Forty years ago on May 1st, 1970--National Guardsmen fired 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis.
Some of the students who were shot had been protesting against the American invasion of Cambodia, which President Richard Nixon announced in a television address on April 30. Other students who were shot had been walking nearby or observing the protest from a distance.
A tribunal has been formed to get some answers.
Finally.
http://truthtribunal.org/about
I went to school with alot of kids who went there. Alison Krause had been in elementary school with alot of them before she moved.
Sandy Scheuer's cousin was in my class.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OmZvyNrzAs
What a waste of life.
I'm glad this tribunal has been formed. Hopefully they'll get to the bottom of this senseless, shameful incident once and for all.
I think that it did get us out of Vietnam more quickly, It provided a focus.
This is really great to hear!! I had friends who went to Kent State for college, it is still a very remembered event in Ohio history!!! I truly hope the full truth comes out and people are healed by this very sad event!
I'm in contact with alot of friends that were actually there. The stories they tell are horrific.
The only thing I can say about the National Guard is that they were a bunch of scared kids too.
The blame lies with the leaders.
Starting with the nation's commander. >:(
Quote from: Welsh Wench on April 29, 2010, 04:00:47 PM
...The only thing I can say about the National Guard is that they were a bunch of scared kids too...
Now that is indeed a great sentiment. A lot of "victims" that day, some dead, some still living.
I can't imagine living with the guilt and shame of following orders to shoot innocent kids. WW is right, the responsibility lies with the ones in charge that gave the order to fire.
I don't think anyone gave orders. Ammunition should not have been issued in the first place. Untrained troops plus panic equals disaster.
Back in my early days as a young troop, I was on the demonstration team at Ft Gordon's MP School. We trained civilian law enforcement personnel. We carried rifles at high port and used formations to divide demonstrators. Issuing ammunition in such situations was not an option. I suspect the National Guard personnel at Kent State had received no such training.
I agree that the training the Guardsmen received was not up to the task, but I disagree about the ammunition issue. A weapon without ammunition is not even a good club. An M-1 is better than an M-16 but still...
A friend of mine was involved in the evacuation of US civilians after the Shah of Iran was thrown out. He helped protect the aircraft transports while they were loaded. Imagine a circle of airmen with their M-16s looking fierce and not a clip of ammunition among them. Thank God the Revolutionaries didn't take advantage of the situation.
Wilkipedia has a good description of the events at Kent State. Truely a tragedy for both sides.
Carl, there WAS an order to fire.
Terry Strubbe, a KSU communications student, pressed the record button on the reel-to-reel machine in his dorm room on May 4, 1970, capturing a chilling 30-minute audio account of the protest, including cries from students, 13 seconds of shooting and the chaos that followed.
After preserving the recording for the past 40 years, Strubbe and a friend, psychologist and occasional music producer Joe Bendo, plan to have it analyzed by a Los Angeles film archivist who will digitize the audio and reduce background noise in an effort to hear whether an order to fire is audible.
And here is a youtube recording of it--
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mid-j9Ki49s&feature=PlayList&p=842EE6EDF4ABB1DC&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=19
I'd also like to thank everyone for keeping this discussion civil and intelligent.
They were not trained in measured responses to civil actions at that time. Things have changed since then; that shows that the powers that be learned from this tragic mistake. After Kent State, the National Guard began to be taught crowd/riot control tactics in the late 70s, and continue to be taught these tactics today. The Marines are also taught less than lethal tactics in their MCMAP curriculum, which started around 2002.
I certainly hope the tribunal will be able to judge the actions of 40 years ago against the standards of 40 years ago, and not use the accepted ethos of today when condeming the actions of that incident.
By no means am I saying it was right; I'm saying it was a different time, and a different national mindset.
I suppose that it's a very good thing that our military has been taught crowd control techniques.
Especially considering -
H.R. 5122 [109th]: John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h109-5122
This law grants the president authority to invade any state in the union that he decides to, turning the United States military on it's own citizens.
SEC. 1076. USE OF THE ARMED FORCES IN MAJOR PUBLIC EMERGENCIES.
(a) Use of the Armed Forces Authorized-
??
(1) IN GENERAL- Section 333 of title 10, United States Code, is amended to read as follows:
`Sec. 333. Major public emergencies; interference with State and Federal law
`(a) Use of Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies- (1) The President may employ the armed forces, including the National Guard in Federal service, to--
`(A) restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when, as a result of a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition in any State or possession of the United States, the President determines that--
`(i) domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities for of the State or possession are incapable of maintaining public order; and
??
`(ii) such violence results in a condition described in paragraph (2); or
??
`(B) suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy if such insurrection, violation, combination, or conspiracy results in a condition described in paragraph (2).
So I guess that means that we had all just better mind our P's and Q's.
Yeah Mister, pick that P up and Move that Q
LMAO
Sober comment will be kept private. ;D
Don't know how the phrase this delicately so-
If the order to fire came from someone authorized to give it, then that person should be liable. If it came from one of the untrained troops, then that's panic.
We were giving riot control demonstration training at Ft Gordon starting around 1964. Doctrine was being developed at that time. As I said, the training was being given to civilian police. I'm not aware that National Guard personnel were receiving that training while I was there (left for Vietnam in 1965).
The issuance of ammunition within the US for control of demonstrations was not doctrine. Protection while evacuating civilians in Iran was a military action, not demonstration control. Riot control for such things as the Watts riot also was a different matter. We were using M-14's and I'd hate to encounter a butt stroke from one of these. In one instance while I was at Ft Gordon, we had a platoon of Airborne MP trainees who decided to tear up their barracks. The MP Support Platoon (the unit I was in) got called out to control the problem. We were issued 45's without ammunition. In one instance, one of them took off. All I had to do was rack my 45 and he put on his brakes. The threat of force and the ability to divide a large mass of demonstrators into smaller groups reduces the herd mentality. When individual responsibility can be assigned, folks generally become much more mild.
Head shots with batons was also not doctrine. A sharp hit on some one's butt can cause cramping sufficient to stop them without doing permanent damage. However, this really isn't the forum for me to be discussing specific techniques.
Unfortunately, what happened at Kent State should not have happened. I don't think it would have happened if the troops there had had adequate training. It's rather grim, but I think it did save lives by reducing the length of our presence in Vietnam.
Quote from: Carl Heinz on April 30, 2010, 11:34:23 AM
Don't know how the phrase this delicately so-
The threat of force and the ability to divide a large mass of demonstrators into smaller groups reduces the herd mentality.
Interesting point...
Reduces in one,
induces in another... it depends on your perspective- which, ultimately, is what this thread is all about.
I can't believe it has been forty years.
"Four dead in Ohio..."
To me, it brought to mind what happened at the National Democratic Convention in 1968.
From Wikipedia under National Democratic Convention 1968--
In 1967, the Yippie movement had already begun planning a youth festival in Chicago to coincide with the Democratic National Convention. They were not alone; other groups, such as Students For a Democratic Society and the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, also made their presence known. When asked about anti-war demonstrators, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley kept repeating to reporters that "No thousands will come to our city and take over our streets, or city, our convention."
In the end, 10,000 demonstrators gathered in Chicago for the convention where they were met by 23,000 police and National Guardsmen. Daley also thought that one way to prevent demonstrators from coming to Chicago was to refuse to grant permits which would allow for people to protest legally.
Keep in mind this was a volatile time. Emotions were running high on the Vietnam War. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy Jr had both been assasinated in April and June respectively.
From what happened in Chicago, I would have thought a lesson would have been learned and been more circumspect when calling in the National Guard. It was only two years later.
In the words of Pete Seeger....'When will they ever learn?'
When it becomes "Of the government, by the government and for the government..." that's when we're all in trouble.
Quote from: Carl Heinz on April 30, 2010, 11:34:23 AM
We were issued 45's without ammunition. In one instance, one of them took off. All I had to do was rack my 45 and he put on his brakes. The threat of force and the ability to divide a large mass of demonstrators into smaller groups reduces the herd mentality.
So, in a nutshell you were bluffing and he did not call your bluff. Well played! In Iran, my friend with the unloaded M-16 didn't have a clip and with that sort of weapon, it is rather obvious so bluffing is impossible. Unloaded clips would be another matter.
I always thought the threat of force will cause an opponent to either back down or react with escalating force if available. I would not want to be put in a position where my bluff was called.
Back to the subject, according to Wikipedia, "In May 2007, Alan Canfora, one of the injured protestors, demanded that the case be reopened, having found an audiotape in a Yale University government archive allegedly recording an order to fire ("Right here! Get Set! Point! Fire!") just before the 13 second volley of shots.[29]" It is unknow who may have issued the it but I have never heard the command "point" issued. And I have watched every John Wayne war movie ever made. So if the command is true, it is very indicitive of the panic among the Guardsmen.
Last year I posted the memories of those from my graduating class.
Here is the link--
http://www.renaissancefestival.com/forums/index.php?topic=7002.0
These kids were actually THERE.
Quote from: Demetrius on April 30, 2010, 11:49:30 AM
Quote from: Carl Heinz on April 30, 2010, 11:34:23 AM
Don't know how the phrase this delicately so-
The threat of force and the ability to divide a large mass of demonstrators into smaller groups reduces the herd mentality.
Interesting point...
Reduces in one, induces in another... it depends on your perspective- which, ultimately, is what this thread is all about.
The rationale was to divide a large group into smaller groups instead of forcing everyone into one large group. Smaller groups tend to disperse. Large groups tend to become more violent.
On the topic of ammunition--if the rules of engagement don't authoize the use of lethal force, then ammunition should not be issued to the line troups. This doesn't mean that snipers can't be used
in situations where specific individuals have actually endangered the line troops.
Unfortunately, all of this assumes training.
As much as I'd like to see the whole truth come out; the reality is most of the people who were in positions of responsibility are dead. How much new can they really find out?
The Krause family initiated Four Days in May, the Kent State Truth Tribunal in order to reveal the truth and establish a clear and accurate historical record from the collective voices of Kent State.
'We hope the Kent State Truth Tribunal will help to heal those involved, establish cause and effect, and shed light on responsibility for the events that transpired on May 4, 1970. We have not set out in pursuit of punitive justice, but rather the restorative justice that comes from collective sharing and healing. The Truth Tribunal honors those whose lives have been directly affected by the killings and also marks the importance of Kent State as an influential chapter in the history of protest, democracy, civil rights and public security in the United States.'
And I agree--those to blame are dead.
As long as the actions of the protesters are also investigated and this is not just a witch hunt against the national guard.
I remember those days and the number of rocks, bottles, and worst that were thrown at the police and innocent bystanders by the protesters.
Amen, Sir Richard.
Two of those killed were just walking to class.
Not much excuse to kill them.
What is to 'witch hunt'?
The government officials that were involved are dead now. Can't really dig them up.
As the tribunal said, they want a clear and accurate historical record.
And healing.
I am afraid the history is already written. It is like trying to go back and rewrite the Warren Report. Good Luck to those that try.
There's a significant difference between rewriting history and getting the facts straight. Their goal, as has been stated before, is to get a clear, accurate historical record.
Gee I guess in all the confusion someone forgot to count. Thing is that no matter where you stand on the issue it was a sad day in American History. But one thing not to forget is that many of the guardsmen were as young if not younger than many of the protesters. This is like a lot of other things there will always be more questions than answers.
If you read reply #4, you would see that it was acknowledged that the National Guardsmen were scared kids too.
No one is disputing that fact.
And it wasn't fair to put a rifle in the hands of scared kids.
Thanks again to the powers that be.
I think we have reached an understanding then. But isnt it really about 40 years late in coming. Like someone said most everyone responsible is already dead. Let us just hope that the Gov't learned something that day. And excuse me for missing the #4 post. Sorry.
I agree.
Forty years too late.
Anyone know what came of this?
I get worried when someone says they just want to clear the record that normally means they want to change things to match their idea of what the record should be.
Here is an article from the Cleveland Plain Dealer dated May 10, 2010--
May 10th, 2010 1:41 AM
New analysis of 40-year-old recording of Kent State shootings reveals that Ohio Guard was given an order to prepare to fire
By John Mangels / Cleveland Plain Dealer
The Ohio National Guardsmen who fired on students and antiwar protesters at Kent State University on May 4, 1970 were given an order to prepare to shoot, according to a new analysis of a 40-year-old audio tape of the event. "Guard!" says a male voice on the recording, which two forensic audio experts enhanced and evaluated at the request of The Plain Dealer. Several seconds pass. Then, "All right, prepare to fire!"
"Get down!" someone shouts urgently, presumably in the crowd. Finally, "Guard! . . . " followed two seconds later by a long, booming volley of gunshots. The entire spoken sequence lasts 17 seconds.
The previously undetected command could begin to explain the central mystery of the Kent State tragedy - why 28 Guardsmen pivoted in unison atop Blanket Hill, raised their rifles and pistols and fired 67 times, killing four students and wounding nine others in an act that galvanized sentiment against the Vietnam War. The order indicates that the gunshots were not spontaneous, or in response to sniper fire, as some have suggested over the years.
"I think this is a major development," said Alan Canfora, one of the wounded, who located a copy of the tape in a library archive in 2007 and has urged that it be professionally reviewed. "There's been a grave injustice for 40 years because we lacked sufficient evidence to prove what we've known all along - that the Ohio National Guard was commanded to kill at Kent State on May 4, 1970."
"How do you spell bombshell?" said Barry Levine, whose girlfriend Allison Krause was mortally wounded as he tried to pull her behind cover. "That is obviously very significant. The photographic evidence and eyewitness accounts of what took place seemed to suggest everything happened in those last seconds in a coordinated way. This would be the icing on the cake, so to speak."
The review was done by Stuart Allen and Tom Owen, two nationally respected forensic audio experts with decades of experience working with government and law enforcement agencies and private clients to decipher recorded information.
Allen is president and chief engineer of the Legal Services Group in Plainfield, N.J. Owen is president and CEO of Owl Investigations in Colonia, N.J. They donated their services because of the potential historical significance of the project.
Although they occasionally testify on opposing sides in court cases hinging on audio evidence, Owen and Allen concur on the command's wording. Both men said they are confident their interpretation is correct, and would testify to its accuracy under oath, if asked.
The original 30-minute reel-to-reel tape was made by Terry Strubbe, a Kent State communications student in 1970 who turned on his recorder and put its microphone in his dorm window overlooking the campus Commons, hoping to document the protest unfolding below.
It is the only known recording to capture the events leading up to the shootings - including a tinny bullhorn announcement that students must leave "for your own safety," the pop of tear gas canisters and the wracking coughs of people in their path, the raucous protest chants, the drone of helicopters overhead, and the near-constant chiming of the campus victory bell to rally the demonstrators.
Strubbe has kept the original tape in a bank vault, and recently has been working with a colleague to have it analyzed, and to produce a documentary about what the examination reveals.
The Justice Department paid a Massachusetts acoustics firm, Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., to scrutinize the recording in 1974 in support of the government's ultimately unsuccessful attempt to prosecute eight Guardsmen for the shootings. That review, led by the company's chief scientist, James Barger, focused on the gunshot pattern and made no mention of a command readying the soldiers to fire.
Barger still works for the company, now known as BBN Technologies. When told Friday of the new findings, he said via a spokeswoman that in his 1974 review he "did not hear anything like that."
Someone made a copy of the Strubbe tape in the mid-1970s for use in the civil lawsuits that the shooting victims and their families filed against the Guardsmen and Ohio Gov. James Rhodes, who had sent the reserves to restore order at Kent State.
One of the plaintiffs' lawyers donated the cassette copy of the Strubbe tape to Yale University's Kent State archives. Canfora, one of the wounded students, found it while doing research for a book. The Plain Dealer commissioned an analysis of a digitized version of the Yale tape.
Using sophisticated software initially developed for the KGB, the Soviet Union's national security agency, Allen weeded out extraneous noises - wind blowing across the microphone, and a low rumble from the tape recorder's motor and drive belt -- that obscured voices on the recording.
He isolated individual words, first identifying them by their distinctive, spidery "waveform" traces on a computer screen, then boosting certain characteristics of the sound or slowing the playback to make out what was said. Owen independently corroborated Allen's work.
For hours on Thursday, first in Allen's dim, equipment-packed lab in Plainfield and later in Owen's more spacious, equally high-tech shop in nearby Colonia, the two men pored over the crucial recording segment just before the gunfire. They looped each word, playing it over and over, tweaking various controls and listening intently until they agreed on its meaning.
"That's clear as a bell," Owen said at one point as he and Allen replayed the phrase "Prepare to fire" on two large wall-mounted loudspeakers. The two audio engineers didn't add anything to the recording or fundamentally alter its contents. Instead, they boosted what was present to make it easier to hear. "It's like putting on eyeglasses," Owen said.
In addition to the prepare-to-fire command, the segment just before the gunfire contains several curiosities.
• There is a sound fragment milliseconds before the gunfire starts. Allen believes it could be the beginning of the word "Fire!" - just the initial "f" before the sound is overrun by the fusillade. Owen said he can't tell what the sound is.
• The frequency of the voice giving the command changes as the seconds pass. "I'm hearing a Doppler effect," Allen said, referring to the familiar pitch change that occurs as a siren passes. "It's as if he was facing one way and turned another," Owen said. That's consistent with eyewitness accounts that the Guardsmen spun around from the direction they had been marching just before they fired.
• The 1974 Bolt Beranek and Newman analysis concluded that the first three gunshots came from M1s, the World War II-vintage rifles carried by most of the Ohio Guardsmen. The M1 is a high-velocity weapon with a high-pitched gunshot sound.
But Allen and Owen said the initial three gunshots sound lower-pitched than the rest of the volley. "It suggests a lot of things, but we're not certified ballistics examiners," Owen said. Pistols typically are lower-velocity, lower-pitched weapons. Several Guard officers carried .45 caliber pistols, but the Bolt Beranek and Newman analysis identified .45-caliber fire later in the gunshot sequence, not among the first three shots.
As author William Gordon reported in his exhaustive 1995 book on the Kent State shootings, "Four Dead in Ohio," several witnesses told the FBI they saw a Guardsman with a pistol fire first, or appear to give a hand signal to initiate the firing. Gordon believes the firing command probably was non-verbal. A few students and Guardsmen claimed at the time that they heard something that sounded like an order to fire, but most of the soldiers who acknowledged using their weapons later testified that they acted spontaneously.
"This is a real game-changer," Gordon said Saturday of the new analysis. "If the results can be verified, it means the Guardsmen perjured themselves extensively at the trials.".
Without a known voice sample for comparison, the new analysis cannot answer the question of who issued the prepare-to-fire command.
Nor can it reveal why the order was given. Guardsmen reported being pelted by rocks as they headed up Blanket Hill and some said they feared for their safety, but the closest person in the crowd was 60 feet away and there is nothing on the tape to indicate what prompted the soldiers to reverse course, and for the ready-to-shoot command to go out.
Most of the senior Ohio National Guard officers directly in charge of the troops who fired on May 4, 1970 have since died. Ronald Snyder, a former Guard captain who led a unit that was at the Kent State protest but was not involved in the shootings, said Friday that the prepare-to-fire phrasing on the tape does not seem consistent with how military orders are given.
"I do know commands," Snyder said. "You would never see anything in training that would say 'Guard, do this.' It would be like saying, 'Army, do this.' It doesn't make sense."
Whether the prepare-to-fire order could lead to new legal action or a re-opened investigation of the Kent State shootings is unclear. A federal judge dismissed the charges against the eight indicted Guardsmen in 1974, saying the government had failed to prove its case. The surviving victims and families of the dead settled their civil lawsuit for $675,000 in 1979, agreeing to drop all future claims against the Guardsmen.
The federal acquittal means the soldiers could not be prosecuted again at the federal level, although a county or state official potentially could seek criminal charges, said Sanford Rosen, one of plaintiffs' attorneys in the civil lawsuit.
The legal issues would be complex, he said. The presence of a command could give rank-and-file Guardsmen a defense, since they could argue they were following an order.
The command's significance may be more historical than legal, Rosen said. "At very least, it puts new [focus] on the training and discipline of the Ohio Guard, and provides a lesson of how things should be done correctly when you are faced with civil disorder, particularly when you bring in troops."
In Pittsburgh, Doris Krause has been waiting 40 years to find out who killed her daughter Allison, and why. Now 84 and widowed, she said Friday the presence of the prepare-to-fire order doesn't surprise her.
"It had to be," she said. "There's no other way they could have turned in unison without a command. There's no other way they could fire at the same time."
She is frustrated, though, that the recording can't identify the person who gave the order. "I wish there was better proof," Krause said. "We have to find a man with enough courage to admit what happened.
"I'm an old lady," she said, "and before I leave this earth, I'd like to find out who said what is on that tape."
I did find this comment very interesting--
"It had to be," she said. "There's no other way they could have turned in unison without a command. There's no other way they could fire at the same time."
As I said, they were scared kids too obeying a command. That is what soldiers do.
I've never hear of any officer saying anything like Guard before a command is issued. Would make more sense for someone in the crowd to be helling guard not anyone who really was serving in the military. I do know audio can be very tricky I know many people really do believe that certain groups have put hidden words on records and tapes to brainwish kids. I've heard them "play" the message back and they are totally convinced that the radom sounds they are hearing are real words given secret evil messages.
The "prepare to fire" order is clear as day, The guardsmen obviously followed an order to fire, which is why they turned in unison and discharged their M-1s. If they were obeying someone in the crowd yelling things, then they would have to be supremely stupid and undisciplined. That line of reasoning makes no sense at all. It's far more likely that their commander lost his cool and/or panicked and gave the tragic orders.
You can hear the digitized recording here.
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/new-analysis-kent-state-recording-say
Decide for yourself;
but I agree it sounds like someone with what I consider a yankee accent saying
"Guard (Gawds?) prepare to fire" The second partial phrase is said much louder.
sounds more like someone say god that guard which would make a lot more sense if something thought they were being shot at. Again the phasing people are claiming makes no sense at all.
No matter what, it all comes down to this--
13 seconds
67 bullets
4 dead kids
And four grieving families.
From today's Cleveland Plain Dealer---
In the four decades since Ohio National Guardsmen fired on students and antiwar demonstrators at Kent State University, Terry Norman has remained a central but shadowy figure in the tragedy.
The 21-year-old law enforcement major and self-described "gung-ho" informant was the only civilian known to be carrying a gun -- illegally, though with the tacit consent of campus police -- when the volatile protest unfolded on May 4, 1970. Witnesses saw him with his pistol out around the time the Guardsmen fired.
Though Norman denied shooting his weapon, and was never charged in connection with the four dead and nine wounded at Kent State, many people suspected he somehow triggered the soldiers' deadly 13-second volley.
http://www.cleveland.com/science/index.ssf/2010/12/kent_state_shootings_does_form.html
It's like an onion. The more they peel, the more layers they find.
It's a replay of the Boston Massacre in both spirit and action.
Its sad that I'm not even surprised that Terry Newman's 'handler' probably covered up his role in the shooting.