birthday! Hail the sunshine!
Thank you all for your comments. It has been a deeply moving experience to write this article and to see it go around.
A few years ago I spoke at Kent State with Sen. Paul Wellstone. We walked to the site of the killings and talked about how when they happened, we thought about how it could have been us. Now we talked about how it might have been one of our kids, which was far far worse. I feel most of all for the parents who struggled to send their kids to college, only to have them murdered or wounded.
And I think also about the circumstances of Paul's death. He was a wondeful man and I find the circumstances of his death every bit as disturbing as those surrounding the Kent State assassinations.
Keep the faith everybody. Let's hope the truth will make us free.
Cassandra - I took that as John's point - a unit like he talks about would not have a commander who would issue such an order.
I was a member of AFROTC at my university when Kent State occurred. It was one of the many things which woke me up, started me thinking on my own, and started me doubting what my government was telling me. I never joined the Air Force after that.
I've spoken with WW II vets who still believe we should exterminate all Japanese because of Pearl Harbor - once molded by war, it can be difficult to be returned to humanity...
Really, John!
"The several guard units sent to Kent had absolutly NO military police training which included crowd control tactics and training."
And just how would trained troops have responded to the orders "Ready, point, fire"?
The "democracy" we're selling in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for that matter here at home, is pure bunk and illusion. It's supposed to summon up a Vermont "town-meeting" flavor of democracy, which, who knows, may still exist somewhere in Vermont...the kind of primary school cartoon mush that Henry Fonda excelled in as "Young Mr. Lincoln" 65 years ago in Hollywood melodrama. For sure, it exists no where else in this mutated country, least of all in the Congress of the United States.
The brand of "democracy" practiced in the House and Senate may have begun as an echo of the Vermont variety (I doubt it), but it morphed long ago into the impotent front end of the military/industrial/congressional complex (Eisenhower wanted to include that last label in his famous farewell speech, but his PR guys pressured him to remove it in the interest of Congressional "harmony"). For decades, unless you're a cash-contributing member of some interest group, or a corporate lobbyist with a charge card at the ready, you have as much chance of seeing or speaking to a congress person, let alone influencing one, as you do of being selected by lottery for NASA's astronaut program.
After democracy tanked, the Constitution hung around, and I actually believed in my heart and soul that it was at best inviolable, or at least still functioning as a bulwark against American facism taking hold. I was of course wrong. Apparently, in this McCarthy-esque bad dream were living through, nothing is inviolable, least of all the Constitution and it's little quirks like Habeus Corpus, free speech, due process, and so forth.
In this toxic atmosphere of contagious, TV-driven Attention Deficit Disorder, rampant fanaticism and nationalism masquerading as armchair patriotism, a National Security Council consisting of elite-educated pinheads and policy geeks with little life experience or maturity, superficial understanding of American History and frequent allegiance to all things Christian fundamentalist, at the expense of rational analysis or discourse, the truth about Kent State has as much resonance as the truth about WMD, the truth about Judith Miller, the truth about Dick Cheney, the truth about Al Gonzales, the truth about Paul Wolfowitz, and the untold truth about Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell. Truth is in the eye of the beholder, and the impact of truth on the body politic seems to have gone the way of that pigmy zebra in South Africa. That is, almost extinct.
We're all in deep quano, without boots.
No one seems to make the correlation between the killings in Ohio and the present day incident in California during the May Day protests. Both were meant to send a signal that any thoughts not agreeing with the mainstream will not only be discouraged but suppressed.
And we expect Iraq to be a flowering democracy? What a shining example we set.
The homeless Vietnam Veterans who populate the streets in our country will soon be dying off, but not to worry. The men and now women who served and are serving in Iraq will replace them, for the same reasons. Human beings are not hard wired to be inhuman, they must be trained for it and live it. Unfortunately, re-humanising them afterwards is not an option.
Veteran, 1966-68
The comment about training National Guardsmen in urban warfare to "keep the peace" is something that has worried me as well. But even more worrisome is the fact that a lot of these soldiers and mercenaries coming back are now ok with killing people just for the heck of it. A case in point was a story about the Ohio National Guard unit that lost so many people in Iraq. In interviews one of them said that hunting just wasn't any fun anymore because it didn't have the same thrill as shooting people. How do you deprogram someone like that so that they now are reluctant to kill people?
i was a student at Kent State and also a member of the 324th military police national guard. i was serving on active duty at the time of the shootings.
The several guard units sent to Kent had absolutly NO military police training which included crowd control tactics and training.
These untrained units should never have been sent to Kent State.
It is my educated opinion, six years of military service in a military police unit, that if any one of the military police units based in Ohio would had been assigned to maintain order of some unarmed college kids,not one single shot would have been fired by any military policeman.
This whitewash is another stain on our government.
Of course we can always trust our government,just ask any American Indian.
The guardsmen who fired shots, and their superiors, should have been Court Marshaled to the fullest extent of military law for their actions at Kent State.
"The Kent State killings are now prominently featured in virtually every history book of the United States used in American schools..."
Well, the teachers must not be making the students read those pages, because few young adults have heard of it today...
The City of Saint Paul and Ramsey County law enforcement are in the midst of multi-million dollar planning to detain and hold 3,000......
that's right, 3,000, people during the Republican National Convention. Not unlike the "Hippies" who "deserved it" at Kent State, I'm sure the plan assumes that detainees will only be terrorist sympathizing, traitorous Democrats anyway. The right to assembly in this country has been COMPLETELY abrogated. Can you all say "Sieg Heil!"?
I can't help but notice the complete lack of right wing respondents to this article and these comments. I do so miss their straw men, non sequiturs, ad hominem attacks, and post hoc ergo propter hoc arguments. I wonder where they are? Composing their apologies to the "conspiracy theorists" they have denigrated as "moonbats" and descibed as "wearing tinfoil hats?" Yeah, right. Like that'll ever happen. Bolstering their denial with liberal doses (oops, sorry) copious amounts of PBR, Coors Light, and Faux News? That's closer., but not it.
Oh, I knw where they are. Given their almost spotless ignorance of history, unsullied by so much as a hint of a clue of a notion of reality, they are probably googling "Kent state" to find out what the hell we're talking about, finding the truth makes their heads hurt, and opting either for the aforementioned denial augmentation regimen or lying down and listening to Rush Limbaugh's drivel on the radio until the hurt goes away.
And for those of you still not worried, consider that the Christian Right currently controls the Air Force Academy. Oh, boy. Jets For Jesus.
Things have changed since Kent State. We have legalised Torture, Disappearance of suspects, Lost our right to a speedy trial, the rights to face one's accusors, and of course no search without probable cause is also past tense. Some things have not changed, we still invade forign countries, committ war crimes and allow the rich to get richer whist those whose families could not get them into college die or worse. I wonder when the citizens of this country will be ready for that remedy that Thomas Jefferson suggested for tyrants. Seems to me we are way over due of the 'every 20 years or so' he thought was required. Give me a call when you are ready, I still have the skills this govenment taught me when I was drafted last time.
Veteren, 1966-68
The shootings at Kent State, the massacre at Tiananmen Square ... these and other acts of oppression were intended to silence the voice of dissent. Listen for that voice today. What do you hear?
Please add any information or commentary you might have to share on Jackson State. I'm not a historian, but I've always felt like this was a missing piece. Thanks.
Thank You for this excellent article. You guys just keep on truckin'. We need you at this point in time. Thanks again for your excellent work.
and so it goes....
re: curmudgeon99 and kathyodat
In addition to Nat'l Guard or even regular military there are also
mercs like the Blackwater guys who were shooting at civilians after Katrina. They could be hired by the thousands and would obey whoever paid them. They wouldn't even have to be Americans.
In Germany, after the Reichstag fire the SA and SS (who swore allegiance to Hitler) were put under Prussian police jurisdiction (under Goering), thus legitimizing them.
For those of us who remember the shootings, this new evidence is only vindication, not revelation. Anyone who was paying attention—and the draft had a lot of us paying attention—knew the shootings were deliberate because we were the ones to whom the message was being sent. The bullets hit the Kent State students, but they were aimed at all of us who opposed the war.
Does anyone know how life has gone for the men who obeyed the order to fire?
To Ron: There were more than your four co-workers who wanted to "kill them goddam hippies". A national poll taken right after the event showed that a large majority of Americans believed the four murdered students were "troublemakers" and "had it coming".
America was then, still is, and probably will be for the foreseeable future, close to becoming an ELECTED fascist state.
¨We have met the enemy,and he is us¨ Pogo
"It proves what "conspiracy theorists" have argued since 1970—that there was a direct military order leading to the unprovoked assassination of unarmed students."
Yeah, right, conspiracy theorists! When the hell is Madame Palfrey going to open that black book of hers and expose all the "alleged" God-fearing, morality-driven frauds? I can't wait!
It's astonishing that people can get slapped in the face with reality and still refuse to accept credible evidence when it doesn't harmonize with their delusional mentality.
When I hear praise for The Greatest Generation, I always remember the day after the Kent State murders. I was 22, just out of college myself, and was not happy about the killings. I wrongly assumed my co-workers would feel the same way. They were 40 to 50-somethings, all WWII vets, and they were saying "Why did they only kill four of them goddamn hippies? They shoulda killed them all." In talking with them, I realized that each of them would've made a fine Nazi.
Hey curmudgeon,now it's crossing your mind? I had a bad feeling before the invasion that our soldiers would learn street fighting in Iraq and bring it home. But I've had that concern for decades. And now our military is developing the equipment to go with the training, and Bush has gained authorization to use our military for defined domestic purposes, includung as he sees fit. Considering his thought processes, that's scary.
The thought crossed my mind that Natl Guardsmen returned from Iraq will be even more ready to fire at anyone that has been defined as'different' (or unpatriotic)- that is what they experienced and it's always easier once you've done it - martial law ,anyone?
It has been apparent that, with the meeting of opposing political force, a groundswell of disgust and frustration in the general public and the mainstreaming of eliminationist memes from the extreme right, the US will experience a sort of political "bow echo" effect in the near future.
(A "bow echo" is a bow-shaped weather formation that can spawn a series of extreme tornados)
Is anyone really surprised that the government would try to cover up such an obvious act of mass murder? If the objective was to "intimidate" the peace movement by using violence, then it follows that what happened at Kent State was, in fact, state sponsored terrorism.
So maybe Bush should send out some agents to track down the ringleader- Mr. Richard Nixon.
And, keeping with how well Bush and company have done at the helm, it should take them maybe six months to figure out that Nixon is dead.
Let's hope we can convict and imprison this group of criminals before they simply die off and avoid having to pay the price for their offenses. And in that case we better get Cheney first.
The US Government doesn't shoot students anymore...now they just disappear them to secret CIA prisons, deny them habeus corpus, and slowly torture them to death...
I observed that Kent State was never included in the lists of campus shootings following the events at Virginia Tech.
The lies just keep unraveling.
There is still dioxin (agent orange) in the soil in Viet Nam and it is still creating birth defects. So the US was the nation that used WMD on civilian populations and it still has not corrected that by way of reparations for the destruction caused.
How do the people who know these things continue to have faith in America? No wonder there is a promotion of blind nationalism in America. Who could be proud of a nation that has used WMD.
Is this the way all nations are? or do some nations actually have values.
How many times in my life have I watched hope slaughtered? Gandhi, the Kennedy's, King, Kent State, Lennon, to name a few of the prominent.
I feel like this has been going on since man could formulate thought and write it down yet it just doesn't ever seem to get to the people that need to understand it the most and they always seem to be the people in charge.
But there is a difference between then and now. Unlike all the doomsayers who said the time is near, today's doomsayers happen to be right.
We used to at least give lip service to the rule of law, even though the torture and kidnappings were happening in the background. Now, with all the war crimes going on in a wholesale fashion it is no longer possible for America to hide her dirty laundry. Maybe that's the good news...once and if we get shut of President Shit-for-Brains and his crew of facists we will at least know what needs cleaning up.