Kent State Conspiracy

Some readers have expressed doubt that conspiracies exist in America to neutralize progressive opposition to corporatocracy policy. The Kent State killings effectively ended political action against the war and destroyed the student movement. This occurred because students realized that their own government and the Military-Industrial Complex would kill to protect itself. The following article shows the involvement of an FBI informant who fired shots in triggering the order to shoot the students. The article also catalogs the government's duplicity in incinerating the MOVE organization in Philadelphia. Finally the article highlights the complicity of the Justice (sic) Department in protecting the perpetrators and hiding the truth about the events. If it could happen with regard to Kent State and MOVE, it is a small inference to believe it could have happened in the Kennedy Assassination, the Tonkin Gulf Incident, and 9-11. If the FBI had an agent provocateur in the middle of the Kent State murders and the destruction of the student protest movement, how difficult is it to imagine it used agents provocateurs to destroy the Green Party?

Star Man


Obama Justice Department Refuses to Investigate New Evidence
Who Ordered the Kent State Shootings?

Retrieved 5/19/11 from https://www.counterpunch.com/washington05192011.html


By LINN WASHINGTON, Jr.

Three days after President Barack Obama visited Ground Zero in New York City on May 5th with his message of "justice being done" with the slaying of terrorist Osama bin Laden, disturbing news broke about this administration's blocking of a quest for justice in the infamous May 1970 killing of four Kent State students.

Those four students fell in a barrage of gunfire on May 4, 1970 by Ohio National Guardsmen who opened fire during a peaceful protest against the Vietnam War on Kent State's campus. That lethal fusillade of 67 shots during a 13-second period also wounded nine others, some seriously.

That blocking action by Obama officials includes an apparent unwillingness to investigate new evidence providing damning insights about that shooting orgy forty years ago, which heightened criticism about U.S. foreign policy in Vietnam and about the abuse of domestic political dissidents.

The inaction on this case comes as opposition grows to Obama's escalation of the unpopular war in Afghanistan and its expansion into Pakistan.

Ongoing U.S drone attacks inside Pakistan, seen by Pakistan as a violation of its sovereignty, have provoked outrage throughout that country. The country's parliament recently passed a resolution calling for an end of drone attacks and a "review of the country's relationship with the U.S." The U.S., according to CNN's Pakistan bureau, unleashed at least four drone attacks since the raid that killed bin Laden. It was just one of two dozen such attacks inside Pakistan this year alone.

One of those students injured during the Kent State shooting, Alan Canfora, met with U.S. Justice Department officials last Fall requesting a new federal investigation based on an analysis of an audio tape conducted early last year which revealed what two forensic audio experts say is a military-style order to open fire on student protesters.

Evidence of an order to open fire contradicts Guard commanders who have consistently maintained that no such order was ever given to troops who were said to have spontaneously unleashed their gunfire in reaction to alleged sniper fire.

Analysis of the audio tape, which was recorded on May 4, 1970 also uncovered an altercation and four pistol shots prior to the Guard gunfire.

Those gunshots are believed to have been fired by a then Kent State student frequently referenced since that incident as an FBI informant, who was involved in the altercation. The alleged informant maintains he fired his pistol after being attacked by another student.

During that late 1960s and early 1970s, the FBI was involved in COINTELPRO, secret and blatantly illegal campaign to disrupt the anti-Vietnam War movement as well as the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, which involved not just the FBI, but also the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency and other government units, as well as Nixon's own secret and illegal "Plumbers unit" inside the White House.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper, which commissioned the audio analysis by the two forensic experts, reported on May 8th that eight months after that Fall 2010 meeting between Canfora, his legal advisors and federal officials, "a seeming dearth of paperwork documenting" any Justice Department review of the new audio evidence "has raised some doubts about the Justice Department's level of interest."

That Plain Dealer account cites a Freedom of Information Act request by an author of a book on the 1970 Kent State massacre which confirms that "Justice Department officials have produced no reports, memos, legal analyses or other documents concerning the new audio tape evidence."

The now-documented Justice Department inaction in this case has incensed many, including Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich who, according to the Plain Dealer, is pressing U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

Kucinich, in an April letter to Holder, stated that the Kent State audio findings, if verified, would contradict "the official record…and may shed light on whether any effort was made to prevent justice from being served."

Obama Administration inaction on the Kent State audio evidence is another reminder of the pattern of persistent refusals by federal, state and local officials to forthrightly ferret out the truth to serve justice in ugly incidents involving alleged misconduct by law enforcement and/or military personnel.

Eight days after President Obama's Ground Zero wreath-laying Philadelphia, witnessed the 26th Anniversary of the worst terroristic incident in that city's long history: a bombing and subsequent blazing inferno that killed 11 people, including five children, and destroyed 61 homes, leaving 250 people homeless.

That horrific May 13, 1985 incident occurred when Philadelphia Police, using a helicopter, dropped a powerful satchel bomb on the rooftop of a house occupied by members of a black radical organization known as MOVE. The bomb sparked a fire, which was the goal of the action, but Philadelphia's then Police Commissioner ordered fire fighters not to battle the blaze, which roared out of control becoming a destructive inferno.

The Police Commissioner justified his unconscionable order, saying he was using the fire as a 'tactical weapon' to force the barricaded radicals out of their fortified row home. However, evidence indicates that police fired upon MOVE members trying to flee the blaze, driving them back inside their home, where temperatures reached 2,000-degrees.

The lone surviving MOVE adult and one MOVE child who successfully fled the fire, reported hearing gunshots, a contention indignantly rejected by police and prosecutors, including federal prosecutors, who refused requests to pursue civil rights law violation charges for the deaths of the five children trapped in the burning house.

The deaths of those five MOVE children in the inferno were characterized as unjustified homicides by a blue-ribbon, but non-bindin,g citizens' investigative panel appointed by Philadelphia's then mayor Wilson Goode.

But that homicide finding was rejected by Philadelphia's then Republican District Attorney who deliberately distorted legalities to justify not pursuing any charges against any governmental employee involved in that 1985 clash, even against policemen (including the police commissioner) caught lying to a grand jury.

Philly prosecutors, for example, claimed reckless endangerment and risking a catastrophe charges were not applicable against the Police Commissioner because he possessed no 'criminal intent' when making the decision to fire-bomb the house. Bombing and burning, they claimed, are not in themselves reckless actions even if they did cause a fatal catastrophe.

Mimicking the non-prosecution posture of Philadelphia prosecutors, federal prosecutors incredibly found no fault with the FBI agent who improperly supplied the Philadelphia Police Department with military grade C-4 high-explosive, months before Philly cops used that explosive in the May 1985 incident, clearly suggesting that the plan was to incinerate MOVE from the outset.

That 1985 bombing marked the second deadly aerial assault on an African American community in U.S. history. On May 31, 1921 during a race riot in Tulsa, Ok white bigots dropped dynamite from an airplane on the all-black Greenwood section of North Tulsa.

The bloody two-day Tulsa riot, sparked in part by efforts among blacks to prevent a lynching, completely decimated the Greenwood section, including the prosperous financial district then referred to as "The Negro Wall Street" of America.

Typical of the racism pervasive in Tulsa at that time, a grand jury convened to investigate the riot blamed the incident on blacks. That grand jury claimed "no mob spirit" by whites existed during the riot, listing one indirect cause of the holocaust as agitation among local blacks for social equality.

In the 1970 Kent State incident, federal prosecutors charged eight low-ranking Guardsmen, but a federal judge later dismissed the case in 1974. As noted in the recent Plain Dealer article, "There has never been a completely satisfactory explanation for why the Guard fired."

LINN WASHINGTON, JR. is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent, collectively-owned, journalist-run, reader-supported online alternative newspaper.

"The Kent State killings effectively ended political action against the war and destroyed the student movement."


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposi...he_Vietnam_War
1970

• Kent State/Cambodia Incursion Protest, Washington, D.C.: A week after the Kent State shootings, on May 4, 100,000 anti-war demonstrators converged on Washington, D.C. to protest the shooting of the students in Ohio and the Nixon administration's incursion into Cambodia. Even though the demonstration was quickly put together, protesters were still able to bring out thousands to march in the Capital. It was an almost spontaneous response to the events of the previous week. Police ringed the White House with buses to block the demonstrators from getting too close to the executive mansion. Early in the morning before the march, Nixon met with protesters briefly at the Lincoln Memorial but nothing was resolved and the protest went on as planned.
• National Student Strike: more than 450 university, college and high school campuses across the country were shut by student strikes and both violent and non-violent protests that involved more than 4 million students, in the only nationwide student strike in U.S. history.
• A Gallup poll in May shows that 56% of the public believed that sending troops to Vietnam was a mistake, 61% of those over 50 expressed that belief compared to 49% of those between the ages of 21–29.^[25]
• On June 13, President Nixon established the President's Commission on Campus Unrest. The commission was directed to study the dissent, disorder, and violence breaking out on college and university campuses.^[26]

• On August 24, 1970, near 3:40 a.m., a van filled with ammonium nitrate and fuel oil mixture was detonated on the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Sterling Hall bombing.

• Vortex I: A Biodegradable Festival of Life: To avert potential violence arising from planned anti-war protests, a government-sponsored rock festival was held near Portland, Oregon from August 28 to September 3, attracting 100,000 participants. The festival, arranged by the People's Army Jamboree (an ad hoc group) and Oregon governor Tom McCall, was set up when the FBI told the governor that President Nixon's planned appearance at an American Legion convention in Portland could lead to violence worse than that seen at 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

• The Chicano Moratorium: on August 29, some 25,000 Mexican-Americans participated in the largest anti-war demonstration in Los Angeles. Police attacked the crowd with billyclubs and tear gas; two people were killed. Immediately after the marchers were dispersed, sheriff's deputies raided a nearby bar, where they shot and killed Rubén Salazar, KMEX news director and Los Angeles Times columnist, with a tear-gas projectile.

[edit] 1971 and after

• On April 23, 1971, Vietnam veterans threw away over 700 medals on the West Steps of the Capitol building.^[27] The next day, antiwar organizers claimed that 500,000 marched, making this the largest demonstration since the November, 1969 march.^[28]

• Two weeks later, on May 5, 1971, 1,146 people were arrested on the Capitol grounds trying to shut down Congress. This brought the total arrested during the protest to over 12,000. Abbie Hoffman was arrested on charges of interstate travel to incite a riot and assaulting a police officer.^[29]

• In August, 1971, The Camden 28 conducted a raid on the Camden, New Jersey draft board offices. The 28 included five or more members of the clergy, as well as a number of local blue-collar workers.

• In August 1971, a bombing conducted by Karlton and Dwight Armstrong at the University of Wisconsin’s Army Mathematics Research Center destroyed the building and killed a student doing research.^[30]

• On March 29, 1972, 166 people, many of them seminarians, were arrested in Harrisburg, PA for encircling the Federal Courthouse with a chain, to protest the trial of the Harrisburg Seven.^[31]

• On April 19, 1972, in response to renewed escalation of bombing, students at many colleges and universities around the country broke into campus buildings and threatened strikes.^[32] The following weekend, protests were held in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and elsewhere.^[33]

• On May 13, 1972, protests again spread across the country in response to President Nixon's decision to mine harbors in North Vietnam^[34] and renewed bombing of North Vietnam (Operation Linebacker).

• On July 6, 1973, four Sisters of Norte Dame de Namur on a White House Tour stopped and began praying to protest the war. In the next six weeks, such kneel-ins became a popular form of protest and led to over 158 protestors arrests.^[35]

[edit] Public opinion

Public support for the war decreased as the war waged on throughout the sixties and beginning part of the 1970s.
William L. Lunch and Peter W. Sperlich collected public opinion data measuring support for the war from 1965-1971. Support for the war was measured by a negative response to the question: "In view of developments since we entered the fighting in Vietnam, do you think the U.S. made a mistake sending troops to fight in Vietnam?"^[36] They found the following results.

Month	Percentage who agreed with war
August 1965	52%
March 1966	59%
May 1966	49%
September 1966	48%
November 1966	51%
February 1967	52%
May 1967	50%
July 1967	48%
October 1967	44%
December 1967	48%
February 1968	42%
March 1968	41%
April 1968	40%
August 1968	35%
October 1968	37%
February 1969	39%
October 1969	32%
January 1970	33%
April 1970	34%
May 1970	36%
January 1971	31%
May 1971	28%

After May 1971 Gallup stopped asking this question.

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Star Man:

...the Kent State killings effectively ended political action against the war and destroyed the student movement....
That blocking action by Obama officials includes an apparent unwillingness ....

---

thanks, Miles. Good detail.
If you want to be simplistic about it, it was the end of the draft that "ended" the anti-war movement. Once your own ass isn't on the line it's harder to be socially disruptive!
and "apparent unwillingness". Pretty damning charge.

Much of the article itself is correct; no-one's playing Pollyanna here about the actions of the various levels of government in those days. That was when Governor Reagan was quoted as saying "if it's to be a bloodbath, let it be now. Appeasement is not the answer. " Those tendencies of those in power are still evident. But where's the conspiracy?