Kent State killings triggered by FBI agent provicateur

[Einzige]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... gs/?page=2

Now largely forgotten, the torching of the ROTC building was the true precursor to the killings at Kent State because it triggered the deployment of the National Guard to the fevered campus.

That deployment climaxed in bloodshed on the afternoon of May 4, 1970, with the guardsmen, clad in gas masks and confronted by angry, rock-throwing students, firing their M-1 rifles 67 times in 13 seconds, killing Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer and William Knox Schroeder.

A report submitted to Attorney General John Mitchell in June 1970 stated "there was no sniper" who could have fired at the guardsmen before the killings...

Rumors of a sniper had circulated for at least a day before the fatal confrontation, the documents show. And a memorandum sent to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover on May 19, 1970, referred to bullet holes found in a tree and a statue — evidence, the report stated, that "indicated that at least two shots had been fired at the National Guard."

Another interviewee told agents that a guardsman had spoken of "a confirmed report of a sniper."

It also turned out that the FBI had its own informant and agent-provocateur roaming the crowd, a part-time Kent State student named Terry Norman, who had a camera. Mr. Norman also was armed with a snub-nosed revolver that FBI ballistics tests, first declassified in 1977, concluded had indeed been discharged on that day.

Then there was the testimony of an ROTC cadet whose identity remains unknown, one of the pervasive redactions concealing the names of all the FBI agents who conducted the interviews and of all those whom they interrogated. Although presumably angry over the demonstrators' destruction of the campus ROTC building, the cadet's calm, precise firsthand account nonetheless carries a credibility not easily dismissed.

Before the fatal volley, the ROTC cadet told the FBI, he "heard one round, a pause, two rounds, and then the M-1s opened up."

The report continued that the cadet "stated that the first three rounds were definitely not M-1s. He said they could possibly have been a .45 caliber. … [He] further stated that he heard confirmed reports of sniper fire coming in over both the National Guard radio and the state police radio."

The cadet also told the FBI he observed demonstrators carrying baseball bats, golf clubs and improvised weapons, including pieces of steel wire cut into footlong sections, along with radios and other electronic devices "used to monitor the police and Guard wavelengths."

Separately, a female student told the FBI she "recalled hearing what she thought was [the sound of] firecrackers and then a few seconds later [she] heard noise that to her sounded like a machine gun going off, but then later thought it may have been a volley of shots from the Guard."

Absent the declassification of the FBI's entire investigative file, many questions remain unanswered — including why the documents quoted here were overlooked, or discounted, in the Justice Department's official findings.

At a minimum, the FBI documents strongly challenge the received narrative that the rioting in downtown Kent was spontaneous and unplanned, that the burning of the ROTC headquarters was similarly impulsive and that the guardsmen's fatal shootings were explicable only as unprovoked acts.

A conservative governmental apparatus intentionally causing the deaths of dissidents against that government? Colour me shocked. Let nobody defend the Nixon government as anything more than what it really was: a sort of organized quasi-fascism.

[MKSheppard]

I like how you posted only the second page.

First page of that very article:

Link

By James Rosen SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Previously undisclosed FBI documents suggest that the Kent State antiwar protests were more meticulously planned than originally thought and that one or more gunshots may have been fired at embattled Ohio National Guardsmen before their killings of four students and woundings of at least nine others on that searing day in May 1970.

As the nation marks the 40th anniversary of the Kent State antiwar protests Tuesday, a review of hundreds of previously unpublished investigative reports sheds a new — and very different — light on the tragic episode.

The upheaval that enveloped the northeastern Ohio campus actually began three days earlier, in downtown Kent. Stirred to action by President Nixon's expansion of U.S. military operations in Cambodia, a roving mob of earnest antiwar activists, hard-core radicals, curious students and others smashed 50 bank and store windows, looted a jewelry store and hurled bricks and bottles at police.

Four officers suffered injuries, and the mayor declared a civil emergency. Only tear gas dispersed the mob.

An exhaustive review later concluded that this unrest on the streets — the worst in Kent's history — was "not an organized riot or a planned protest."

But the FBI's investigation swiftly uncovered reliable evidence that suggested otherwise. Among the strongest was a pre-dawn conversation — never before reported — between two unnamed men overheard inside a campus lounge later that night. Their discussion was witnessed by the girlfriend of a Kent State student and conveyed up the FBI chain of command 15 days later.

"We did it," one man exulted, according to the inquiry. "We got the riot started."

The second man expressed disappointment at being excluded from the riot's planning. "Wait until tomorrow night," the leader replied excitedly. "We just got the word. We're going to burn the ROTC building."

This was 20 hours before the ROTC headquarters on the Kent State campus, an old wooden frame building, was, in fact, burned to the ground.

"What about the flare?" the second man asked before the leader spotted the coed listening to them and abruptly ended the conversation. Dozens of witnesses later told the FBI they saw a flare used to ignite the blaze.

And of course, the entire town around Kent State is divided even to this day:

Kent was in my recruiting zone (for ROTC) 89-93, and the town is split into two factions: those who know exactly what happened there and know full well that there were dozens of professional agitators there who were bound and determined to start a confrontation, and the college/everybody else who to this day are sure unto death that the Fascists wanted to start their war of oppression right then and there.

[Einzige]

I like how absolutely nothing that you posted takes the immediate responsibility away from the government operatives who instigated the shooting for it.

But that's okay, isn't it? You love the government when it's putting down left-winged protesters.

[MKSheppard]

I like how absolutely nothing that you posted takes the immediate responsibility away from the government operatives who instigated the shooting for it.

All we know is that a couple rounds were discharged; not when they were discharged.

But that's okay, isn't it? You love the government when it's putting down left-winged protesters.

I do love how you leave out the part about the protesters carrying golf clubs, baseball bats, bits of rebar, etc as improvised blunt/bludgeoning weapons. Because those can't hurt people, right?

[Einzige]

All we know is that a couple rounds were discharged; not when they were discharged.

Because if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a giraffe escaped from the zoo.

I do love how you leave out the part about the protesters carrying golf clubs, baseball bats, bits of rebar, etc as improvised blunt/bludgeoning weapons. Because those can't hurt people, right?

No more than the Tea Partiers carrying their AK...

... oh, wait, that's right. They're on your side.

[Elfdart]

I like how absolutely nothing that you posted takes the immediate responsibility away from the government operatives who instigated the shooting for it.

All we know is that a couple rounds were discharged; not when they were discharged.

But that's okay, isn't it? You love the government when it's putting down left-winged protesters.

I do love how you leave out the part about the protesters carrying golf clubs, baseball bats, bits of rebar, etc as improvised blunt/bludgeoning weapons. Because those can't hurt people, right?

Because the claim is utter bullshit. There are quite a few pictures of the students at Kent State before, during and after the massacre. Show me ONE where a student is brandishing a golf club or baseball bat.


No clubs or bats here!


No clubs or bats here!


None here!


This is a very clear picture with nary a club or bat in sight. Maybe the guy applying first aid has a weapon hidden under his beanie.


Nope.


Not here either.


None here or here.

Not that it matters. Golf clubs and baseball bats are only a few feet long, and the Ohio National Guard yellowbellies' closest victim was Joseph Lewis, who was 71 ft away. Next closest was John Cleary, who was over a hundred feet away. All the others, including those murdered, were well over 200 feet away. So even if some of the students were carrying them (someone has a baseball bat in May? ), the yellowbellies were still cowardly as hell for opening fire.

As far as Terry Norman is concerned, his role in the massacre is old news:

August 3, 1973 (Friday)

The Justice Department announces it will reopen the May 4, 1970 case. The announcement is made almost two years after the department rejected further federal inquiries into the case.

In his written statement, Attorney General Elliot Richardson does not mention new evidence but states that the decision to start a new inquiry rests on "the need to exhaust every potential for acquiring facts relating to this tragedy."

Assistant Attorney General J. Stanley Pottinger, head of the Civil Rights Division, will conduct the investigation.

Pottinger said he could "not speculate on any new evidence we may or may not have" but suggested that the decision have been prompted by other events, including civil suits filed by parents of victims, Congressional inquiries, student petitions, and pressure for reform of National Guard procedures.

Sen. Birch Bayh of Indiana reveals he had informed Richardson of a letter sent to Bayh by a National Guard company commander suggesting that a police informer, Terrence B. Norman, might have precipitated the National Guard fire by firing his own revolver at students.

According to Bayh, the commander said Norman was posing as a newsman and had run up to guardsmen after the shootings, handed over a revolver and said he had shot a student.

Bayh also said that FBI director Clarence M. Kelley told him on July 9 that Norman had once been an FBI informer in an unrelated matter but had not been questioned on the Kent case. A Justice Department spokesman said Aug. 3 that the FBI had interviewed Norman twice about the May 4 incident.

Damn dirty hippies -it's all their fault!