UN to Review Whether the FBI Killed the Kids at Kent State

PAT LaMARCHE, May 6, 2013

Editors Note: On October 10, 2013, the US Delegation to the United Nations Human Rights Committee requested a postponement due to the partial US Government shutdown. The US postponement request was for the United States 4th Periodic Review and the UN Human Rights Committee Secretariat agreed to the request, setting a new date for the US 4th Periodic Review in March 2014, with the exact dates to be determined. News response to the US postponement ~ http://bit.ly/H4M6qD

Gwen Ifell and Oliver Stone were at Kent State this weekend to commemorate the May 4, 1970 shootings at the university that claimed four lives and wounded nine people. The celebrities will share their thoughts on what happened 43 years ago as the university dedicates its new May 4 visitor center. Among the visitors who dropped by to hear them speak and scrutinize the new center was Laurel Krause, sister of Allison Krause, the 19-year-old freshman honor student, who was killed that day by members of the Ohio National Guard. The soldiers shot her where she stood — 343 feet from away from them on the campus lawn.

What was the climate like the day Allison and the others were shot?

Well, aside from the fact that it was the first beautiful day after weeks of rain, the political climate was anything but clearing. Just four days earlier President Richard Nixon announced the U.S. invasion of Cambodia. He struggled to justify his decision to further escalate the conflict in south east Asia even as he worked to conceal the fact that he had authorized the illegal bombing of Cambodia for more than a year.

Domestically the clouds were gathering as well. Two years and one month earlier, Martin Luther King, Jr., had been assassinated after turning his attention on the evils he perceived were associated with the Vietnam War. His voice had added to the growing number of young voices speaking out across the nation calling for an end to the war and an elimination of military conscription, better known as the draft

FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had compiled surveillance tapes and documents on everyone from the Kennedy family to MLK, Jr. and while his top secret files were destroyed upon his death, there is no reason to believe he did not run a series of intelligence programs based at monitoring and curtailing the efforts of young people on campuses all across the nation who he felt “seek to destroy our society.”

For these and other reasons, Laurel Krause and her organization, The Kent State Truth Tribunal (KSTT), filed a petition on February 9, 2013, with the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC), asking them to review their claim that Vietnam War protesters were intentionally targeted by Hoover’s FBI and the Department of Defense. On April 5, the UNHRC agreed to hear the case. http://bit.ly/12r6F68

Laurel and the other members of the KSTT have a lot to say on what they believe has been a 43 year coverup and spin job. From the time headlines broke that called the shooting victims “bums” and portrayed them as an unwashed violent rabble of questionable morality, until this year when the UN became the first governing body willing to dig a little deeper into the official story, Laurel has keenly remembered the details of the day her sister died.

Time will tell what will come of Laurel’s struggle to get justice for her sister and the other victims. And justice for Laurel means that the government will one day acknowledge the truth. Until that day comes and on this anniversary of Allison’s death, it’s illuminating to know exactly how the day unfolded for the rest of the Krause family.

At 12:24 p.m. 28 Ohio National Guard soldiers — after hearing what they later called sniper fire — opened fire on unarmed protesters at Kent State University. Most of the protesters were more than the length of a football field from the soldiers. The soldiers had live rounds in their guns and must have been cautioned that they may need to shoot to kill the college kids.

At about 3:00 p.m. 15-year-old Laurel Krause got off the school bus and started walking to her home. A neighbor ran up to Laurel and told her that the radio had announced that Allison had been hurt in a shooting at Kent State.

Laurel called her mom and dad who were at work.

Laurel’s mom came home and called the Robinson Memorial Hospital in Ravenna, Ohio, and was told over the phone that “she was DOA.” Doris Krause collapsed on the floor.

Laurel’s dad, Arthur Krause, worked as a middle manager for Westinghouse and his co-worker brought him home. Arthur had received a call from his brother saying that the local radio station had announced that Allison was dead. When he arrived home, Doris confirmed it, and the family friend drove them from their home in Pittsburgh, Penn., to the hospital in Ohio.

Laurel recounts that no one from the university or the U.S. government was there to assist them. When the door swung open to the room where Allison lay dead, Laurel could see her sister’s body. When her parents went into the room to identify Allison, Laurel waited in the hall where two armed men wearing no uniforms were standing. One of the men muttered behind her, “They should have shot more.”

These are the memories Laurel Krause has carried 43 years. These are the memories that motivate her to make regular calls to the Department of Justice and ask when her sister’s murder will be investigated and solved. And every time Laurel calls, she is referred to the civil rights department. Laurel says, “She was nothing more than garbage to them. They don’t want to investigate her murder. The DOJ has no department for the killing of students by the government.”

The day after his daughter’s death, Arthur filed a lawsuit he refused to drop regardless of how much money he was offered. Arthur died never receiving the justice he was after. Laurel has continued his fight. She says the battle can get unpleasant but that won’t stop her. She’s not surprised that she hasn’t gotten answers, and she’s not daunted by the obstacles in her way. Laurel says, “Any time the FBI kills a member of your family, they are gonna to be up your ass for the rest of your life.”

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To the United Nations: A Plea for Justice at Kent State

Editors Note: On October 10, 2013, the US Delegation to the United Nations Human Rights Committee requested a postponement due to the partial US Government shutdown. The US postponement request was for the United States 4th Periodic Review and the UN Human Rights Committee Secretariat agreed to the request, setting a new date for the US 4th Periodic Review in March 2014, with the exact dates to be determined. News response to the US postponement ~ http://bit.ly/H4M6qD

On February 9, 2013, the Kent State Truth Tribunal and Allison’s family submitted a list of issues to be considered by the United Nations, including Kent State questions to be asked at the United States’ Report on their Compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights before the 107th Session of the Human Rights Committee in Geneva, March 11-28, 2013.

READ the Kent State Truth Tribunal submission to the UN, HRC full document 130209_ICCPRKentStateFinalA

Kent State Truth Tribunal submission the United Nations, Human Rights Committee

Seeking an independent, impartial investigation into the May 4th Kent State Massacre (Article 2 (Right to remedy); Article 6 (Right to life); Article 19 (Right to fre

edom of expression); Article 21 (Right to peaceful assembly))

I. Reporting Organization

The Kent State Truth Tribunal (KSTT) was founded in 2010 upon the emergence of new forensic evidence regarding the May 4, 1970 Kent State Massacre. KSTT is a non-profit organization focused on revealing truth and bringing justice to Kent State massacre victims and survivors.

Representing Allison Beth Krause, 19-year-old student protester slain at Kent State University on May 4, 1970: Doris L. Krause, mother & Laurel Krause, sister.

II. Issue Summary

On May 4, l970 members of the Ohio National Guard fired between 61 and 67 shots into a crowd of unarmed anti-war protestors at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, killing four and wounding nine students. For over 40 years, the government has claimed that the Guardsmen did not fire on command, and instead shot in self-defense after hearing sniper fire in the crowd.

In 2010, new forensic evidence emerged debunking this theory. The evidence consisted of a tape recorded by a Kent State student during the shooting. Though the original tape, known as the Kent State Strubbe tape, was destroyed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.) in 1979, a bonafide copy of the tape was located in 2007 and was analyzed in 2010 by an internationally accredited forensic expert. The analysis, derived using state-of-the-art technology that was not available in prior investigations of the shooting, demonstrates that there was a ‘command to fire’ at the protestors. Moreover, the enhanced tape identified four pistol shots fired 70 seconds before the command as coming from an F.B.I. informant’s pistol to create the ‘sound of sniper fire.’ Although the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) received this new evidence, the Department declined to re-open its investigation of the Kent State shooting.

The victims of the Kent State massacre and their families have been unable to obtain access to meaningful redress. In 1974, federal charges against eight members of the Ohio National Guard of willfully violating the rights of the dead and wounded students were dismissed because, according to the judge, the government had failed to prove its case. In 1979 a civil rights settlement was reached with the issuance of a signed Statement of Regret and $15,000 for Allison B. Krause, one of the victims of the Kent State shooting. However, the settlement did not include an apology. Moreover, the federal charges and settlement were centered on civil rights and constitutional violations – there has yet to be a criminal indictment for murder. Additionally, as investigations of the shooting have thus far only been conducted by government entities, there has yet to be a credible, impartial, and independent investigation of the Kent State shooting. Moreover, the U.S. military has failed to address the use of live ammunition on college campuses and whether appropriate force was used on protestors at Kent State.

Failure to ensure justice and accountability for the Kent State massacre has set a precedent that the U.S. can continue to harass, abuse, and even kill protestors. Just ten days after the Kent State massacre, two student protesters were murdered by state police as they protested the Vietnam War on the Jackson State University campus. American authorities have stated ‘snipers’ prompted the firing of military weapons at student protesters, just as at Kent State University. Unfortunately suppression of peaceful assembly continues today. Since the ‘Occupy’ movement began in 2011, protestors have been labeled as ‘domestic terrorists’ by the F.B.I. and have been arrested in massive numbers for peaceful protests and assemblies. Until the U.S. conducts a credible, impartial and investigation into the Kent State shooting, and provides redress for victims and their families, protestors in the U.S. will continue to be at risk of being deprived of their fundamental rights without accountability.

III. U.S. Government Report and Prior Recommendations

Although the U.S. has not addressed the Kent State shooting in its periodic reports to the Human Rights Committee, it has professed support for the right to remedy, compensation for victims of crimes, and the obligation to conduct independent, credible, and thorough investigations into violations of rights, especially the right to life.

In 2010 and after two failed investigations, the United Kingdom finally organized a legitimate, impartial investigation into Bloody Sunday, a 1972 massacre that was strikingly similar to the May 4 Kent State shooting. The Bloody Sunday investigation overturned all prior examinations and admitted to wrongdoing by the State. At the time, the U.S. welcomed the publication of the resulting Bloody Sunday Inquiry report and expressed hope that “the completion of the independent inquiry’s work and publication of its report will contribute to Northern Ireland’s ongoing transformation from a turbulent past to a peaceful future.”

On the international stage the U.S. has called upon nations to uphold the rule of law and respect the right to peaceful assembly. This was particularly evident during the ‘Arab Spring,’ as the Obama Administration called for accountability when government officials suppressed speech and killed and injured protestors. What the Administration has preached abroad, however, is not always practiced at home.

IV. Other UN and Regional Bodies Recommendations

In November 2012, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) released a report conveying concern about the use of excessive force and undue restrictions on peaceful assembly in 11 countries, including the U.S. The report mentioned specific abuses with regards to Occupy Wall Street and recommended U.S. authorities ensure the right to free assembly, take efforts to limit the use of force by law enforcement officials, and ensure that allegations of police misconduct are promptly and thoroughly investigated. In a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in December 2011, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression and U.N. Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association called on U.S. officials to “explain the behavior of police departments that violently disbanded some Occupy protests last fall” and reminded the U.S. government of its obligations under international law to “take all necessary measures to guarantee that the rights and freedoms of all peaceful protesters be respected.”

V. Recommended Questions

1. Given the new forensic evidence emerging in 2010 related to the murders at Kent State, for what reasons has U.S. Department of Justice chosen to refuse to conduct a new, independent, impartial inquiry into the killings?

2. What lessons have American leadership learned from the May 4th Kent State Massacre? Under what circumstances will deadly, lethal force and war-grade weapons be used against peaceful American protesters, including on university and college campuses?

3. What steps will the U.S. government take to ensure that protestors are allowed to protest and assemble freely, without fear of intimidation, arrest, physical injury or – more seriously – murder?

4. Will the United States conduct an impartial, independent examination of the Kent State massacre?

5. What steps will the U.S. government take to ensure that the F.B.I. does not violate the fundamental rights of protestors, including the right to life?

VI. Suggested Recommendations

1. Conduct a full, independent and credible investigation into the May 4th shooting and killing of 13 American protesters at Kent State University. Such an investigation must consider the new evidence and ensure that victims and their families have the right to be heard and given an opportunity to present evidence and testimony.

2. The U.S. government must ensure that all incidents involving the killing, injuring or unlawful use of lethal force against protesters are promptly and impartially investigated, the perpetrators held accountable, and the victims and their families are provided with adequate information on the investigation and full redress. This should include a criminal investigation and prosecution of perpetrators in addition to other legal remedies for violations of civil and constitutional rights.

Read the full document ~ 130209_ICCPRKentStateFinalA

Kent State Makes It to the U.N., Human Rights Committee http://bit.ly/1KTBGsI

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Kent State: Was It about Civil Rights or Murdering Student Protesters?

This article is from the forthcoming book Censored 2013: Dispatches from the Media Revolution and intends to expose the lies of American leadership in order to uncensor the “unhistory” of the Kent State massacre, while also aiming toward justice and healing, as censoring the past impacts American Occupy protesters today.

by Laurel Krause with Mickey Huff

Shooting guardsmen at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, photograph taken by John A. Darnell Jr.

When Ohio National Guardsmen fired sixty-seven gun shots in thirteen seconds at Kent State University (KSU) on May 4, 1970, they murdered four unarmed, protesting college students and wounded nine others. For forty-two years, the United States government has held the position that Kent State was a tragic and unfortunate incident occurring at a noontime antiwar rally on an American college campus. In 2010, compelling forensic evidence emerged showing that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) were the lead agencies in managing Kent State government operations, including the cover-up. At Kent State, lawful protest was pushed into the realm of massacre as the US federal government, the state of Ohio, and the Ohio National Guard (ONG) executed their plans to silence antiwar protest in America.

The new evidence threatens much more than the accuracy of accounts of the Kent State massacre in history books. As a result of this successful, ongoing Kent State government cover-up, American protesters today are at much greater risk than they realize, with no real guarantees or protections offered by the US First Amendment rights to protest and assemble. This chapter intends to expose the lies of the state in order to uncensor the “unhistory” of the Kent State massacre, while also aiming toward justice and healing, as censoring the past impacts our perspectives in the present.

The killing of protesters at Kent State changed the minds of many Americans about the role of the US in the Vietnam War. Following this massacre, there was an unparalleled national response: hundreds of universities, colleges, and high schools closed across America in a student strike of more than four million. Young people across the nation had strong suspicions the Kent State massacre was planned to subvert any further protests arising from the announcement that the already controversial war in Vietnam had expanded into Cambodia.

Yet instead of attempting to learn the truth at Kent State, the US government took complete control of the narrative in the press and ensuing lawsuits. Over the next ten years, authorities claimed there had not been a command-to-fire at Kent State, that the ONG had been under attack, and that their gunfire had been prompted by the “sound of sniper fire.” Instead of investigating Kent State, the American leadership obstructed justice, obscured accountability, tampered with evidence, and buried the truth. The result of these efforts has been a very complicated government cover-up that has remained intact for more than forty years.¹

The hidden truth finally began to emerge at the fortieth anniversary of the Kent State massacre in May 2010, through the investigative journalism of John Mangels, science writer at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, whose findings supported the long-held suspicion that the four dead in Ohio were intentionally murdered at Kent State University by the US government.

Mangels commissioned forensic evidence expert Stuart Allen to professionally analyze a tape recording made from a Kent State student’s dormitory window ledge on May 4, 1970, forever capturing the crowd and battle sounds from before, during, and after the fusillade.² For the first time since that fateful day, journalists and concerned Americans were finally able to hear the devastating soundtrack of the US government murdering Kent State students as they protested against the Vietnam War.

The cassette tape—provided to Mangels by the Yale University Library, Kent State Collection, and housed all these years in a box of evidence admitted into lawsuits led by attorney Joseph Kelner in his representation of the Kent State victims—was called the “Strubbe tape” after Terry Strubbe, the student who made the recording by placing a microphone attached to a personal recorder on his dormitory window ledge. This tape surfaced when Alan Canfora, a student protester wounded at Kent State, and researcher Bob Johnson dug through Yale library’s collection and found a CD copy of the tape recording from the day of the shootings. Paying ten dollars for a duplicate, Canfora then listened to it and immediately knew he probably held the only recording that might provide proof of an order to shoot. Three years after the tape was found, the Plain Dealer commendably hired two qualified forensic audio scientists to examine the tape.

But it is really the two pieces of groundbreaking evidence Allen uncovered that illuminate and provide a completely new perspective into the Kent State massacre.

First, Allen heard and verified the Kent State command-to-fire spoken at noon on May 4, 1970. The command-to-fire has been a point of contention, with authorities stating under oath and to media for forty years that “no order to fire was given at Kent State,” that “the Guard felt under attack from the students,” and that “the Guard reacted to sniper fire.”³ Yet Allen’s verified forensic evidence of the Kent State command-to-fire directly conflicts with guardsmen testimony that they acted in self-defense.

The government claim—that guardsmen were under attack at the time of the ONG barrage of bullets—has long been suspect, as there is nothing in photographic or video records to support the “under attack” excuse. Rather, from more than a football field away, the Kent State student protesters swore, raised their middle fingers, and threw pebbles and stones and empty tear gas canisters, mostly as a response to their campus being turned into a battlefield with over 2,000 troops and military equipment strewn across the Kent State University campus.

Then at 12:24 p.m., the ONG fired armor-piercing bullets at scattering students in a parking lot—again, from more than a football field away. Responding with armor-piercing bullets, as Kent State students held a peaceful rally and protested unarmed on their campus, was the US government’s choice of action.

The identification of the “commander” responsible for the Kent State command-to-fire on unarmed students has not yet been ascertained. This key question will be answered when American leadership decides to share the truth of what happened, especially as the Kent State battle was under US government direction. Until then, the voice ordering the command-to-fire in the Kent State Strubbe tape will remain unknown.

The other major piece of Kent State evidence identified in Allen’s analysis was the “sound of sniper fire” recorded on the tape. These sounds point to Terry Norman, FBI informant and provocateur, who was believed to have fired his low-caliber pistol four times, just seventy seconds before the command-to-fire.

Mangelswrote in the Plain Dealer, “Norman was photographing protestors that day for the FBI and carried a loaded .38-caliber Smith & Wesson Model . . . five-shot revolver in a holster under his coat for protection. Though he denied discharging his pistol, he previously has been accused of triggering the Guard shootings by firing to warn away angry demonstrators, which the soldiers mistook for sniper fire.”⁴

Video footage and still photography have recorded the minutes following the “sound of sniper fire,” showing Terry Norman sprinting across the Kent State commons, meeting up with Kent Police and the ONG. In this visual evidence, Norman immediately yet casually hands off his pistol to authorities and the recipients of the pistol show no surprise as Norman hands them his gun.⁵

The “sound of sniper fire” is a key element of the Kent State cover-up and is also referred to by authorities in the Nation editorial, “Kent State: The Politics of Manslaughter,” from May 18, 1970:

The murders occurred on May 4. Two days earlier, [Ohio National Guard Adjutant General] Del Corso had issued a statement that sniper fire would be met by gunfire from his men. After the massacre, Del Corso and his subordinates declared that sniper fire had triggered the fusillade.⁶

Yet the Kent State “sound of sniper fire” remains key, according to White House Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman, who noted President Richard Nixon’s reaction to Kent State in the Oval Office on May 4, 1970:

Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman told him [of the killings] late in the afternoon. But at two o’clock Haldeman jotted on his ever-present legal pad “keep P. filled in on Kent State.” In his daily journal Haldeman expanded on the President’s reaction: “He very disturbed. Afraid his decision set it off . . . then kept after me all day for more facts. Hoping rioters had provoked the shootings—but no real evidence that they did.” Even after he had left for the day, Nixon called Haldeman back and among others issued one ringing command: “need to get out story of sniper.”⁷

In a May 5, 1970, article in the New York Times, President Nixon commented on violence at Kent State:

This should remind us all once again that when dissent turns to violence it invites tragedy. It is my hope that this tragic and unfortunate incident will strengthen the determination of all the nation’s campuses, administrators, faculty and students alike to stand firmly for the right which exists in this country of peaceful dissent and just as strong against the resort to violence as a means of such expression.⁸

President Nixon’s comment regarding dissent turning to violence obfuscated and laid full blame on student protesters for creating violence at Kent State. Yet at the rally occurring on May 4th, student protester violence amounted to swearing, throwing small rocks, and volleying back tear gas canisters, while the gun-toting soldiers of the ONG declared the peace rally illegal, brutally herded the students over large distances on campus, filled the air with tear gas, and even threw rocks at students. Twenty minutes into the protest demonstration, a troop of National Guard marched up a hill away from the students, turned to face the students in unison, and fired.

The violence at Kent State came from the National Guardsmen, not protesting students. On May 4, 1970, the US government delivered its deadly message to Kent State students and the world: if you protest in America against the wars of the Pentagon and the Department of Defense, the US government will stop at nothing to silence you.

Participating American militia colluded at Kent State to organize and fight this battle against American student protesters, most of them too young to vote but old enough to fight in the Vietnam War.⁹ And from new evidence exposed forty years after the massacre, numerous elements point directly to the FBI and COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) as lead agencies managing the government operation of the Kent State massacre, including the cover-up, but also with a firm hand in some of the lead-up.

Prior to the announcement of the Cambodian incursion, the ONG arrived in the Kent area acting in a federalized role as the Cleveland-Akron labor wildcat strikes were winding down. The ONG continued in the federalized role at Kent State, ostensibly to protect the campus and as a reaction to the burning of a Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) building. Ohio Governor James “Jim” Rhodes claimed the burning of the ROTC building on the Kent State University campus was his reason for “calling in the guard,” yet in this picture of the burning building, the ONG are clearly standing before the flames as the building burns.¹⁰

From eyewitness accounts, the burning of the ROTC building at Kent State was completed by undercover law enforcement determined to make sure it could become the symbol needed to support the Kent State war on student protest.¹¹

According to Dr. Elaine Wellin, an eyewitness to the many events at Kent State leading up to and including May 4th, there were uniformed and plain-clothes officers potentially involved in managing the burning of the ROTC building. Wellin was in close proximity to the building just prior to the burning and saw a person with a walkie-talkie about three feet from her telling someone on the other end of the communication that they should not send down the fire truck as the ROTC building was not on fire yet.¹²

A memo to COINTELPRO director William C. Sullivan ordered a full investigation into the “fire bombing of the ROTC building.” But only days after the Kent State massacre, every weapon that was fired was destroyed, and all other weapons used at Kent State were gathered by top ONG officers, placed with other weapons and shipped to Europe for use by North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), so no weapons used at Kent could be traced.

From these pieces of evidence, it becomes clearer that the US government coordinated this battle against student protest on the Kent State campus. Using the playbook from the Huston Plan, which refers to protesting students as the “New Left,” the US government employed provocateurs, staged incidents, and enlisted political leaders to attack and lay full blame on the students. On May 4, 1970, at Kent State University, the US government fully negated every student response as they criminalized the First Amendment rights to protest and assemble.¹³

The cover-up adds tremendous complexity to an already complicated event, making it nearly impossible to fairly try the Kent State massacre in the American justice system. This imposed “establishment” view that Kent State was about “civil rights”—and not about murder or attempted murder—led to a legal settlement on the basis of civil rights lost, with the US government consistently refusing to address the death of four students and the wounding of nine.¹⁴

Even more disheartening, efforts to maintain the US government cover-up at Kent State recently went into overdrive in April 2012, when President Barack Obama’s Department of Justice (DOJ) formally announced a refusal to open a new probe into the wrongs of Kent State, continuing the tired 1970 tactic of referring to Kent State as a civil rights matter.¹⁵

The April 2012 DOJ letters of response also included a full admission that, in 1979, after reaching the Kent State civil rights settlement, the FBI Cleveland office destroyed what they considered a key piece of evidence: the original tape recording made by Terry Strubbe on his dormitory window ledge. In a case involving homicides, the FBI’s illegal destruction of evidence exposes their belief to be “above the law,” ignoring the obvious fact that four students were killed on May 4, 1970. As the statute of limitations never lapses for murder, the FBI’s actions went against every law of evidence. The laws clearly state that evidence may not be destroyed in homicides, even when the murders are perpetrated by the US government.

The destruction of the original Strubbe tape also shows the FBI’s intention to obstruct justice: the 2012 DOJ letters on Kent State claim that, because the original Strubbe tape was intentionally destroyed, the copy examined by Allen cannot be compared to the original or authenticated. However the original Strubbe tape, destroyed by the DOJ, was never admitted into evidence.

From these pieces of evidence, it becomes clearer that the US government coordinated this battle against student protest on the Kent State campus. Using the playbook from the Huston Plan, which refers to protesting students as the “New Left,” the US government employed provocateurs, staged incidents, and enlisted political leaders to attack and lay full blame on the students. On May 4, 1970, at Kent State University, the US government fully negated every student response as they criminalized the First Amendment rights to protest and assemble.¹³

The cover-up adds tremendous complexity to an already complicated event, making it nearly impossible to fairly try the Kent State massacre in the American justice system. This imposed “establishment” view that Kent State was about “civil rights”—and not about murder or attempted murder—led to a legal settlement on the basis of civil rights lost, with the US government consistently refusing to address the death of four students and the wounding of nine.¹⁴

Even more disheartening, efforts to maintain the US government cover-up at Kent State recently went into overdrive in April 2012, when President Barack Obama’s Department of Justice (DOJ) formally announced a refusal to open a new probe into the wrongs of Kent State, continuing the tired 1970 tactic of referring to Kent State as a civil rights matter.¹⁵

The April 2012 DOJ letters of response also included a full admission that, in 1979, after reaching the Kent State civil rights settlement, the FBI Cleveland office destroyed what they considered a key piece of evidence: the original tape recording made by Terry Strubbe on his dormitory window ledge. In a case involving homicides, the FBI’s illegal destruction of evidence exposes their belief to be “above the law,” ignoring the obvious fact that four students were killed on May 4, 1970. As the statute of limitations never lapses for murder, the FBI’s actions went against every law of evidence. The laws clearly state that evidence may not be destroyed in homicides, even when the murders are perpetrated by the US government.

The destruction of the original Strubbe tape also shows the FBI’s intention to obstruct justice: the 2012 DOJ letters on Kent State claim that, because the original Strubbe tape was intentionally destroyed, the copy examined by Allen cannot be compared to the original or authenticated. However the original Strubbe tape, destroyed by the DOJ, was never admitted into evidence.

No More Kent States! ²³

In 2010, the United Kingdom acknowledged the wrongs of Bloody Sunday, also setting an example for the US government to learn the important lessons of protest and the First Amendment. In January 1972, during “Bloody Sunday,” British paratroopers shot and killed fourteen protesters; most of the demonstrators were shot in the back as they ran to save themselves.²⁴

Thirty-eight years after the Bloody Sunday protest, British Prime Minister David Cameron apologized before Parliament, formally acknowledging the wrongful murder of protesters and apologized for the government.²⁵ The healing in Britain has begun. Considering the striking similarity in events where protesters were murdered by the state, let’s examine the wrongs of Kent State, begin to heal this core American wound, and make a very important, humane course correction for America. When will it become legal to protest in America?

President Obama, the Department of Justice, and the US government as a whole must take a fresh look at Stuart Allen’s findings in the Kent State Strubbe tape. The new Kent State evidence is compelling, clearly showing how US covert intelligence took the lead in creating this massacre and in putting together the ensuing cover-up.

As the United States has refused to examine the new evidence or consider the plight of American protest in 2012, the Kent State Truth Tribunal formally requested the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague consider justice at Kent State.²⁶

Who benefited the most from the murder of student protesters at Kent State? Who was really behind the Kent State massacre? There is really only one US agency that clearly benefited from killing student antiwar protesters at Kent State: the Department of Defense.

Since 1970 through 2012, the military-industrial-cyber complex strongly associated with the Department of Defense and covert US government agencies have actively promoted never-ending wars with enormous unaccounted-for budgets as they increase restrictions on American protest. These aims of the Pentagon are evidenced today in the USA PATRIOT Act, the further civil rights–limiting National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), and new war technologies like CIA drones.

Probing the dark and buried questions of the Kent State massacre is only a beginning step to shine much-needed light on the United States military and to illuminate how the Pentagon has subverted American trust and safety, as it endeavors to quell domestic protest against war at any cost since at least 1970.

********

Laurel Krause is a writer and truth seeker dedicated to raising awareness about ocean protection, safe renewable energy, and truth at Kent State. She publishes a blog on these topics at Mendo Coast Current. She is the cofounder and director of the Kent State Truth Tribunal. Before spearheading efforts for justice for her sister Allison Krause, who was killed at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, Laurel worked at technology start-ups in Silicon Valley.

Mickey Huff is the director of Project Censored and professor of social science and history at Diablo Valley College.  He did his graduate work in history on historical interpretations of the Kent State shootings and has been actively researching the topic more since his testimony to the Kent State Truth Tribunal in New York City in 2010.

This article is from the forthcoming Seven Stories Press book Censored 2013: Dispatches from the Media Revolution and intends to expose the lies of American leadership in order to uncensor the “unhistory” of the Kent State massacre, while also aiming toward justice and healing, as censoring the past impacts #Occupy protesters today.

Notes

[1.] For more background on Kent State and the many conflicting interpretations, see Scott L. Bills, Kent State/May 4: Echoes Through a Decade (Kent OH: Kent State University Press, 1982). Of particular interest for background on this chapter, see Peter Davies, “The Burning Question: A Government Cover-up?,” in Kent State/May 4, 150–60. For a full account of Davies’s work, see The Truth About Kent State: A Challenge to the American Conscience (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1973). For a listing of other works see Selected Bibliography on the Events of May 4, 1970, at Kent State University, http://dept.kent.edu/30yearmay4/source/bib.htm.

[2.] John Mangels, “New Analysis of 40-Year-Old Recording of Kent State Shootings Reveals that Ohio Guard was Given an Order to Prepare to Fire,” Plain Dealer (Cleveland), May 9, 2010, updated April 23, 2012, http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2010/05/new_analysis_of_40-year-old_re.html; Interview with Stuart Allen analyzing new evidence who said of the efforts, “It’s about setting history right.” See the footage “Kent State Shootings Case Remains Closed,” CNN, added April 29, 2012, http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/us/2012/04/29/justice-department-will-not-reopen-kent-state-shootings-case.cnn.

[3.] Submitted for the Congressional Record by Representative Dennis Kucinich, “Truth Emerging in Kent State Cold Case Homicide,” by Laurel Krause, http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r111%3AE14DE0-0019%3A. For a brief introduction on the history and emerging historiography of the Kent State shootings, see Mickey S. Huff, “Healing Old Wounds: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Conflicts Over Historical Interpretations of the Kent State Shootings, 1977–1990,” master’s thesis, Youngstown State University, December 1999, http://etd.ohiolink.edu/view.cgi?acc_num=ysu999620326.

For the official government report, see The Report of the President’s Commission on Campus Unrest (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1970), also known as the Scranton Commission. It should be noted that the Scranton Commission stated in their conclusion between pages 287 and 290 that the shootings were “unnecessary, unwarranted and inexcusable” but criminal wrongdoing was never established through the courts and no one was ever held accountable for the shootings. Also, it should be noted, that the interpretation that the guard was ordered to fire conflicts with Davies’s interpretation, in note 1 here, that even though he believes there was a series of cover-ups by the government, he has not attributed malice. For more on the Kent State cover-ups early on, see I. F. Stone, “Fabricated Evidence in the Kent State Killings,” New York Review of Books, December 3, 1970, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1970/dec/03/fabricated-evidence-in-the-kent-state-killings.

[4.] Mangels, “Kent State Tape Indicates Altercation and Pistol Fire Preceded National Guard Shootings (audio),” Plain Dealer (Cleveland), October 8, 2010, http://www.cleveland.com/science/index.ssf/2010/10/analysis_of_kent_state_audio_t.html.

[5.] Kent State Shooting 1970 [BX4510], Google Video, at 8:20 min., http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3727445416544720642.

[6.] Editorial, “Kent State: The Politics of Manslaughter,” Nation, April 30, 2009 [May 18, 1970], http://www.thenation.com/article/kent-state-politics-manslaughter.

[7.] Charles A. Thomas, Kenfour: Notes On An Investigation (e-book), http://speccoll.library.kent.edu/4may70/kenfour3.

[8.] John Kifner, “4 Kent State Students Killed by Troops,” New York Times, May 4, 1970, http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0504.html#article.

[9.] Voting age was twenty-one at this time, until the passage of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution in 1971, which lowered the voting age to eighteen, partially in response to Vietnam War protests as youth under twenty-one could be drafted without the right to vote.

[10.] It should also be noted, that Rhodes was running for election the Tuesday following the Kent shootings on a law and order ticket.

[11.] “My Personal Testimony ROTC Burning May 2 1970 Kent State,” YouTube, April 28, 2010, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ppBkB4caY0&feature=youtu.be; Freedom of Information Act, FBI, Kent State Shooting, File Number 98-46479, part 7 of 8 (1970), http://vault.fbi.gov/kent-state-shooting/kent-state-shooting-part-07-of-08/view.

[12.] The Project Censored Show on The Morning Mix, “May 4th and the Kent State Shootings in the 42nd Year,” Pacifica Radio, KPFA, 94.1FM, May 4, 2012 live at 8:00 a.m., archived online at http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/80293 and http://dl.dropbox.com/u/42635027/20120504-Fri0800.mp3. For Wellin on ROTC, see recording at 28:45.

Show description: The May 4th Kent State Shootings 42 Years Later: Justice Still Not Served with Congressman Dennis Kucinich commenting on the DOJ’s recent refusal to reopen the case despite new evidence of a Kent State command-to-fire and the ‘sound of sniper fire’ leading to the National Guard firing live ammunition at unarmed college students May 4, 1970; Dr. Elaine Wellin, Kent State eyewitness shares seeing undercover agents at the ROTC fire in the days before, provocateurs in staging the rallies at Kent, and at Kent State on May 4th; we’ll hear from investigator and forensic evidence expert Stuart Allen regarding his audio analysis of the Kent State Strubbe tape from May 4th revealing the command-to-fire and the ‘sound of sniper fire’ seventy seconds before; and we hear from Kent State Truth Tribunal director Laurel Krause, the sister of slain student Allison, about her efforts for justice at Kent State and recent letter to President Obama..

Also see Peter Davies’ testimony about agents provocateurs and the ROTC fire cited in note 1, “The Burning Question: A Government Cover-up?,” in Kent State/May 4, 150–60.

[13.] The Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC), “Volume 2: Huston Plan,” http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/contents/church/contents_church_reports_vol2.htm.

[14.] Associated Press, “Kent State Settlement: Was Apology Included?,” Eugene Register-Guard, January 5, 1979, http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1310&dat=19790105&id=xvJVAAAAIBAJ&sjid=BuIDAAAAIBAJ&pg=3696,963632.

[15.] Mangels, “Justice Department Won’t Reopen Probe of 1970 Kent State Shootings,” Plain Dealer (Cleveland), April 24, 2012, http://www.cleveland.com/science/index.ssf/2012/04/justice_department_wont_re-ope.html; and kainah, “Obama Justice Dept.: No Justice for Kent State,” Daily Kos, May 2, 2012, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/05/02/1086726/-Justice-Dept-No-Justice-for-Kent-State.

[16.] Mangels, “New Analysis.”

[17.] Letters between the Department of Justice and Representative Dennis Kucinich, archived at the Congressman’s website, April 20 and April 24 of 2012, http://kucinich.house.gov/uploadedfiles/kent_state_response_from_doj.pdf and http://kucinich.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=292306.

[18.] Mangels, “Kent State Shootings: Does Former Informant Hold the Key to the May 4 Mystery?,” Plain Dealer (Cleveland), December 19, 2010, http://www.cleveland.com/science/index.ssf/2010/12/kent_state_shootings_does_form.html.

[19.] Freedom of Information Act, FBI.

[20.] The Project Censored Show on The Morning Mix, “May 4th and the Kent State Shootings in the 42nd Year.”

[21.] Steven Rosenfeld, “Will a Militarized Police Force Facing Occupy Wall Street Lead to Another Kent State?,” AlterNet, May 3, 2012, http://www.alternet.org/rights/155270/will_a_militarized_police_force_facing_occupy_wall_street_lead_to_another_kent_state_massacre.

[22.] Ibid.

[23.] Laurel Krause, “No More Kent States,” Mendo Coast Current, April 21, 2012, https://mendocoastcurrent.wordpress.com/2012/04/21/13-day-for-kent-state-peace.

[24.] Laurel Krause, “Unjustified, Indefensible, Wrong,” Mendo Coast Current, September 13, 2010, https://mendocoastcurrent.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/unjustified-indefensible-wrong.

[25.] Associated Press, “Bloody Sunday Report Blames British Soldiers Fully,” USA Today, June 15, 2010, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2010-06-15-Bloody-Sunday-Ireland_N.htm; and Cameron’s direct quote from Henry McDonald, Owen Bowcott, and Hélène Mulholland, “Bloody Sunday Report: David Cameron Apologises for ‘Unjustifiable’ Shootings,” Guardian, June 15, 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jun/15/bloody-sunday-report-saville-inquiry.

[26.] Laurel Krause, “To the Hague: Justice for the May 4th Kent State Massacre?,” Mendo Coast Current, May 7, 2012, https://mendocoastcurrent.wordpress.com/2012/05/07/may-4th-kent-state-massacre-a-call-for-truth-justice; for more on the Kent State Truth Tribunal, see http://www.TruthTribunal.org.

 

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Allison Beth Krause Lives On

MendoCoastCurrent, May 4, 2011

Jennifer Schwartz on her cousin Allison Krause at the 41st commemoration of the Kent State Shootings, May 4, 1970

My name is Jennifer Schwartz and I am Allison Krause’s cousin and also among the first generation of our family who never met Allison.

What can I tell you about my beloved cousin? I was less than a year old when she was shot dead on May 4, 1970. Had she not been killed, I would most certainly have known her.

I have spent my life trying to right this wrong in my own way, trying to get closer to her, to know her, endeavoring to honor her and make Allison proud. So I thank you for inviting me here today to tell you some of what I have learned about Allison from books and published articles, from her friends, from our family and from my efforts at the Kent State Truth Tribunal.

Allison Beth Krause was the cherished first of two daughters born to Arthur and Doris Krause, living in Cleveland Heights. Although roughly 10 years older than Allison, my father Marvin Schwartz remembers many summers playing with the Krause girls. My Dad talks about Allison as a sweet, fun, clever, pretty and vivacious girl. Many of Allison’s friends in Cleveland still remember her from those days back in grade school.

In the early sixties, Allison’s family went for Sunday drives out to the country often ending up at Kent, dining at the Robin Hood and enjoying the pastoral campus. Remarkably, at a very early age, Allison made her decision to attend college at Kent State University.

Her father’s job at Westinghouse moved the family to Pittsburgh in the mid-sixties and then on to Wheaton, Maryland where Allison attended John F Kennedy high school. Many of Allison’s classmates were children of government employees, and with them Allison developed an active awareness of global issues and a well-formed understanding of American history, politics and civil rights.

As she found her political voice in high school, Allison joined the young people of those times who were against the ever-expanding war in Vietnam, and the draft lottery. She lent her voice to the calls for peace at demonstrations in Washington DC.

Allison’s father Arthur was a veteran of WW11. Back in the late sixties he was pro-Vietnam, like many of his generation. Allison’s sister, Laurel remembers many heated dinner-table arguments where she and her big sister objected to the war and nuclear weapons. It was a scene like so many other dining room debates back then.  From those debates, Allison knew: As an American she had a right to freedom of speech and a right to engage in peaceful assembly, all guaranteed by the first amendment.

Yet Allison was more than anti-war protester and advocate of civil rights. She was an active, caring person and was considering a career in a helping profession such as art therapy. My aunt Doris Krause recounts this story of Allison’s volunteer work at a hospital for the mentally disabled.  “She would go there at night and play basketball with them… and her biggest day that she had was when she came home and told us that one of the men had talked to her, and he hadn’t talked to anybody in a long period of years.  And she was so gratified by that.  So she had potential.  She was a smart girl and was just cut down.”

In the fall of 1969, Allison started college as a freshman here at Kent State. Her family had recently moved back to Pittsburgh, so Allison was still close to home. Allison lived in Metcalf Hall, and later Engleman, did well academically as an honors student, made friends quickly, and met another student, the love of her life, Barry Levine. Barry describes Allison as “a sweet, intelligent, loving, warm, intelligent, compassionate, creative, funny, intelligent girl.  As bright as they come.”

That fall, Allison traveled to Washington DC, like hundreds of thousands of other young people, taking part in a huge anti-war demonstration and peace rally.

In her last days, Allison reveled in the first Earth Day Celebration held on April 22, 1970. Buckminster Fuller erected a geodesic dome right here on the commons, just a few steps from Allison’s dorm. The following day, April 23^rd, was Allison’s 19^th birthday. Her family came in from Pittsburgh to celebrate, never imagining this would be the last time they would see her alive.

Allison assembled with others on Friday May 1st as she vehemently disagreed with the U.S. government’s decision to escalate the war and send more troops into Cambodia.  She spent the first weekend of May with friends, doing schoolwork, enjoying the first breath of Spring, but at night, running from the military and helicopters on campus, now occupied by the National Guard, the Highway Patrol, and campus and town police.

On Sunday afternoon May 3^rd, Allison spent time outside, socializing with friends and started talking with some guardsmen among the blooming lilacs.  I have heard different accounts of this story, some say Allison placed a flower in the barrel of one Guardsman’s gun, others say the flower was already there. What is certain, is that those moments have been preserved in several photographs. That guardsman’s smiling face is absolutely beaming in the pictures, there with Allison, the flower, his rifle, and the irony and release of tension they all felt in that moment, as human beings who were on opposite sides of a conflict. And when Allison witnessed that guardsman’s superior come along and reprimand him there for having a silly flower in his gun barrel, Allison responded, “What’s the matter with peace? Flowers are better than bullets.”

The next day Allison attended the peace rally at the Victory Bell at noon with her boyfriend Barry. She was unarmed. She was vocal. I do not believe that Allison thought her life might be in danger on her own college campus. Not in America. Surely there weren’t real bullets in those guns… But there were bullets and there was intention to kill protesting students.

My cousin Allison Krause was shot dead in the Prentice parking lot, roughly a football field away from the shooting guardsmen. A steel jacketed, armor piercing bullet fragmented on impact in her left chest, according to the autopsy. She died on the way to the hospital, in Barry’s arms.

Who was my cousin? I wish I could tell you, but as mentioned, I never met her. And still, I stand here to say we will never forget her!

We honor her memory by emulating her actions. Personally, in my professional life as an art therapist, in my volunteer work as a community organizer, as a mother of a little girl named Allison, as a peacemaker, as an earth-conscious consumer, as a citizen and active participant in government… in all of these actions every day of my life, I honor Allison, and all those murdered at Kent State on May 4th.

This time last year, I memorialized the 40^th Anniversary in the way I think Allison would have appreciated. With Laurel Krause, Emily Kunstler and the Kent State Truth Tribunal crew, we recorded and preserved the personal narratives of original participants and witnesses of the Kent State Shootings. The emotional healing that we witnessed during our four days together was immense. I encourage you to take a look at our project online at http://www.TruthTribunal.org.

In closing, I must tell you briefly about one powerful piece of  healing that is not viewable in the Kent State Truth Tribunal video archives. On the second day as I was greeting and checking in KSTT participants, a man, whom I later recognized from the photos to be THAT guardsman, the one with the flower in his rifle, came through the tribunal doors to share his truth & find his own healing. He did not want to film his story with us. And yet, he was there. Though he didn’t identify himself by name, he bravely told me that he had been among the guardsmen that weekend in 1970. I remember looking into his eyes as he spoke his truth to me for several long minutes. He simply came, as so many others did last year, to unburden himself, to try to heal his own wounds from Kent State and to connect with the spirit of truth.

Since last May, at KSTT NYC, I greeted and checked in the forensic scientist Stuart Allen, who is Keynote here today. Before our cameras, he examined the Kent State tape.  He verified an order to shoot and exposed suspicious additional gunshots. Listening to that recording, cleaned up by Mr. Allen’s state-of-the-art technology was gut wrenching.

The Krause family asks the federal government to open up an investigation into this new evidence, the Kent State tape. Because we understand, there can never be true healing without truth and justice.  We further encourage our government to issue a formal acknowledgment of the wrongs of Kent State on May 4, 1970… 41 years later, it’s time!

Finally, what I know in my soul is this… that none of the accounts that I have presented to you today can truly do Allison justice without justice being done. Allison believed in a just world.  She put her life on the line for it. Let us never give up in our pursuit of justice and healing at Kent State.

*****************

Watch Jennifer Schwartz’s 5/4/11 speech at the 41st anniversary of the Kent State Shootings ~

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Please Support Our Call to Action Now

CALL, EMAIL & FAX the Dept of Justice now. Join us in demanding Attorney Gen’l Eric Holder: OPEN AN INQUIRY into the shootings at 1970 Kent State & EXAMINE the Kent State Tape now. ~ Email: oipl@usdoj.gov, Call: 202-514-3465, Fax: 202-514-8336 Please share widely to help spread the word

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Election Politics Affecting Kent State Congressional Probe

JOHN MANGELS, Cleveland Plain Dealer, November 4, 2010

A congressional probe into new revelations about the Kent State University shootings will be hampered — or may be curtailed — by voters’ decision Tuesday to hand Republicans control of the House of Representatives.

Cleveland Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich had launched an inquiry in October into the May 4, 1970, killing and wounding of 13 students and Vietnam War protesters by Ohio National Guardsmen. The notorious incident hardened sentiment against the war, while also raising national alarm about campus unrest.

Kucinich, who chairs a House subcommittee with oversight of the FBI and the Justice Department, began the inquest after The Plain Dealer published articles containing new details gleaned from a long-forgotten audiotape of the shootings.

Though he won re-election Tuesday, Kucinich will lose his subcommittee chairmanship and its investigative power when Republicans gain control of the House in January. His office was scrambling Wednesday to adjust the inquiry’s timetable to the suddenly looming deadline.

Kucinich and the subcommittee’s staff “are working to see if it is possible to hold a hearing before the end of this year,” spokesman Nathan White said via e-mail. The congressman “has personally talked to several witnesses” who have agreed to testify, White said, though he declined to identify them. Kucinich “believes that holding this hearing swiftly is important to ensure that the information is entered into the public record before any more time passes.”

A forensic audio expert who examined the 40-year-old recording earlier this year at The Plain Dealer’s request, using modern sound-filtering and analyzing software, reported hearing an altercation and four pistol shots roughly 70 seconds before the Guardsmen opened fire, and later, a male voice commanding the Guard to prepare to shoot.

Previous investigations had determined that the Guardsmen wheeled and fired spontaneously, even though they were not at imminent risk. Some Guardsmen claimed to have heard an order to fire. Others reported reacting to pistol shots, possibly from a sniper, though much more immediately than the 70 seconds that pass between the apparent pistol shots on the tape and the Guardsmen’s volley.

No officer ever admitted issuing a firing command, and none of the criminal, civil or independent reviews identified anyone other than Guardsmen as having fired their weapons.

It is difficult to determine how, if at all, the apparent altercation and pistol shots and the subsequent firing command captured on the tape are related. The violent confrontation between members of the protest crowd and someone – with shouts of “Kill him!” and “Hit the [expletive]!” – are followed by what forensic audio expert Stuart Allen believes are four shots from a .38-caliber revolver.

After The Plain Dealer reported the latest findings, some speculated that the altercation involved Terry Norman, a Kent State law enforcement student who was carrying a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson pistol during the May 4 protest rally and was taking photos of demonstrators for the university police department and the FBI.

Norman claimed he was assaulted by crowd members angered by his picture-taking and told investigators he drew his gun to warn them away. But he denied firing, and insisted that the dust-up happened after the Guard gunfire, not before.

Several witnesses said they heard a Kent State policeman who inspected Norman’s pistol exclaim that it had been fired four times. The officer later denied making the remark. An FBI lab test determined the gun had been fired since its last cleaning, but could not pinpoint when.

In 1973, then-U.S. Sen. Birch Bayh pressed the Justice Department to look into Norman’s activities, saying he may have been the catalyst for the Guard’s shootings. A federal grand jury questioned Norman in December 1973, but he was not charged.

“As far as we were concerned at the time, [Norman] was a non-issue in the overall events of what happened that day,” Robert Murphy, the Justice Department lawyer who led the grand jury probe, said in a telephone interview Monday.

The grand jury indicted eight low-ranking Guardsmen on civil rights violations for the shootings. A federal judge later dismissed the charges (pdf). Norman joined the Washington, D.C., police department several months after the Kent State incident. His precise whereabouts today are not known.

Kucinich has asked the FBI to produce records that might show whether Norman was working as a confidential informant or some other capacity, and whether the bureau helped him get the D.C. police job. He has said the subcommittee will attempt to locate and interview Norman, and that he may be called to testify.

In addition to the House inquiry, the Justice Department’s civil rights division is weighing whether to re-open an investigation of the Kent State affair based on the potential new audio evidence. No decision has been reached, a spokeswoman said Wednesday.

Cleveland attorney Terry Gilbert and Alan Canfora, who was wounded by the Guard’s gunfire, recently met with Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez and U.S. Attorney Steven Dettelbach to discuss the possibility of a renewed federal review.

Since the statute of limitations for civil rights violations has long since expired, Gilbert said some of the discussion involved the basis for a federal case, assuming there’s evidence to warrant moving forward. “We told Mr. Perez that we’re not looking to put people in jail,” Gilbert said. “We’re looking for some answers and acknowledgment that this evidence is compelling. We’re researching whether, within the Justice Department, there’s some kind of fact-finding process that’s designed to further justice, but not prosecute.”

Gilbert said the department’s inspector general, for example, might be able to provide an impartial, independent review of the FBI’s role at Kent State.

The political changeover and its potential effect on Kucinich’s investigation of Kent State is a setback, Gilbert acknowledged, but he remains optimistic.

“We’re in a worse position now in getting politicians to look at this case than we were yesterday, but we’re not giving up,” he said. “As long as people are around who remember that day, there are going to be some serious efforts to try to get to the truth.”

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Kent State: Death of Innocence & the First Amendment

MendoCoastCurrent, October 5, 2010

Since the beginning of 2010, the Kent State Truth Tribunal has been focused on collecting and understanding the truth about the circumstances that surrounded the killing of four students and the wounding of nine others at Kent State University in Ohio on May 4, 1970. As new evidence emerges that supports the belief that the Ohio National Guard was following orders to shoot when they fired into a crowd of peacefully assembled students, we are reminded that this tragic chapter in American history has left an indelible mark on the civic freedoms that define this country.

One of the students shot was my sister Allison Krause and at the moment she died, Allison was protesting the invasion of Cambodia and the escalation of the Vietnam war at a noon peace rally on her college campus. Some of those shot were fellow protestors while others were students simply walking to class.

Like many college students at that time, the protesters at Kent State were fighting the draft and opposed the war in Vietnam. At this peace rally on May 4^th at Kent State, they were also protesting the Ohio National Guard’s occupation of their campus that had begun days earlier.  When the shots were fired, the U.S. government robbed the Kent State students of their right to exercise the First Amendment. It also sent a chilling message to young people across the country: If you protest against the government, you could be killed in the process.

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution was profoundly devalued by this criminal act. This amendment prohibits our government from “interfering with the right to peaceably assemble or prohibiting the petitioning for a government redress of grievance.”

Until the truth about the Kent State shootings is known and laid bare before the public, the value and meaning of our First Amendment continues to be compromised. The words written and preserved in the Library of Congress have very little to do with citizen’s rights in America today.

Fast-forwarding 40 years to May 4, 2010 and with the help of heartfelt Kent State supporters like Michael Moore, as well as many present at the original peace rally at Kent, the Kent State Truth Tribunal began to record and preserve the truth, broadcasting our findings at MichaelMoore.com. The buried truth about Kent State and the continued cover-up that surrounds the Kent State killings has begun to unfold before us.

We now see how that the calculated acts of President Richard Nixon, Ohio Governor James Rhodes and the Ohio National Guard commanders seamlessly silenced and damaged the psyche of the sixties generation, robbing us of our civil rights. The consequences of their violent actions against students still reverberate today.

I was 15 years old on May 4^th 1970. Through the eyes of a teenager I felt the deeper personal angst and pain of losing my only sibling Allison as my family and our home was torn apart. Allison’s death and the harassment that followed will never be forgotten. When I lost Allison I was outraged but realized quickly that there was little that a 15-year-old could do.

My parents, Arthur and Doris Krause, pursued redress through the courts, seeking justice the American way. In each and every litigation the shooting guardsmen, along with their commanding officers, claimed there wasn’t an order to shoot ~ that the guardsmen reacted with their shots because they felt their lives were in danger, despite the fact that many eye-witnessed remembered clearly hearing an order to fire.  By taking this position and stating this under oath, the government forced everyone pursuing truth and justice in the Kent State killings to look for proof that an ‘order to shoot’ existed.

Back to the present, just days after we closed the doors at the Kent State Truth Tribunal at the 40^th anniversary of the killings in Kent, Ohio, important news was published by the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Read it here: bit.ly/aM7Ocm The Plain Dealer arranged an examination of an audio tape recorded by a Kent State student from his dorm window ledge. Two, expert forensic audio scientists, Stuart Allen and Tom Owen, independently confirmed an order was issued to the Ohio National Guard. Mr. Allen found that the order “Prepare to fire,” can be heard on the audio cassette ‘as clear as a bell’.

As we turn our attention to the approaching Kent State Truth Tribunal in New York City on October 9 and 10 http://TruthTribunal.org/event , Mr. Allen will present this new evidence so that everyone watching at MichaelMoore.com can judge for themselves. We hope you will tune in to witness this important moment that will prove an order was issued, that the guards followed a command and that there was homicidal intent on the part of our government to kill unarmed, protesting students

We have invited the federal government to send an official to audit and witness our interview with Mr. Allen.

Additionally, we will be interviewing participants and witnesses of the Kent State shootings to hear and preserve their truth, as well as some notable guests with meaningful connection to the prelude and aftermath.

Daniel Ellsberg will participate in our first Skype interview at this KSTT in New York City.  You may remember that Mr. Ellsberg precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of US government decision-making about the Vietnam War, to The New York Times and other newspapers.  He will be giving us background into the political context and key elements of the Vietnam war at the time of the killings at Kent State.

Mr. Lawrence Dowler, founder of the Kent State collection in the Yale Library where he was chief archivist (now retired), will share his truth on the collection he personally assembled, a collection revered to be the most extensive and accurate archive of the Kent State shootings.

You are invited to share in this important moment in history by watching our live broadcast at www.MichaelMoore.com on Saturday and Sunday, October 9 and 10, from 10AM to 5PM est.

You hope you’ll join us as we continue to uncover the truth at Kent State.

To learn more about KSTT and support our efforts, visit http://TruthTribunal.org

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Unjustified, Indefensible, Wrong

LAUREL KRAUSE, MendoCoastCurrent, July 13, 2010

My sister Allison Krause was one of four students killed in the 1970 Kent State shootings. You may have heard about that day in American history – May 4, 1970 – when the Ohio National Guard opened fire on unarmed students protesting the invasion of Cambodia. Some of those killed or injured were just walking to class. After the guardsmen fired their weapons, four students lay dead, and nine others were wounded by gunfire. Forty years have passed and no one has ever been held accountable.

When courts fail to bring justice to the injured and when governments prefer to neglect their role in such tragedies, families sometimes turn to alternative means of gathering the truth. So after years of exhausting efforts to find out what happened on the day of Allison’s death, and failure to receive any meaningful recognition for the injury suffered by our family, we decided to establish the Kent State Truth Tribunal on the 40th anniversary of the killings. We felt the imperative to do this for our family and also to come together with others to create an accurate historical account of what happened at Kent.

The Kent State Truth Tribunal (KSTT) teamed up with a remarkable filmmaker named Emily Kunstler, who has dedicated her work to the pursuit of criminal justice in this country. Her father Bill Kunstler was a larger-than-life civil rights attorney who had stood with the Kent State students in the difficult years that followed the shootings. Emily is carrying on his work by harnessing the power of storytelling to establish and memorialize the truth about Kent State.

The KSTT was held on the first four days of May in Kent, Ohio and we recorded and preserved over 70 personal stories of original participants and witnesses. A number of the wounded students shared their truth of what happened that horrific day in American history, along with faculty, student witnesses, Kent townspeople and friends and family of those killed. Some spoke publicly for the first time in four decades. The stories that emerged are powerful narratives about a day that changed America and helped us understand what happened on that historic day. As we filmed the interviews, they were broadcast live on MichaelMoore.com and were viewed throughout the country. This is the first time that a truth-telling initiative in America set out to use new media in this way and it was remarkable to broadcast these accounts live throughout the country.

Little did we know that as we wrapped our project in Kent, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and ace reporter John Mangels would break a key piece of news long sought after by those eager to learn the truth about Kent State. The journalist uncovered evidence of an ‘order to shoot’ given to the National Guardsmen on Blanket Hill that May 4th so long ago.

Over the ten years that the families pursued justice in Ohio state and federal courts, the testimonies from the Ohio National Guard and ranking decision-makers supported the ludicrous claim that no order to fire was given. An order would have implicated higher-ranking officers and would have led to court-martials for those involved. Since an admission of command responsibility for the shootings was not forthcoming, it became our job to prove them wrong. This was almost impossible…until now.

The Plain Dealer investigation produced a copy of an audio tape recorded by a student using a microphone on his dormitory room window ledge. This tape surfaced when Alan Canfora, a student protester wounded at Kent State, and researcher Bob Johnson dug through Yale Library’s collection on 1970 Kent State to find a CD with the tape recording on it from the day of the shootings. Paying $10 to have a duplicate made, Alan listened to it and immediately knew he probably held the only recording that might provide proof of an order to shoot. Three years after the tape was found, the Plain Dealer commendably hired two qualified forensic audio scientists to examine the tape. They verified an order for the guards to ‘prepare to fire’.

Shortly after the tape was publicized a remarkable event unfolded in another part of the world with direct parallels to Kent State. British Prime Minister David Cameron formally apologized before Parliament for the events and killings of Bloody Sunday.

As you may recall this event occurred on January 30, 1972, when British paratroopers opened fire on demonstrators in Northern Ireland and 14 civilians were shot and killed and others wounded. The bloodshed led to a major escalation of the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland, which have only recently largely subsided. Like Kent State, the military shot and killed its own unarmed citizens.

After 12 years of exhaustive study by an independent judicial commission set up by the British government, the findings spurred this apology from Prime Minister David Cameron. I am moved to think how these words could apply to Kent State in our country:

What happened should never, ever have happened.

The families of those who died should not have had to live with the pain and hurt of that day, and with a lifetime of loss.

Some members of our armed forces acted wrongly, the government is ultimately responsible for the conduct of the armed forces, and for that, on behalf of the government, indeed, on behalf of our country, I am deeply sorry.

While news of the Bloody Sunday apology begins to spread and settle, original participants are beginning to call for even greater steps to condemn the higher-ranking officers that made this deadly decision to shoot and kill.

As I watch from my perch in America, I ponder the complexities of apologies and our need for truth in the Kent State killings of 1970.

From conversations with others who were present at and witnessed the shootings at Kent State, I know that we all wish to have the truth revealed in 2010 and applaud Britain’s important first step to address the harm caused by Bloody Sunday. And I have to ask: what will it take for America to heal the wounds of Kent State?

To learn more about the Kent State Truth Tribunal, please visit our website at http://TruthTribunal.org

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Shining a Light on the Kent State Shootings of 1970

MendoCoastCurrent, August 12, 2010

This last weekend on August 7 and 8, the Kent State Truth Tribunal (KSTT) traveled to San Francisco to record and preserve narratives from west coast-based original witnesses to and participants in the 1970 Kent State shootings.

My sister Allison Krause was one of the four students killed at Kent State and our tribunal has provided an opportunity for me to follow in my father Arthur Krause’s footsteps and discover the truth for my family. My father, who for over ten years fought for justice in the courts, would add, “and not let our government get away with murder at Kent State”.

Throughout our recording sessions with the KSTT, I have felt the presence of Allison and my dad and I wanted to share him with you in this photograph, taken in 1975 at a candlelit memorial on the 5^th anniversary of Allison’s death. After we lost Allison, Arthur Krause made it his business—until the end of his life—to get the truth out about Kent State and this year I feel he is joining our call for truth at Kent State in 2010.

Our second KSTT session in San Francisco (our first was this year at the 40^th anniversary of the shootings, in Ohio in May) enabled us to see, hear and record critical details and first-hand observations. Our west coast participants, coming from vastly different walks of life, gave testimonials that provided greater insight and detail into the lead up to the Kent State shootings, the shootings themselves and the events that followed. A clearer picture is beginning to emerge about the 67 shots fired over 13 seconds by the national guard at unarmed students protesting the U.S. expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia at Kent State University in Ohio on May 4th 1970.

For the first time at the KSTT, we heard from participants with military training and background shine a light on the mechanics of the shootings at Kent State and the factors that came together to create this egregious military action.

Take a look around today and you’ll see that the lessons learned 40 years ago had a pronounced effect in silencing a generation. Despite the perspective we now have as a nation that the Vietnam War cost us dearly, the spirit of protest has only diminished over the past four decades. I think back on the passion and social consciousness of my peers and the older kids I admired when Allison was at Kent and I can see how badly scarred this feisty, compassionate sixties generation eventually became. Pulling out weapons set aside to defend America and turning them on its children betrayed for many some of the basic social contracts we all took for granted. I believe those wounds have still not healed and continue to plague this country.

We learned about live ammunition and training procedures from a former member of the Ohio National Guard, stationed in the same shooting troop deployed to Kent State. This brave Guardsman from the sixties reported on the use of steel-jacketed, armor-piercing bullets—bullets designed to be used against tanks and structures. These deadly bullets were deployed against Kent State students that day, shooting into a peaceful assembly of unarmed 19- and 20-year-old college kids as they changed classes during lunch time and attended a peace rally on that Ohio spring day.

Howard Ruffner, a student at Kent State and a stringer for Life Magazine at the time of the shootings, arrived at KSTT-SF with a huge stack of photographs he took on May 4, 1970. As an independent observer that weekend, Howard told us he photographed whatever he found—chronicling the exact movements before, during and after the shootings.

Howard shared, “The worst thing that happened to the guard from my perspective is: they were being yelled at and given the finger. It’s hard to understand what would cause people, close to their age, to turn and fire at people, and willingly do so.”

He shared with us his firm belief that the shootings were planned and intentional. “I have no idea what caused that first shot unless it was a planned activity because they got to a marked place, there’s a dirt path between that corner [of Taylor Hall] and the pagoda,” Ruffner told us. “You wouldn’t even have to give an order if you wanted to make a plan, because it’s right there. You get to that place, turn, shoot.”

Ruffner went on to describe how he believed the Kent State students were specifically targeted by the national guard. “It had to be a planned event because of the soldiers turn[ed] in unison. The firing of the weapons and so many shots in such a very short period of time. The fact that they could turn and have specific targets in mind when they got to the top… Some of the guardsmen turned and looked back on occasion on the way up the hill so that by the time they got to that high point they knew who they were going to shoot at.”

Gail Ewing, the first Ohio National Guard to participate, bravely offered his experience from 1964-67, with the same unit involved in the shootings at Kent State 1970.

Sharing chilling, military detail Ewing commented, “We had no training for riot control. I was sent to Cleveland for the riots in 1966 and we were given tear gas grenades and live ammunition and put on guard duty with no instruction on when to load your weapon or when to use tear gas. They just passed it out and put us on guard duty.” This is not unlike the behavior of the Ohio National Guard troop on Blanket Hill at Kent on May 4^th.

Ewing added, “In terms of the decision-making, that order of live ammunition probably came from higher than local company commanders, it was at the state level or maybe even federal level,” confirming that government officials were directly involved in the killings at Kent State.

Linda Seeley, an activist witness to the events of May 4^th, provided a heartfelt look into the elements of fear utilized that day. Here’s her take on the aftermath of Kent State, “The idea that these people could get away with cold-blooded murder in the face of witnesses—hundreds, thousands of witnesses—and never have justice done, only have the innocent being[s] accused [as] perpetrators and only have the witnesses live in fear… There’s a key here to looking at ourselves as a society and what we can do, not only realizing what [we] can do, the power, but realizing how long a wound lasts.”

We’re still processing all of this new information and insight from the narratives we recorded and preserved in San Francisco, and I invite you to take a look at our findings to discover the truth for yourselves.

This image of Arthur Krause was forwarded to me just this morning. Seeing my dad gives inspires me to pursue our right to know the truth and fight for justice at Kent State.

I’m also drawn to a recent comment from a facebook friend on the relevance of what we may learn from Kent State:

Freedom of speech and the right of assembly must be protected. The ability of the government to preserve order is a necessity in a civilized nation. These two elements must be balanced, but it is incumbent on those who are armed to ensure that ONLY those who cannot otherwise be prevented from harming others be subject to potentially lethal violence.

Our San Francisco event also brought Lester Chambers of the Chambers Brothers to ‘share his truth’ on Kent State as his recording of ‘Time Has Come Today’ was at the top of the charts when the Kent State shootings happened. For us, he performed ‘People Get Ready’, expressing his wish to amend the words of this song to: “People get ready there’s a CHANGE a’coming!” Please listen and get ready for the change a’coming!

The Kent State Truth Tribunal, please visit www.truthtribunal.org

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Allison Krause Challenges Kent State Massacre History

Editor’s Note: To learn more about the Kent State Truth Tribunal, please go to www.TruthTribunal.org and to support our efforts.

MendoCoastCurrent, February 2010

Allison Krause was slain at Kent State University on May 4, 1970 by the Ohio National Guard. She was protesting against the VietNam war on her Ohio university campus.

The shots that killed Allison came from the Ohio National Guard that were occupying Kent State University over the first four days of May 1970.

Just before the shots of the Kent State Massacre, the guard turned and marched away from the protesting students. The guard continued up a hill, stopped and then turned in unison. Also in unison, they discharged 13 seconds of 67 armor-piercing bullets from their M1 rifles into a group of unarmed, protesting students, most of them over a football field distance away.

This same troop of guardsmen have continuously claimed that there was not an order to shoot.

Forty years later, everyone involved with Kent State–everyone that has walked this path of horror–knows the truth.

That when the Ohio National Guard marched up the hill and all turned in unison to discharge their weapons in unison…it is evident that it was their intention to shoot as they aimed their weapons at unarmed protesters. Some one made a decision and, as in all military situations, this troop of guardsmen followed orders.

With the advent of findings from a May 7, 2010-reported investigation of the Kent State audio tape by the Cleveland Plain Dealer, new evidence has surfaced to isolate and verify the verbal ‘prepare to fire’ order given by the Ohio National Guard seconds before shooting their weapons.

The trouble is that history does not report the truth at Kent State. And this is the reason for us to gather together for a truth tribunal…to share our stories, personal narratives..to document and honor these truths from all participants.

Allison calls for the national guardsmen to now share their ‘real’ truth at this tribunal. She calls for the truth in 2010!

Allison stood for peace and harmony and she is known for her words, “Flowers are better than bullets.”

This year we all call for the truth to finally be known about what happened at Kent State in 1970!

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The Kent State Truth Tribunal invites your participation, support and tax-deductible, charitable donations. If the Truth at 1970 Kent State matters to you, please join us here.

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Speaking Your Truth

Editor’s Note: Since January 1, 2010, we have been working on the Kent State Truth Tribunal, please go to www.TruthTribunal.org to learn more about our efforts to reveal the truth at Kent State in 2010. Thanks!

On May 4, 2009 I participated in the 39th Annual Kent State University Memorial and gave this talk:

My name is Laurie Krause. I am the sister of Allison Krause, the daughter of Arthur and Doris Krause.

I want to thank you for gathering together today. It’s an honor to be here at Kent State University to participate. I’d also like to thank the student body and May 4th Task Force for inviting me.

I am here to honor people who follow their truths, to respect people who live their ideals, and to focus on the healing of Kent State and our community at large.

39 years ago today, my sister, Allison Krause, was murdered by the Ohio National Guard for protesting and demonstrating against the Vietnam War. Also killed were Jeffrey, Sandra and William, and nine other Kent State students were seriously injured. I’m pleased to see a number of the surviving protesters here today, thank you for being here.

Allison was a freshman at Kent State who was incredibly passionate about life. She was a peace-loving, confident, altruistic, honor-student wanting to get the most out of college, and she was also deeply in love with her boyfriend, Barry.

As my older sister, Allison was someone I looked up to. She was so creative. I still look up to her and continue to be inspired that the whole world may be changed by any real person, like you or me, walking forward with hope and living our ideals and truths.

Let me ask you, today, are you living your truth?

Allison vehemently disagreed with the US government and its involvement in Vietnam so she assembled with many others and protested on Friday, the first of May, not knowing that she was putting her life in jeopardy, yet feeling strongly that the actions committed by our government were wrong.

On that day, a group of 500 students assembled to protest the US invasion of Cambodia. Rallies were planned for Monday to continue protesting the expansion of the Vietnam War.

The Ohio National Guard was sent in on Saturday and Kent State became a war zone overnight. Students were tear gassed and wounded by bayonets during demonstrations taking place over the weekend.

The ROTC building was burned down in retaliation for the students being attacked for expressing their right to protest and assemble.

Press conferences held by Gov. Rhodes called protesters un-American. Rhodes declared a state of emergency, banned any further demonstrations and imposed martial law at Kent. Curfews were set. Students had to run from Guardsmen on campus late at night and Allison ran from them that night. Students couldn’t return to their dorm rooms and were stuck wherever they could find shelter for the night.

Over the following days, the Kent State University campus ignited into one of our country’s worst nightmares.

As tensions heightened over the weekend, Allison called home to my parents to let them know what was happening on campus. My father told Allison to be cautious; he even asked her to back down and not involve herself.

My parents, like most parents, were coming from a place of love for their daughter. They wanted her to be safe.

But Allison was aware of the risks involved. Still, she never considered not protesting against something she was incredibly passionate about. The Vietnam War had just taken a turn for the worse, it was a time when hope for peace was fading.

To Allison, it was an obligation to show dissension to the government invading Cambodia. She made her decision, and we all know the outcome.

That Monday, despite school officials attempting to ban the demonstration by sending out leaflets, more than 2,000 people arrived to protest the government’s actions.

The dispel process began that morning with leaders telling student protestors to go home or be arrested. Students responded to these infringements of rights by throwing rocks. Wearing gas masks, the National Guard used tear gas to exert control over the growing crowds.

After some time with a lot of maneuvering Guardsmen turned in unison and took aim.

The shooting lasted 13 seconds.

Dumdum bullets were used – a type of bullet that’s illegal in warfare – and explodes on impact.

My sister died in Barry’s arms.

Allison’s death symbolizes the importance of our right to protest and speak our truths freely.

The day after the shooting, my father Arthur Krause spoke on television, telling the public how Allison’s death shall not be in vain.

Afterwards, my parents followed their truth through the legal system and in the courts over the next nine years. They sought the truth about Kent State and the reason for the murder of their daughter … going all the way to the US Supreme Court. Their final appeal was settled and the federal government issued a statement of regret.

It’s no secret that my family holds Nixon, Rhodes and the State of Ohio responsible.

Also, with the recently re-discovered audio tape, proof of an order to shoot has been found.

We now know that our government intentionally committed this deadly act against the youth of 1970, calling them ‘bums’ as they protested the Cambodian Invasion.

Triggers were not pulled accidentally at Kent State. What happened was malicious, what happened was irresponsible, what happened was evil.

The shooting was at best, without any forethought, and at worst, with total forethought. Firing on a group of unarmed students, who were simply exercising their First Amendment rights to express dissent with their government was a crime.

What do we do with an order to shoot? What can you do when the government gives permission to use ultimate force, to use deadly force, against its dissenters?

It was the government’s goal to make a defining statement and shut down student protest across the country that day…and they did…for years!

There is no such thing as a true democracy when this happens.

The local, state and federal governments never accepted responsibility for the murder of Allison, Jeffrey, Sandra and William and the injuries sustained by nine others that occurred 39 years ago today.

The people injured in the protests are reminded of it everyday.

The Kent State shooting has changed all of our lives forever, both on the inside and the outside. My family lost its eldest child and were robbed from seeing her blossom in her life past 19 years. I lost my only sister and I miss her each day.

Looking back, did the Kent State protest and killings make a difference?

Well, there was a huge response by Americans.

The Kent State shooting single-handedly created the only nationwide student strike with over 8 million students from high schools to universities speaking out and holding rallies afterward.

And Jackson State also culminated in murderous acts in a similar quest to silence student protest.

We became a nation at war with itself.

But how did we let it get that far? How did this happen?

People will never forget that day at Kent State. Today marks an event that still hits deep for so many of us.

People who were directly involved, people who believe in the Bill of Rights and the freedom to disagree with the government, people who continue to share a vision of harmony and peace for all. We’re all active participants; we are all involved in what happened.

Today is about remembrance, honor, respect and a focal point for a change in the way we handle dissension with governmental actions.

What have we learned? What can we take away from this horrible event?

For starters, we must each take responsibility for what happened so we may learn from the past, to learn from our mistakes.

First, I’m interested in learning more about the re-discovered audio recording from a student’s window ledge during the actual shooting. With new recording and audio technologies, we have revealed that ‘order to shoot.’

The order to shoot has always been a concern. In fact, each and every governmental or military official throughout the legal battle has stated under oath that there was never an order to shoot.

However, I do not accept their words and I ultimately believe they perjured themselves. There is no way the National Guard could march uphill away from the crowd – to turn in unison after reaching the top, and to shoot into the crowd – without premeditated forethought. Their bullets murdered students from over a football field away. There is no way this could ever be accomplished without an order to shoot.  (Click to hear tape.)

Now with this re-discovered tape recording, we finally have proof that an order to shoot was given.

With this tape, it is very much my belief that until the truth is brought to light here, the Kent State Killings will continue to remain an ugly, unknown, unaccounted-for wound.

Case in point, just a little over a week ago Kent State students had another brush with aggressive police action during College Fest, a block party where 60 people were arrested and rubber bullets were shot into the crowd for ‘crowd control.’

People were shot for no reason, arrested for not disbanding, and fires started in the streets.

At an event with no political subtext, we can see how much kindling there already is, waiting for a spark to ignite an explosion of extreme violence. It’s still there!

We’re still seeing the same tension of the Kent State shooting that happened 39 years ago, today. The cause and effect is still active here at Kent State.

Unless we heal these wounds, they shall continue festering.

Instead of focusing on our differences, let’s focus on what brings us together.

Right now, at this point in time, it is critically important that we work together in harmony to benefit all.

We can’t perpetuate this us/them polarization of constant reaction to what’s happening around us anymore. I mean, how’s that working for us? Is that working?

So, how do you heal a community, a nation? Or should I ask, how do we heal ourselves?

Each day as we live our truths, our intentions capture a healing, beautiful, peaceful essence for positive change.

Despite harsh criticism by local residents, even by her own president, Allison and others continued on.

Allison believed in making a difference. Being anti-war and pro-peace and harmony, she was called to action. Although it was not her clear intention, Allison spoke, participated in and died for what she believed in.

The spirit of Allison asks “What are we but what we stand for?”

Don’t hope for a new tomorrow, live it today and live your truth each day. We all make a difference by speaking our truths against all odds.

Through-out my life I looked to my big sister for inspiration. Allison taught me the importance of living a life of intention and truth and I am now consciously and busily speaking my truths.

That is Allison’s message and it not just for me.

I want to close the speech by sharing with you how I have the spirit of Allison in my life as I live on the Northern California coast.

A few years ago under the Bush Administration, a major utility company and the federal government wanted to begin exploring wave energy renewable energy technologies in the Pacific Ocean near where I live.

As it progressed, the administration was very gung-ho on exploring wave technologies with a mentality of ‘throwing technology into the ocean and let’s see what happens!’

In March 2008, I marched for the Mendocino Wave Energy Moratorium, to be a voice for protecting the marine environment, to slow it down for proper environmental research to be conducted and to involve the community in this project.

In 2007 I also began publishing a blog called MendoCoastCurrent. I did this as my personal, political act and operate as the Wave Energy Blogger and an environmental activist now.

Allison showed me that it is my responsibility to live and speak my truth. If I do not agree with what’s happening, it is my right to protest, assemble and voice my concerns.

Since then I’ve encountered quite a few unforeseen obstacles and hostile harassment, yet I still believe that even in the face of opposing forces and arrest, I must fight my good fight…and keep on, keeping on! Allison whispers this in my ear.

Let’s stand up for what is right and best for all. We must protest against injustices and use our voices to speak out when we disagree with what’s happening.

On the Mendocino coast as all looked lost regarding the negative effects of wave energy with mounting environmental concerns regarding this nascent technology in our ocean, President Obama was inaugurated.

Obama and his administration bring us so much good news. They are approaching renewable energy technology from an environmentally-safe perspective along with incorporating community aims and input now. And that massive utility company is following suit.

Environmental concerns in creating safe renewable energy in my community may now be possible!

And I feel Allison smiling!

We must still remain ever vigilant yet I’ve found a great deal of hope and comfort in what I’ve seen these past one hundred days of Obama.

I’m hopeful that we may become more conscious of our use of our precious resources, in using and generating our electricity and in fueling our vehicles.

I’m hopeful that the truth about Kent State will someday be known.

As we learn to speak our truth, even in the face of danger and opposition, we bring change and harmony.

So I ask you…and I ask you for Allison as well…how are you speaking your truth today?

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Allison’s Sister Recording Stories from Kent State

KEVIN FAGAN, San Francisco Chronicle, July 31, 2010

It happened a long time ago in a state on the other side of the country, but the day Ohio National Guardsmen killed four students at Kent State University during an anti-war protest is still a fresh hurt for Laurel Krause.

Her sister, 19-year-old freshman Allison Krause, was one of those killed in what became a tragic touchstone for protests against the Vietnam War. Now, 40 years after the May 4, 1970, shootings that also left nine wounded, Krause has launched a personal project to collect a video history of the event.

The 55-year-old Mendocino County woman will be coming to San Francisco on Aug. 7 and 8 to set up a camera and record the testimonials of anyone who was at the shootings or was directly affected by them. Witnesses, people who were wounded, relatives of victims, teachers, administrators, National Guardsmen – they’re all welcome, she said.

The event will be webcast live from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day on MichaelMoore.com.

‘Truth Tribunal’

Krause, an environment blogger, is calling her project “The Kent State Truth Tribunal.” Her first collection of oral histories – about 70 in all – was recorded in early May at Kent State, when the university was commemorating the 40th anniversary of the killings. After San Francisco she intends to record more recollections in New York City on October 9 and 10.

Co-directing the project with Krause is filmmaker Emily Kunstler, daughter of the late civil rights lawyer William Kunstler.

“Based on what we’ve been told over the years, we think the second-largest group of participants and witnesses to the shootings is in California, and we expect people to come from this state, Washington, Oregon and anywhere else nearby,” Krause said. “We are hoping to get all sides of the story. We want the whole truth to come out about these shootings.”

Public apology

In 1990, then-Ohio Gov. Richard Celeste apologized publicly for the shootings, but nobody was ever officially held accountable for the killings. Varying accounts have been offered over the years of whether the National Guardsmen were ordered to open fire on the anti-war protesters or did so spontaneously.

Krause is convinced the shooting was deliberate. She wants an apology from the federal government, because the U.S. invasion of Cambodia during the Vietnam War was what precipitated the protests that led to the shootings.

“Even 40 years later, it’s still a horrible thing for me and my family,” Krause said. “Allison was my only sibling. She wanted to be an art therapist. And I can never, ever see her again.”

Krause intends to give her collection to a library at New York University.

Earlier this year, the shooting site at Kent State was added to the National Register of Historic Places, and the university started a walking tour of it. The school’s library already has more than two floors worth of archives, including 100 oral histories, devoted to the shootings – but its archivists pick no sides in the historical debate, said Cara Gilgenbach, head of special collections and archives.

“There are many varying narratives of what occurred,” she said.

Find out more

To find out more about the tribunal event in San Francisco, and to register to give a testimonial, go to truthtribunal.org.

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Michael Moore to Broadcast San Francisco Kent State Truth Tribunal

MendoCoastCurrent, July 27, 2010

On Aug 7-8, 2010 filmmaker Michael Moore will livecast the hearings of the Kent State Truth Tribunal, streaming in real-time the accounts of participants and witnesses to the events surrounding the 1970 Kent State shootings, that left four students dead and nine injured. This livecast is a continuation of the first real-time broadcast of a truth-seeking initiative on Kent State and will be broadcast on www.MichaelMoore.com from 9am-5pm PT. The Tribunal in San Francisco follows a four-day tribunal in Kent, Ohio in early May which marked the 40^th anniversary of the campus shootings and assembled over 70 testimonies.

The Kent State Truth Tribunal in May resulted in an outpouring of original participant testimonies, some who shared their stories for the first time since the shootings, forty years ago. Demand for participation was immense at the 40^th anniversary yet many witnesses and participants in the events surrounding the shootings were not able to travel to Ohio.

“San Francisco was a cultural and political hub in the sixties and seventies and it is no accident that so many young people scarred by the events of Kent State headed west after the tragic events of May 1970. Forty years later, the west remains a progressive mecca and many Kent State participants made the west coast their home, like me. We will collect their experiences of the Kent State shootings to continue to try to learn the truth about Kent State in 2010,” said Laurel Krause, tribunal founder and sister of Allison Krause, one of four students killed at Kent.

The Kent State Truth Tribunal was convened by family members of students killed at Kent State in order to record and preserve the stories of those directly affected by the shootings and reveal the truth of what happened on that day 40 years ago. The Ohio National Guard, who opened fire on the protesters, has never publicized the findings of its internal investigation into command responsibility for the shootings.

Michael Moore commented on the truth tribunal: “40 years after the Kent State killings, justice still has not been served. The Kent State Truth Tribunal brings us closer to that goal by sharing first-hand accounts with the public. I am grateful for their efforts and hopeful that some day the truth will come out.”

Three days after the original Kent State Truth Tribunal the Cleveland Plain Dealer broke a major story about a recorded order to fire given to the Ohio National Guard on May 4, 1970. Then on June 15th, in the U.K., British Prime Minister David Cameron apologized for the killings of Bloody Sunday, a strikingly similar event in 1972 where British paratroopers fired on demonstrators, killing 14 people.

Tribunal organizers are asking the United States government to acknowledge the ‘wrongs’ of May 4, 1970, in the hope of reclaiming what was lost that day – freedom to protest and to peacefully assemble and the democratic right to question the government and hold it accountable for wrongdoings.

The Truth Tribunal is generating a comprehensive historical record of the Kent State massacre. Interviews are being conducted by award-winning filmmaker Emily Kunstler and like the 40^th anniversary hearings, will be simultaneously livecast on the home page of www.MichaelMoore.com. Archived interviews can be found on http://TruthTribunal.org/testimonials. The footage and mementos from the tribunal will be physically archived and available for viewing by the public as part of the permanent collection at the renowned Tamiment Library at New York University.

The west coast tribunal will take place over the weekend of August 7 & 8, 2010 at 150 Green Street, San Francisco, California. Organizers are asking for all original participants and witnesses of the event surrounding the 1970 Kent State shootings to pre-register at www.TruthTribunal.org/preregister. An East Coast Tribunal will follow in New York City on October 9 & 10.

On May 4, 1970 the Ohio National Guard opened fire on unarmed students protesting America’s invasion of Cambodia during the Vietnam War. In a day that changed America, four students were killed and nine were wounded as they protested against the war. The incident triggered national outrage in a country already divided. In immediate response to the Kent State shootings, more than four million students rose up in dissent across 900 campuses, generating the only nationwide student protest in U.S. history. No one has been held responsible for the deaths and injuries that resulted from the shootings.

For more information, visit: http://www.truthtribunal.org

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We’re Heading West

MendoCoastCurrent, July 21, 2010

Back in spring 1970, just after the shootings at Kent State, the Kent State University (KSU) campus went on lockdown and every KSU student was forced to leave within hours, many for good. Since we formed the Kent State Truth Tribunal (KSTT), I have heard many KSTT participants recollect their experiences driving out west immediately after. I can picture this mass exodus of Kent Staters championing the back-to-land movement of the sixties and early seventies, in search of a safe haven, close to nature. I can relate as the west coast called to me years later.

Since so many original participants and witnesses that live on the west coast could not make it back to Kent for the 40^th anniversary of the shootings, we are now gearing up for our San Francisco Tribunal on August 7 and 8 from 9-5pm.

Every original participant and witness of the 1970 Kent State shootings is invited to come to San Francisco to “share their truth” at the Kent State Truth Tribunal on August 7 and 8. Please pre-register here: http://TruthTribunal.org/preregister

As the first new media, truth-seeking initiative, the Kent State Truth Tribunal will continue to broadcast live at http://MichaelMoore.com on August 7 & 8 from 9am to 5pm Pacific, each weekend day. Every narrative will be livecast from our studio into your home via Michael Moore’s website, so be sure to watch!

We know the 1970 Kent State shootings wounded more than nine protesters – Kent State wounded a generation. Every young man facing the Vietnam draft and every person protesting the war saw themselves ‘shot dead’ in America that day. These wounds have not healed. The true story of the killings of Kent State remains untold, unknown and unrecorded.

The truth about Kent State will help to heal this generation’s pain. To enable this, we call for the United States government to acknowledge the ‘wrongs’ of May 4, 1970. We are reclaiming what was lost that day – freedom to protest and to peacefully assemble and our democratic right to question our government and hold it accountable for wrongdoings.

Gathering the collective stories of the witnesses of this seminal event in the history of American protest is our call to begin this assembly.

We’re focusing our gaze on San Francisco in early August and we continue on our path toward healing at our next tribunal in New York City on October 9 and 10.

Mark your calendars to watch the Kent State Truth Tribunal in San Francisco from your home computer at MichaelMoore.com. The truth at Kent State will broadcast live through the testimonials of witnesses and participants of the 1970 Kent State shootings.

Please join us.

Attend: August 7 and 8 in San Francisco from 9am to 5pm Pacific. To pre-register: http://TruthTribunal.org/preregister KSTT pre-registration guarantees your space and participation is free.

Watch: From 9am to 5pm, Pacific, you’ll see ‘live, streaming Kent State truth’ at http://MichaelMoore.com.

Questions?  ContactKSTT@gmail.com

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Allison’s Sister, Laurel Krause, on Truth at Kent State

MendoCoastCurrent, filmed May 1, 2010

Watch Laurel Krause in her Kent State Truth Tribunal testimonial, May 1, 2010 in this live stream video.
Laurel Krause’s KSTT livestream 5/4/10

Blip.tv streaming livecast service was bought by Microsoft and then shut down August 20, 2015. When Microsoft bought Blip the entire library of Kent State Truth Tribunal livecast content was DELETED without notice.

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Original Kent State Shootings Movie with Enhanced Audio from 1970

May 22, 2010

Watch this remarkable 1970 Kent State shootings home movie sync’d with a copy of an audio recording enhanced by the Cleveland Plain Dealer in May 2010. The Plain Dealer claims this enhanced version contains the Ohio National Guard’s order to ‘prepare to fire’ at the group of unarmed students. . . do you hear it?

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For History’s Sake, Another Look at–and a Listen to–the Kent State Shootings

The Plain Dealer Editorial Board, May 12, 2010

Dozens of investigators, from the FBI to the Presidential Commission on Campus Unrest, reviewed the 1970 Kent State University shootings, but none could resolve the central mystery: Why did Ohio National Guardsmen pivot and pull the trigger in lockstep when they fired from the university’s Blanket Hill?

Over the years, there was no concrete evidence that the Guard had orders to fire.

Now there is, thanks to a sophisticated analysis of an amateur recording, according to a remarkable story by Plain Dealer Reporter John Mangels this week.

Gov. Ted Strickland should follow up on these intriguing findings and create a commission to study the tape, incident reports and eyewitness testimony and give a full accounting of that tragic day — not for the courts, but for the sake of the historical record.

Likewise, the U.S. and Ohio attorneys general should consider whether the new audio evidence is sufficient to reopen their inquiries and follow up with attempts to verify the tape’s analysis.

A contentious court case over the shootings, which killed four people and wounded nine, was settled in 1979. Ohio paid $675,000 to victims and survivors. There is no need to reopen it.

And it’s true that some important questions may never be answered. Analysis of the tape, for instance, sheds no light on who might have given the order to fire, or why.

However, if what is heard on the recording can be verified as a command, it could shed light in all of the long-hidden corners of this case for the victims left behind and those still absorbing its lessons.

Already much has been learned from the shootings at Kent State. Law enforcement now uses less lethal methods to control even unruly protesters.

Still, deadly clashes between police and civilians continue to occur in tense, hostile times that are reminiscent of Kent State during the Vietnam War.

New Orleans is reeling from recent, stunning admissions from four police officers who pleaded guilty to covering up a police shooting of innocent, unarmed civilians on the Danziger Bridge after the devastating Hurricane Katrina. Police now say they raced to the bridge because of reports of gunfire nearby, but when they arrived, all they saw were unarmed civilians. A U.S. District judge was right to call the revelations sickening.

It took five years for the truth to come out about Danziger Bridge, for the record to begin to be set straight and for some cops to face justice.

Uncovering the truth about the shootings at Kent State University has taken far longer, but with a new revelation in hand, Gov. Strickland shouldn’t give up on it now. History is worth getting right.

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Participant Testimonials – Kent State Truth Tribunal

Watch and learn the truth about 1970 Kent State shootings from the original witnesses and participants recorded at the 40th anniversary in Kent, Ohio.

Kent State Truth Tribunal testimonials

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New Analysis of 40-year-old Recording of Kent State Shootings Reveals that Ohio Guard was Given an Order to Prepare to Fire

JOHN MANGELS, Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 8, 2010

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.”

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40 Years Later: Kent State Truth Tribunal to Examine 1970 Kent State Shootings

Family Members of Victims Seek Full Accounting for Events that Triggered National Outrage; Call for Healing and “Restorative Justice”

Kent, Ohio – On May 4, 1970 the Ohio National Guard opened fire on unarmed students protesting America’s bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War. In a day that changed America, four students were killed and nine were wounded as they protested against the war. The incident triggered national outrage in a country already divided. In response to the Kent State Shootings, more than four million students rose up in dissent across 900 campuses, generating the only nationwide student protest in U.S. history. Fearing civil unrest, President Nixon was taken to Camp David for his protection.

The Ohio National Guard has never publicized the findings of its investigation of command responsibility for the shootings. And importantly, there has never been a public inquiry to hear, record and preserve the stories of those directly impacted by Kent State.

Forty years later, family members of those killed have initiated the Kent State Truth Tribunal to preserve and honor the stories of those whose lives have been touched by this tragedy. The Truth Tribunal will generate the only comprehensive historical record and live archive of the Kent State massacre. The tribunal will take place for four consecutive days, mirroring the events of 1970, and held at Franklin Square Deli Building, corner of Water & Main Streets, 110 S. Water Street, in downtown Kent, Ohio on May 1, 2, 3 & 4, 2010. Organizers are asking for all who were original participants and witnesses of the 1970 Kent State to pre-register at www.TruthTribunal.org

“The Kent State shootings have never been thoroughly examined,” said Laurel Krause who was 15 years old when her older sister Allison was cut down by a Guardsman’s bullet. “We hope the Kent State Truth Tribunal will shed light on the truth of the murders 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, historical inquiry and healing,” she added.

Organizers are reaching out to participants and witnesses to the events of May 4^th 1970 and others who were present on campus and in the community including protesters, Ohio National Guardsmen, Ohio State officials, local residents, students, family members and others who were affected by the shootings.

Among the confirmed participants will be

• Doris Krause – Mother of slain student protester Allison Krause
• Dean H. Kahler – KSU student wounded on May 4, 1970
• Marc Siegel – KSU student witness of May 4, 1970
• Sue Corbin – KSU student witness of May 4, 1970
• Emily Petrou – Kent resident and witness of May 4, 1970
• Joe Lewis – KSU student wounded on May 4, 1970
• Laurel Krause – Sister of slain student protester Allison Krause

The personal narratives of original 1970 Kent State witnesses and participants will be beamed via integrated, new and social media technologies to broadcast live over the first four days of May 2010 and will be available on the Internet at the Truth Tribunal website where it will continue to grow (http://TruthTribunal.org).

The Library of Congress has expressed interest in the recorded masters of the Kent State Truth Tribunal event on May 1, 2, 3 & 4 for inclusion in the American Folklife Center. It is America’s first national archive of traditional life, and one of the oldest and largest of such repositories in the world.

With 18 days away until the event organizers report a groundswell of interest reflected by more than 500 face book fans in its first week, an upswing in registrations from original participants and an endorsement from Michael Moore who has offered free advertising and other support to the Truth Tribunal.

For more information, visit: http://www.truthtribunal.org

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Kent State Truth Tribunal Launches . . .

Editor’s Note: To learn more about the Kent State Truth Tribunal 2010, please go to www.TruthTribunal.org and pre-register to participate as well as support us with your generous donation. Thanks!

April 8, 2010

We are pleased to announce the launching of the Kent State Truth Tribunal website at http://www.TruthTribunal.org

Please visit, peruse and let us know what you think!

If you are an Original Participant and/or Witness of 1970 Kent State we hope you will join us at the Kent State 40th commemoration and Pre-Register to share your truth at the Truth Tribunal here.

See you in Kent, Ohio over the first four days in May at the Kent State Truth Tribunal!

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Four Days in May, Kent State Truth Tribunal

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Kent State Massacre is Calling for Truth

Editor’s Note: To learn more about the Kent State Truth Tribunal 2010, please go to www.TruthTribunal.org and pre-register to participate as well as support us with your generous donation. Thanks!

Anderson Valley Advertiser (AVA), February 24, 2010

LAUREL KRAUSE was 15 when her sister Allison, 19, was gunned down by the National Guard at Kent State. Laurel lives near Fort Bragg these days but still suffers the loss of her big sister who was one of thirteen kids shot that early May day in 1970, four of them fatally. Forty years later, Laurel and her 84-year-old mother have enlisted some heavy hitting help in founding a group called the Kent State Truth Tribunal. Laurel is co-founder with Emily Kunstler, daughter of the late William Kunstler. Howard Zinn endorsed Laurel’s project, as have Paul Krassner and Bill Schaap of the Institute of Media Analysis. The idea, Laurel says as she refers us to full details on Facebook, is to get the stories of everyone involved, get them recorded, preserved and honored in as thorough a way as possible 40 years after the event.

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Kent State Shootings on May 4, 1970 Now in National Register

Editor’s Note: To learn more about the Kent State Truth Tribunal 2010, please go to www.TruthTribunal.org and pre-register to participate as well as support us with your generous donation. Thanks!

ALAN JOHNSON, Columbus Dispatch, February 24, 2010

Nearly 40 years after a volley of 60 shots fired by Ohio National Guardsmen killed four students during a campus protest at Kent State University, the site has been named to the prestigious National Register of Historic Places.

The May 4, 1970, campus shootings site was added to the National Register even though it did not meet the criteria that events being recognized had to have happened at least 50 years ago.

“It was something those students deserved,” said Mark Seeman, a Kent State anthropology professor who helped write the 150-page application. “Now, this place will be recognized by the government of the U.S. as a place where history important to this nation took place.”

Jerry M. Lewis, 73, a Kent professor emeritus who was there in 1970, said what took place that day “was a very crucial event, not only of the Vietnam era, but the student-activism experience.”

The 17.24-acre site near E. Main and S. Lincoln streets, incorporating the Commons, Blanket Hill and the Southern Terrace, was nominated in December by the Ohio Historic Site Preservation Advisory Board.

Among the site’s endorsers: Gov. Ted Strickland. One of his predecessors, Gov. James A. Rhodes, ordered the Ohio National Guard troops to Kent State to quell student protests that he feared were getting out of hand.

On that day in 1970, “Kent State University was placed in an international spotlight after a student protest against the Vietnam War and the presence of the Ohio National Guard on campus ended in tragedy when the Guard shot and killed four and wounded nine Kent State students,” the Ohio Historical Society said.

That set off “the largest student strike in U.S. history, increased recruitment for the movement against the Vietnam War and affected public opinion about the war, created a legal precedent established by the trials subsequent to the shootings and for the symbolic status the event has attained as a result of a government confronting protesting citizens with unreasonable deadly force,” the society said.

Reacting to the shootings, President Richard M. Nixon said they “should remind us all once again that when dissent turns to violence, it invites tragedy.”

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Paul Krassner on the Kent State Truth Tribunal

Excerpted from Paul Krassner’s column, June 2010 issue of “High Times”

Allison Beth Krause

In my book, Magic Mushrooms and Other Highs: From Toad Slime to Ecstasy, Freddy Berthoff described his mescaline trip at a Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young concert in the summer of 1970 when he was 15. “Earlier that spring,” he wrote, “the helmeted, rifle-toting National Guard came up over the rise during a peace-in-Vietnam rally at Kent State University. And opened fire on the crowd. I always suspected it was a contrived event, as if someone deep in the executive branch had said, ‘We’ve got to teach those commie punks a lesson.’” Actually, President Nixon had called antiwar protesters “bums” two days before the shootings. While Freddy was peaking on mescaline, CSNY sang a new song about the massacre:

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming
We’re finally on our own
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in O-hi-o…

Plus nine wounded. Sixty-seven shots – dum-dum bullets that exploded upon impact — had been fired in 13 seconds. This incident on May 4, 1970 resulted in the first general student strike in U.S. history, encompassing over 400 campuses.

Arthur Krause, father of one of the dead students, Allison, got a call from John Ehrlichman, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs, who said, “There will be a complete investigation.” Krause responded, “Are you sure about that?” And the reply: “Mr. Krause, I promise you, there will be no whitewash.”

But NBC News correspondent James Polk discovered a memo marked “Eyes Only” from Ehrlichman to Attorney General John Mitchell ordering that there be no federal grand jury investigation of the killings, because Nixon adamantly opposed such action.

Polk reported that, “In 1973, under a new Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, the Justice Department reversed itself and did send the Kent State case to a federal grand jury. When that was announced, Richardson said to an aide he got a call from the White House. He was told that Richard Nixon was so upset, they had to scrape the president off the walls with a spatula.”

Last year, Allison Krause’s younger sister, Laurel, was relaxing on the front deck of her home in California when she saw the County Sheriff’s Deputy coming toward her, followed by nearly two dozen men.  “Then, before my eyes,” she recalls, “the officers morphed into a platoon of Ohio National Guardsmen marching onto my land. They were here because I was cultivating medical marijuana. I realized the persecution I was living through was similar to what many Americans and global citizens experience daily. This harassment even had parallels to Allison’s experience before she was murdered.”

What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Now, 40 years later, Laurel, her mother and other Kent State activists have been organizing the “2010 Kent State Truth Tribunal” (see http://bit.ly/8AD8TQ) scheduled for May 1-4 on the campus where the slaughter of unarmed demonstrators originally occurred. The invitation to participate in sharing their personal narratives has been extended to 1970 protesters, witnesses, National Guardsmen, Ohio and federal government officials, university administrators and educators, local residents, families of the victims. The purpose is to uncover the truth.

Laurel was only 15 when the Kent State shootings took place. “Like any 15-year-old, my coping mechanisms were undeveloped at best. Every evening, I remember spending hours in my bedroom practicing calligraphy to Neil Young’s ‘After the Goldrush,’ artistically copying phrases of his music, smoking marijuana to calm and numb my pain.” When she was arrested for legally growing marijuana, “They cuffed me and read my rights as I sobbed hysterically. This was the first time I flashed back and revisited the utter shock, raw devastation and feeling of total loss since Allison died. I believed they were going to shoot and kill me, just like Allison. How ironic, I thought. The medicine that kept me safe from experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder now led me to relive that horrible experience as the cops marched onto my property.”

She began to see the interconnectedness of those events. The dehumanization of Allison was the logical, ultimate extension of the dehumanization of Laurel. Legally, two felonies were reduced to misdemeanors, and she was sentenced to 25 hours of community service. But a therapist, one of Allison’s friends from Kent State, suggested to Laurel that the best way to deal with the pain of PTSD was to make something good come out of the remembrance, the suffering and the pain. “That’s when I decided to transform the arrest into something good for me,” she says, “good for all. It was my only choice, the only solution to cure this memorable, generational, personal angst. My mantra became, ‘This is the best thing that ever happened to me.’ And it has been.” That’s why she’s fighting so hard for the truth to burst through cement like blades of grass.

***

The Kent State Truth Tribunal invites your participation, support and tax-deductible, charitable donations. If the Truth at 1970 Kent State matters to you, please learn more about us here.

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Still Searching for Kent State Truth

Editor’s Note: To learn more about the Kent State Truth Tribunal 2010, please go to www.TruthTribunal.org and pre-register to participate as well as support us with your generous donation. Thanks!

February 5, 2010

Found this YouTube providing background and historical analyses of the Massacre at Kent State University on May 4, 1970…near 40 years ago.

Ironically truth as in ‘what really happened’ remains unexplored.

The Kent State Truth Tribunal invites your participation, support and tax-deductible, charitable donations. If the Truth at 1970 Kent State matters to you, please join us here.

Watch:

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Howard Zinn on Kent State & the Truth Tribunal

Editor’s Note: To learn more about the Kent State Truth Tribunal, please visit www.TruthTribunal.org

MendoCoastCurrent, January 28, 2010

Learned of Howard Zinn’s death last night. He had a heart attack while swimming in Los Angeles. His passing, my grief and our recent interaction prompt this recollection.

Howard Zinn has been a lifelong mentor, friend ~ an inspiration to me. He was my college professor more than three decades ago so I’m proud and blessed. He opened my mind and spirit to a better world, introducing me to Emma Goldman, anarchy and civil rights. With Howard’s help, I saw and believed in a more just, harmonious world.

It began when I enrolled in Dr. Zinn’s class at Boston University in 1973. He wrote of meeting my folks in his book You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train:

The Cambodian Invasion provoked nationwide protests, and on the campus of Kent State University, in Ohio, trigger-happy National Guardsmen fired into a crowd of unarmed student demonstrators, killing four of them, crippling another for life. A photo flashed around the world showed an unarmed young woman, her face anguished, bending over the body of one of the dead students.

On television I saw the father of one of the victims, Allison Krause, barely able to control his grief, pointing to the fact that President Nixon had referred to student protesters as “bums.” He cried out, “My daughter was not a bum!”

A few years later, when some visiting parents were sitting in on the introductory session of my course “Law and Justice in America,” I handed out the syllabus, which included as one of the course topics the shootings at Kent State. At the end of the session, one of the new students came up and introduced herself and her parents. She was Laurie Krause, the sister of Allison Krause. I recognized her father from the television screen and felt a pang of unease that their unspeakable grief was represented so matter-of-factly on a course syllabus. But they seemed to appreciate that the Kent State affair was not forgotten.

The spring of 1970 saw the first general student strike in the history of the United States, students from over four hundred colleges and universities calling off classes to protest the invasion of the Cambodia, the Kent State affair, the killing of two black students at Jackson State College in Mississippi, and the continuation of the war.”

Howard Zinn has been the only historian to understand and correctly depict the massacre at Kent State. He was appalled at our treatment in the judicial system over those nine years following the shootings.

Fast forward 35 years to early January this year ~ just two weeks ago ~ Howard and I exchanged emails on the Kent State Truth Tribunal, an event Emily Kunstler and I are organizing right now. We were seeking his participation in creating our truth forum on the Kent State Massacre, May 4, 1970.

This year at the 40th anniversary of the shootings, May 1-4, 2010, we invite everyone involved and affected by the Kent State Massacre to come forth and be heard. Our aim is to enable the sharing of 1970 Kent State personal narratives, document and record these stories as we weave them into a collective truth. ALL participants from that day include protesters, university employees, university students, national guardsmen, Ohio and federal servants, and those deeply affected.

So back to Howard: My last email from him led to his apology for being unable to attend in May and he shared this:

Laurie, learning and spreading the truth is the most important thing you can do to acknowledge what took place at Kent State. That was the essence of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and applies equally to our own history in the US.”

The Kent State Truth Tribunal invites your support and tax-deductible, charitable donations. If the Truth at 1970 Kent State matters to you, please join us here.

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Launching: 2010 Kent State Truth Tribunal

Editor’s Note: To learn more about the Kent State Truth Tribunal 2010, please go to www.TruthTribunal.org and pre-register to participate as well as support us with your generous donation. Thanks!

Allison asks for your help now

Winter 2010

The Kent State Truth Tribunal in 2010

We invite you to join us for the 40th anniversary of the 1970 Kent State Massacre.

If Kent State matters to you, please come to participate in the Kent State Truth Tribunal, early May 2010, at the Kent State University campus in Ohio.

The Truth at Kent State Calls to be Revealed in 2010

Inviting the extended family of the 1970 Kent State Massacre:

• All witnesses of the 1970 Kent State Massacre
• Kent State protesters or students
• Ohio National Guardsmen
• Ohio/federal government and public servants
• Kent State Univ. administrators/educators
• Local residents
• Families damaged by the killings
• Citizens that deeply care about the truth at Kent State
• Leading practitioners in consensus-building, truth and forgiveness

Please join us by traveling to Kent, Ohio and participating in early May 2010.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Kent State Massacre at Kent State University in Ohio. On May 4, 2010 the Kent State Truth Tribunal will reveal the truth surrounding the murder of four young American protesters and the wounding of nine others on May 4, 1970.

The chief goal of the Truth Tribunal is to correct history as we record, document and honor the truth gathered from personal narratives of witnesses and participants from the original shootings. The truth of what happened at Kent State on May 4th 1970 will finally be available for all to hear, read, see and know. The resulting archive will be disseminated in published transcripts, streaming video and audio, film and through social media.

If the truth at 1970 Kent State matters to you, and you wish to become meaningfully involved in helping create, organize, fund and successfully reveal the truth about the killings and massacre, please let us know. With early May liftoff, we have a short fuse!

To join now, see the facebook event: http://bit.ly/7AKZl3 and facebook cause: http://bit.ly/4NoM4r There is also considerable writing on Kent State, Allison Krause and the Kent State Truth Tribunal here.

The Kent State Truth Tribunal invites your participation, support and tax-deductible, charitable donations. If the Truth at 1970 Kent State matters to you, please join us here.

Please spread the word by going to the Kent State Truth Tribunal facebook event, joining in and sharing it with your family, friends and colleagues.

Thank you,

Laurel Krause

sister of slain KSU student Allison Krause

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The Daily Kos on the Kent State Massacre

Editor’s Note: To learn more about the Kent State Truth Tribunal 2010, please go to www.TruthTribunal.org and pre-register to participate as well as support us with your generous donation. Thanks!

Kainah, The Daily Kos, May 24, 2006

At 12:24 pm on May 4, 1970, twenty-eight Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on the Kent State campus. When the shooting stopped, four students lay dead or dying while an additional nine had suffered wounds ranging from minor to life-threatening. The shootings had lasted thirteen seconds but legal repercussions would continue for nearly a decade.

In Part I, we look at Nixon’s curiously timed announcement of the Cambodian invasion and the May Day rally at Yale University. Part II examines the events of that weekend at Kent. Part III explores the events of Monday, May 4. Part IV deals with the immediate aftermath of the shootings. Part V looks at the various investigations following the shootings. Part VI examines the federal grand jury and criminal trial of eight guardsmen. Part VII concludes the series by examining the years of civil proceedings.

In memory of Jeffrey Miller, Allison Krause, Bill Schroeder, and Sandy Scheuer, join me in exploring the aftermath.

(First, let me apologize that it has taken three weeks to continue this series. The reaction to my May 4 diary was absolutely overwhelming and it left me emotionally and physically exhausted. This, then, is offered as a “bonus edition” in the series, dealing with the immediate aftermath. Part V will cover the legal aftermath. Now, on with the story…)

News of the shootings spread quickly across the country that May afternoon. The first reports claimed that two Guardsmen had been shot. Whether disinformation or a mistake, many heard this news and took it as evidence of the deadly intent of the student protesters. However, within hours, the truth of students shot and killed overtook the earlier rumors.  As parents and friends tried to connect with those in Kent, the phone lines jammed and then, in mid-afternoon, crashed. The inability to get accurate information in or out heightened anxieties. For four families, the incomprehensible news of the shootings would give way to the heartbreaking realization that their children were gone forever.

Sarah Scheuer was painting the house on May 4, her twenty-seventh wedding anniversary, when she heard news of the shooting. She immediately tried to call Sandy’s house but it took several hours to get through. When she finally did, one of Sandy’s roommates told her that she better come right away:  “Sandy’s in the hospital, but that’s all we know right now.” The roommate also told Sarah that Sandy’s wallet was still in the house. Sarah then called Robinson Memorial Hospital in Ravenna and asked whether there was a wounded girl, dressed in a red shirt and blue jeans, with no identification. The administrator she spoke with wasn’t sure but confirmed that at least one of the injured girls had no identification. Sarah and her husband, Martin, quickly left their home in Boardman, near Youngstown, for Ravenna. At the hospital, they asked about Sandy. A police officer overheard them and, assuming they’d heard the news, asked if they had come to identify the body. Still hoping there was a mistake, Sarah asked if the unidentified girl was wearing a gold ring with a blue stone. The policeman went into the morgue and returned to confirm that, yes, the girl was wearing such a ring. After the morgue had been cleared of the other dead students, the Scheuers were allowed in to identify Sandy.

Jeff Miller’s mother, Elaine, heard about the shootings on the radio as she drove home from work in Long Island. She decided then and there to make Jeff come home because it just wasn’t safe in Kent. At home, she called Jeff’s off-campus apartment. Although by this time in late afternoon, the phone system was severely overloaded, Elaine’s call somehow got through on the first try. The phone rang and rang and rang. Finally someone picked up. Elaine asked to speak with Jeff. The voice on the other end asked “Who is this?” When Elaine, annoyed by the question, replied, “It’s his mother,” the boy replied bluntly, “He’s dead.” Elaine began to shriek. Her husband-to-be, who had followed her home, found her in a heap at the end of her bed, still holding the phone and screaming incoherently. Later that night, Jeff’s father and brother flew to Ohio to bring Jeff’s body home. When shown his son’s body in the morgue, Jeff’s father initially refused to identify him. His face had been so badly damaged by the bullet wound, Bernard Miller simply couldn’t recognize him. After the shock wore off, he realized that, indeed, this was his son. Later, this event would be twisted by those who wanted to paint the student victims as worthless agitators deserving of their fate. “Did you hear,” the rumor mill asked, “that Miller’s own father couldn’t recognize him because he was so dirty?” Back in New York, the funeral director advised Jeff’s mother not to view his body because of the extensive damage. Still in shock, Elaine accepted that advice and regretted it for the rest of her life. Months later, the high school that Jeff attended (and where his mother and would-have-been stepfather worked) held a memorial service for him. A boyhood friend told the crowd:  “Like many of us, (Jeff) left for college confused, seeking answers and trying to legitimize his own existence. Now his search has ended. A National Guardsman’s bullet has brought him the final reality. Dust to dust – another statistic – why should the world notice?” He finished his eulogy with a poignant question:  “Jeff, friend, you as much as anybody typified the fact that we all march to the beat of a different drummer. Why didn’t you tell me it was going to be a procession?”

For several hours after the shootings, reports indicated that a “William Schneider” was among those killed. Back at Bill Schroeder’s apartment, his roommates waited for Bill to return. When the 5:00 curfew came and went without Bill appearing, his roommates got “that sick feeling” that William Schneider was really William Schroeder. Around 5:15, one of Bill’s friends got through to the apartment and he told Bill’s roommates that he had seen Bill after he was shot, but that he was just wounded. Bill’s roommate, Lou Cusella, then called the hospital to ask if William Schneider had been positively identified. The hospital said he hadn’t. The hospital urged Cusella to call State Senator Robert Stockdale, a professor at Kent State, who had been given the job of notifying the victims’ families. Stockdale asked Cusella if he would be willing to go to the morgue to try to identify his friend. Cusella agreed, reluctantly, and soon thereafter, a sheriff’s department car arrived to transport Cusella to the morgue. There, after being frisked, Lou was taken to a viewing room. Behind a pane of glass, Cusella saw Bill’s profile. “Oh god, it’s him,” Cusella told the officials. Later, Cusella called Stockdale to ask how Bill’s family had taken the news. “Not too well,” Stockdale told him. In fact, Stockdale had never called the Schroeders – or the Scheuers, the Krauses or Millers. Instead, Bill Schroeder’s mother, in Lorain, had heard the reports of a William Schneider dead. Her repeated calls to his apartment never got through. Then, at 4:00, someone from the Cleveland Plain Dealer called to ask if the family had a picture of Bill the newspaper could use. When Florence Schroeder asked why, the reporter quickly apologized, saying he must have called the wrong house, and hung up. When Lou Schroeder got home, his wife persuaded him to go talk to a neighbor, a Lorain policeman. The policeman assured the Schroeders that, if Bill had been killed, they would have heard by now. But, at 6 PM, the Plain Dealer reporter called again. This time, he said he had reliable information that William Knox Schroeder had been killed at Kent State. Minutes later, a Lorain police dispatcher called the Schroeders and gave them a number to call. The number turned out to be Robinson Memorial Hospital where they were put in touch with a hospital administrator who asked if Senator Stockdale had called them. When Florence said no, the administrator told her that Bill had “expired.” Florence Schroeder collapsed.

Allison Krause’s uncle lived in Cleveland. In the early afternoon of May 4, he heard a report that there had been trouble at Kent and that his niece had been killed. He called his brother, Arthur, and relayed what he was hearing on local radio. Arthur immediately called his wife to get Allison’s phone number. Not wanting to alarm his wife until he could find out more, Arthur mentioned nothing of what his brother had told him. Meanwhile, Allison’s little sister, Laurie, was on her way home when a neighbor told her that KDKA, a local Pittsburgh radio station, was trying to get in touch with her family. When Doris, Laurie and Allison’s mother, called home a bit later, Laurie passed along the message. Doris called KDKA and a reporter there told her that Allison had been shot. Doris began frantically trying to get through to the hospital, with no luck. Eventually, someone suggested using a police band radio and they were finally able to get the emergency call through. Doris asked if there was an Allison Krause at the hospital and was switched to the hospital administrator. She asked her question again and received a chillingly blunt reply, “Yes, she was DOA.” (DOA=dead on arrival) Even that turned out to be disputed as Allison’s boyfriend, Barry, who rode with her to the hospital, swore she was alive when they arrived. The Krauses left for Ravenna in the early evening. At the hospital, reporters crowded around Arthur Krause seeking a statement. In his grief, Krause told the reporters:  “All I know is that my daughter is dead! I’m not on anybody’s side. We were so glad we had two daughters so they could stay out of Vietnam. Now she’s dead. What a waste. What a terrible waste.” He hesitated and then went on:  “I’d like to know who the boys were who shot my daughter. I’d like to meet them. They’re young, immature guys who joined the National Guard to stay out of Vietnam. They’ve got a miserable job to do.” The Krauses stayed at the hospital until an ambulance came to take their daughter’s body to a funeral home. The next day, an emotional Arthur would again speak to the media and his powerful words would be broadcast on all the national news networks:  “She resented being called a bum because she disagreed with someone else’s opinion. She felt that our crossing into Cambodia was wrong. Is this dissent a crime? Is this a reason for killing her? Have we come to such a state in this country that a young girl has to be shot because she disagrees deeply with the actions of her government?” (emphasis added)

The state of Ohio did extensive autopsies on all the students killed that day and, even though it went against the tenets of his Jewish faith, Arthur Krause decided to have another autopsy done once Allison’s body was returned to Pittsburgh because, even then, he didn’t trust any official report. After the second autopsy had been completed, her devoted family laid Allison to rest in a small Jewish cemetery in Pittsburgh. A few weeks later, they got a check from Kent State University for $514. It was a refund for Allison’s spring tuition.

Before the end of June, Arthur Krause had filed a wrongful death suit against Ohio officials, including Governor Rhodes and National Guard Generals Del Corso and Canterbury. When his lawyer asked Krause how much he wanted to sue for, Krause responded $1. For him, the lawsuit had nothing to do with money and everything to do with holding people accountable. Informed that federal courts required a certain dollar threshold before they would entertain the suit, Krause thought for a bit and then announced he would sue for $6 million. Asked later how he arrived at that figure, he said it represented $1 for every Jew killed in the Holocaust. (Three of the four students killed – Scheuer, Krause and Miller – were, by chance, Jewish.) By mid-September, the parents of Jeff Miller and Sandy Scheuer had also filed suit.

Meanwhile, all across the country, college students tried to understand what had happened. Their gut instincts, combined with what many had seen happen on their own campuses, convinced them that the students had been innocent and that the Guard had overreacted. The shock of the killings, however, was heightened for many when they called home that afternoon. Scared and upset, they heard their own parents denounce the students and proclaim that “they should have shot them all” or “they must have done something to deserve what they got.” This widespread attitude that blamed the victims for their fate only served to pull the generations further apart. A fog of grief and outrage descended. One report described how, in the weeks after the killings, the citizens of Kent would greet each other by flashing four fingers, signifying, “We got four.”  Bill Gordon, author of Four Dead in Ohio:  Was There a Conspiracy at Kent State would call the Kent State shootings “the most popular murders ever committed in the United States.”

Students, reacting to what they believed was murder, took to the streets to demand answers and to remember their fallen comrades. Memorial vigils occurred that night all across the country. Over the next few days, however, many campuses moved from quiet candlelight vigils to more direct action. A nationwide student strike was called and, by the end of the week, some 800 campuses had been shut down, affecting nearly four million college students. It was the largest such event in American history. Many students went home but others, fearing parents who supported the actions of the National Guard, wandered from friend to friend, searching for some place to hang out until their campus reopened. That first weekend, hundreds of thousands of students found that place in Washington, DC, where people from all over the country gathered to protest the killings and demand accountability.

The DC protesters that weekend included Jeff Miller’s older brother, Russ, who left for DC shortly after his brother’s funeral in New York’s historic Riverside Church. Thousands of young people gathered outside, waving banners with peace doves and blown up photos of Jeff lying dead on the pavement. One placard declared “WE THE PEOPLE MOURN OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS.” When police arrived with barricades, the wary youth stood back and then, respectfully, they helped the police set up a barrier to provide space for the hearse carrying Jeff’s body. Inside the glorious old church, the large crowd heard a series of distinguished speakers remember the 20-year-old none of them had known. NY Senator Charles Goodell told the crowd, “We pledge to do what we can to make this a meaningful death.” Dr. Benjamin Spock, the outspoken opponent of the war in Vietnam, also spoke:  “Young people…are willing to look at the terrible injustices that exist in the United States. They have the courage to act out their idealism. They put the rest of us to shame. To me, the most impressive thing of all this is that they cannot be intimidated. The more efforts there are at oppression, the more it opens young peoples’ eyes. (Jeff’s) death and the death of the other three at Kent State may be a blessing. This may do more to end the war in Vietnam than all the rest of us have been able to do in five years.” Rabbi Julius Goldberg noted that Jeff had been “killed by a fusillade of bullets labeled fear, panic, mistrust, war to end wars.” He admonished the crowd to “listen to Jeff’s brothers and sisters. We must give peace a chance.” Finally, when the service ended, six pallbearers carried Jeff’s simple hardwood coffin down to the street where the young, mostly long-haired mourners filled the street for a block in either direction. When they saw the coffin, the kids became silent and raised their hands in the peace sign. Later, Elaine Miller Holstein would say that she had no real understanding of how the memorial service came to be. She didn’t know who had arranged for the service to be held in Riverside Church. She had no knowledge of how so many VIPs came to speak at the funeral. She just remembered the kids outside. She knew that they were really the ones who had come to remember Jeff as a person, rather than as a symbol.

Meanwhile, in Washington, DC, Richard Nixon heard the news on May 4 and issued a statement supposedly expressing regret but really just blaming the students for their own deaths:  “This should remind us all once again that when dissent turns to violence it invites tragedy.  It is my hope that this tragic and unfortunate incident will strengthen the determination of all the nation’s campuses, administrators, faculty and students alike to stand firmly for the right which exists in this country of peaceful dissent and just as strongly against the resort to violence as a means of such expression.” (emphasis added)

On Friday, May 8, Nixon held a press conference where, as expected, most of the questions revolved around the shootings. As he spoke to the press, students had begun gathering in D.C. for the massive weekend protest. When asked what he thought the students were trying to say with their protest, Nixon replied:  “They are trying to say that they want peace. They are trying to say that they want to stop the killing. They are trying to say that they want to end the draft. They are trying to say that we ought to get out of Vietnam. I agree with everything that they are trying to accomplish.” He added, “I think I understand what they want. I would hope they would understand somewhat what I want.” When asked if he felt the country was heading into a period of revolution and repression, he pointed to the pending demonstrations as evidence disputing this claim. “Briefly, this country is not headed for revolution. The very fact that we do have the safety valves of the right to dissent, the very fact that the President of the United States asked the District Commissioners to waive their rule for 30 days’ notice for a demonstration, and also asked that that demonstration occur not just around the Washington Monument but on the Ellipse where I could hear it–and you can hear it pretty well from there, I can assure you–that fact is an indication that when you have that kind of safety valve you are not going to have revolution which comes from repression.” In fact, by this point, buses had been brought in to surround the White House and, according to Alexander Haig, troops had been stationed in the basement in case students decided to attack.

Following the press conference, Nixon went back to his quarters where, apparently, he began drinking heavily. Unable to sleep, he began working the phones. As Army troops moved into position to protect government buildings from the demonstrators, Nixon made 47 phone calls in four hours, including eight to Henry Kissinger, seven to Bob Haldeman, and at least one each to Norman Vincent Peale and Billy Graham. While we still don’t know everyone he called, we do know that one of the calls went to DeWitt Wallace, founder and publisher of Reader’s Digest which had a well-deserved reputation of printing books and articles that “portrayed an America that was kindly, religious, self-sufficient, neighborly, and staunchly anticommunist.” A few days later, Wallace would commission James Michener to write Kent State:  What Happened and Why, a massive work designed to prove that what happened at Kent State was a tragedy in which no one was to blame. Michener’s high profile and solid reputation, combined with the marketing power of Reader’s Digest, gave the book wide circulation. For years, publishers approached about doing another book on the shootings would decline, pointing to Michener’s work as “definitive.” Unfortunately, however, like most of Michener’s works, he sprinkled fiction in with his facts. The result could more honestly be called a “nonfiction novel.” But Nixon got what he wanted and DeWitt Wallace was rewarded in 1972 when Nixon conferred on him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

To his dismay, Nixon discovered that even this mad round robin of phone calls couldn’t calm his brain. After finally giving up on phone calls, Nixon listened to Rachmaninoff’s First Piano Concerto. When that, too, failed to bring peace, Nixon summoned his personal valet, Manolo Sanchez, and asked if he had ever visited the Lincoln Memorial at night. When Sanchez replied that he had not, Nixon decided to go sight-seeing despite the fact that it was now 5 AM. Without alerting his Secret Service detail, Nixon summoned a limousine and took off with Sanchez for the Lincoln Memorial. There, they found thousands of students hanging out on the steps, waiting for the next day’s protests. The students, of course, were stunned to see Nixon approaching. They stood by respectfully while the President clumsily attempted to engage them in conversation. Nixon talked about surfing and football and how travel would broaden their understanding of the world. Mostly, the students maintained a stunned silence. Finally, Nixon told the protestors to enjoy their time in D.C. but admonished them to keep things peaceful. He then left, with Sanchez still in tow, and went over to the Capitol. In the chamber of the House of Representatives, Nixon encouraged Sanchez to give a speech to the empty chamber while Nixon sat and listened. One can only imagine the thoughts running through Nixon’s head as he remembered his days in the House and the Senate. By then, however, the Secret Service had realized their most important person had gone missing. They tracked him down and brought him back to the White House where, referring to his talk with the students at the Lincoln Memorial, he said simply, “I doubt if that got over.”

A few days later, after seeing pictures of the students shot down at Jackson State, Nixon would say, “What are we going to do to get more respect for the police from our young people?” Later, Henry Kissinger would confide his belief that, that May, Nixon was on the verge of a mental breakdown. H.R. “Bob” Haldeman would suggest in his Watergate memoir, The Ends of Power that the shootings deepened the White House paranoia, thereby adding to the conspiratorial thinking that ultimately forced Nixon from office. For those of us who believe that the Nixon administration was not necessarily caught off guard by the shootings, this explanation sounds like another attempt to blame the victims.

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Kent State Massacre Scene Nominated as Historic Site

Editor’s Note: The family of Allison Krause seeks and supports the creation of the Kent State Truth Tribunal, a collaborative, multimedia, sharing event to dialog, document, discover and uncover the truth in the events leading to the killing of four students and wounding of nine at the Kent State Massacre.

At our event, commencing exactly 40 years later, we invite all concerned persons, all witnesses, all concerned humans and all those damaged by the Kent State Massacre to come together to SHARE, RECOUNT and EXPLORE what really happened at the Kent State Truth Tribunal to finally uncover the truth!

If you wish to join and support this event, please go to http://bit.ly/91Ez5X . The Kent State Truth Tribunal asks for your tax-deductible, charitable donations. If the truth at 1970 Kent State matters to you, please give generously here.

ALAN JOHNSON, The Columbus Dispatch, December 2, 2009

It’s not unusual for a battlefield to be declared a historic site, but it’s rare when the scene of a protest qualifies for that distinction.

But what happened at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, is indeed history.

Ohio officials want to recognize that by nominating 17 acres on campus to the National Register of Historic Places.

The Kent State site is one of five that the Ohio Historic Site Preservation Advisory Board will review Friday for nomination to the National Register. View a video of this meeting to learn more about this nomination, here: http://bit.ly/7VSgmi

The Ohio Historical Society, which handles the nominations, acknowledged that the Kent State events happened less than 50 years ago. However, the events were nationally significant, according to the nomination:

“They caused the largest student strike in United States history, increased recruitment for the movement against the Vietnam War and affected public opinion about the war, created a legal precedent established by the trials subsequent to the shootings and for the symbolic status the event has attained as a result of a government confronting protesting citizens with unreasonable deadly force.”

The nominated site includes 17.24 acres on campus in three areas: the Commons, Blanket Hill and the Southern Terrace.

That is where Ohio National Guard members, called out by then-Gov. James A. Rhodes, clashed with protesters, eventually shooting into the crowd, killing four students and injuring nine others.

Sites, buildings, structures and objects are listed on the National Register because of “their significance in American history, architecture, archaeology, engineering, and culture”

Being named to the National Register does not obligate property owners to preserve or improve the property, nor does it prevent alteration, sale or even demolition. The final decision on nominations is made by the National Park Service program administrator.

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BOOK EXCERPT Gimme Rewrite, Sweetheart: Tales from the Last Glory Days of Cleveland Newspapers by John Tidyman

November 25, 2009

Editor’s Note: To learn more about the Kent State Truth Tribunal 2010, please go to www.TruthTribunal.org and pre-register to participate as well as support us with your generous donation. Thanks!

A reporter named Jim Dudas from the Cleveland Press contributed this story on a National Guardsman present at the Kent State Massacre:

The year was 1971 or 1972. A federal grand jury had just handed down indictments of a number of Ohio National Guardsmen for the events on the afternoon of May 4, 1970, when the guardsmen fired upon a group of students protesting the United States’ bombing of Cambodia. The guardsmen were accused of violating the civil rights of the four slain students.

I was a relatively new reporter for the Cleveland Press. I had just been assigned the federal courts beat. And I was hungry and aggressive.

The morning after the indictments were handed down, and reported in the morning paper, the city editor came to my desk first thing upon my reporting for work and told me to go to Wooster, a small community about two hours south of Cleveland, and see if I could talk with one of the indicted guardsmen, Matthew McManus.

None of the indicted guardsmen were answering their phones or returning calls. I had McManus’ home address from the indictment. I found the home, left my car and rang the bell and rapped on the door. No answer. No surprise.

Not wanting to return empty-handed, I took a chance and found a phone booth (there were no cell phones then) and called the largest employer in town, Rubbermaid. The receptionist put me right through to McManus, a mid-level manager.

I remember to this day my exact words: “Hello, Mr. McManus, my name is Jim Dudas with the Cleveland Press, and I would like to get your side of the story about the indictments.” I did not say shootings because it would have implied that he actually shot and/or hit a student. He was not eager to talk, but he was too polite not to.

When it appeared he was willing to talk with me, I panicked. I didn’t expect the interview. I left my notebook in the car. But not wanting to slow him down or disturb him as he patiently and comprehensively answered my questions, I started writing on my hands, arms and, ultimately, my bare ankles, which, at the time, I could lift and rest on the small shelf in the booth. (Fortunately, I had only two days prior shaved my legs from the calves down in preparation for taping them for a marathon I was planning to run).

He was saying things no other guardsman had said before. He was scathing in his judgment of his commanding officers. I knew it was going to be a good story. I started running out of bare skin and he started running out of patience.

I asked if we might meet for lunch (it was then about 10 a.m.) to further explore some of his comments. “I will have to talk with my attorney,” he said. “Call me back in about an hour.” I knew there was not a snowball’s chance in hell that his attorney would let him talk to me while under federal indictment. Still, I hung around Wooster and, while waiting, transcribed my notes from my skin to my reporter’s notebook.

At precisely 11 a.m. I called McManus back. “Yes,” he said, “I did talk with my attorney and he does not think it a good idea for me to talk with you.” I thanked him for trying and hung up the phone. I did this hurriedly because I did not want him inquiring about what I might or might not do with the notes from our earlier conversation.

Not to be pejorative, but McManus was kind of unsophisticated, and I knew it almost immediately by the way he answered the questions. He was as unassuming and forthright as any subject I had talked with.

So here was my dilemma that I had two hours to think about as I drove back to the newspaper office. I had a great story, one we called a “one-er” (front page, above the fold). I also knew it was a national story. But I knew in my heart of hearts that McManus did not know talking to a reporter, without stipulating that it was an off-the-record conversation, could automatically be an on-the-record story.

My city editor was not expecting a story. No one else had one. McManus was not living at his home, so coming back empty-handed would not have hurt my career one bit. Only I knew I had a story. Only I knew I had a choice.

I did not want to hurt McManus. He was, after all, a fine young man, with a family, a bungalow and a comfortable existence in one of those storybook communities. And I knew a story like the one I had would cause him pain, embarrassment and, perhaps, impact the outcome of his trial.

But I had this freedom of the press thing to deal with, as well. I had my professionalism. And, yes, I had my ambition. Those three things were part of the mix, and I found it impossible to separate them.

About halfway into the ride, I forced myself to stop thinking about it. I put a Bob Seeger tape in the car stereo (I think it was an eight-track) and decided I would make a decision at the front door of the Press. An hour never went so quickly. There I was, facing the front door and the biggest decision of my nascent career.

Let me add that I was raised by the Golden Rule. My parents instilled fair play into all of us. There were six kids in the family and, to a kid, we all found a way to befriend those on the playground who were otherwise friendless. It was not goodness, it was just expected.

I kept putting off the decision as I slowly climbed the stairs to the building. There were 10 of them. And I took my time with each. I kept putting off the decision and decided that once I grabbed the handle of the door, I would make up my mind.

I touched the door and said to myself: “I’m going to go with it.”

I ambled up to the city editor. “Bill,” I said, “I think I got a hell of a story. He talked to me.”

The city editor sprang into action so we could get it into that afternoon’s edition. He assigned the best rewrite man on the paper (some would say one of the best in the country) to sit down with me and take my notes. I read them to him. He asked me some questions. “Are you sure he said that?” he would ask. I would look at my leg or other note-sullied skin and read my notes and reply: “Positive.”

Each page was ripped from the rewrite man’s typewriter and rushed to the composing room, where they were already remaking Page 1. We got it in the first edition. It was a banner headline that used the most damning quote: “We were led like blind fools.” It referred to the officers.

I was the toast of the city room. That evening, gathering my stuff in preparation for going home, one of my buddies said: “You look bummed out, wanna go have a beer?” “Nah,” I said, “I think I just want to go home.”

That evening I got a call from Dan Rather, who, at the time was an ambitious reporter for CBS. He asked how he could contact McManus. My story had hummed across the wires and it was national news.

My feelings about McManus were swirling in my head. I knew that McManus would not likely talk to Rather. Still, I decided, in my own way, to protect the small-town kid who was suddenly thrust in the big-time spotlight.

“Dan,” I said, “I can’t give you that information. I have to protect my source.” He understood, and hung up. At least I had that to feel good about.

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Re-Examine Kent State Now, Let’s Finally Get the Truth Out

Editor’s Note: The Kent State Truth Tribunal invites your participation, support and tax-deductible, charitable donations. If the Truth at 1970 Kent State matters to you, please join us here.

MendoCoastCurrent, October 3, 2009,  December 14, 2009, March 11, 2011

Allison Krause, Autumn 1969, collecting funds the anti-war effort

On May 4, 1970, 67 bullets were fired at protesting anti-Vietnam war students on the Kent State University campus. The 13-second discharge of the Ohio National Guard weapons devastatingly concluded four days of protests with the death of four and wounding of nine young American students.

In courtrooms over the next 10 years, all the way to the US Supreme Court and back, National Guardsmen and Ohio government officials testified the guardsmen marched away from the protesting Kent State students, up a hill, then turned in unison, to discharge M-1 rifles into unarmed, protesting students, many over a football field away — all claiming it occurred without an ‘order to shoot.’

It is believed, yet obviously still-to-be-proven, that an ‘order to shoot’ was indeed given at Kent State. Common sense and physics alone support this.

[At the Kent State Truth Tribunal in NYC October 2010, forensic evidence expert Stuart Allen examining the Kent State Tape ~ Discovered, presented and expert-verified the Kent State shootings order to shoot, read about it here ~ http://bit.ly/cO69Yx A violent alternation and sniper fire 70 seconds before the national guard barrage is recorded and verified on the tape. Watch Stuart Allen’s Kent State Truth Tribunal narrative here ~ http://bit.ly/dakhWw Allison’s family learned the truth about the killings at Kent State in 2010. Please visit the KSTT at http://TruthTribunal.org]

On May 4, 2009, Laurel Krause participated in the 39th Kent State commemoration for her sister, Allison Krause entitled Speaking Your Truth ~ http://bit.ly/9Zi1wQ). She concluded, “Triggers were not pulled accidentally at Kent State.”

With the 40th memorial approaching quickly, the Krause family is wishing to work with others to create a tribunal over the first four days in May at the Kent State University campus to uncover the facts about what occurred forty years earlier.

We are now launching the Kent State Truth Tribunal to discover, uncover and examine what really happened and to learn the PEOPLE’S TRUTHS about those four days in American history. Let’s explore through art, music, video interviews, poetry, enactments, rituals and discussions.

We see this as appropriate BOOKENDS to the event. When we uncover the final, long-sought-after truths of what occurred those Four Days in May so long ago…the truth shall set us free, history shall be corrected from hence day forth and we will share in this beautiful healing!

Won’t you please join us by helping to uncover the truth at Kent State at the 40th?

*******

December 2010, Congressman Dennis Kucinich offered to publish Kent State: Truth Emerging in this Cold Case Homicide by Laurel Krause in the United States Congressional Record. A current view on the Kent State shootings, killings from Allison Krause’s family.

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The Aftermath of Loss

Editor’s Note: To learn more about the Kent State Truth Tribunal, go to www.TruthTribunal.org. Please lend your support to our efforts for Truth & Justice.

A tribute to my sister, slain 1970 Kent State University student protestor against the Vietnam War, Allison Krause.

Becoming Galvanized by Laurel Krause & Delaney Rose Brown

Putting the finishing touches on my face, I looked in the mirror and had a funny feeling about the day ahead.  I saw a healthy, bright-eyed, intense 53 year old woman glancing back with excitement and dashes of hope and desirability in knowing a nice man had just called to ask me out on a date that afternoon.  I accepted the invitation and as I dashed around my place, I realized it had been a while.  It felt like today was going to be different and maybe extraordinary, perhaps even life-changing.

Feeling optimistic and energized, I walked outside onto my front deck to take in the warm, late morning California sunshine and the calming beauty of my view on the rural Mendocino coast.  I turned around to look at the sun and feel the winter mid-day rays shine on me.

Unsure if it was real or if I imagined it, I tried to focus my over-40 eyes; it looked like the lead Mendocino County Sheriff’s Deputy marching towards me from the gate.  Nearly two-dozen men followed behind like bees in a hive, some fiddling with the gate to take it off its track while others were coming through in vehicles and, most disturbingly, officers aggressively following the Deputy marching towards me.  It was hard to fathom why so many officers were coming at me and Manny, my small dog that Friday noon.

There I was, standing barefoot in a beautiful dress pretty with perfume, and all the grace of the day suddenly vanished.  I immediately felt raw with shock.

Grabbing the deck rail to steady myself, I moaned “Ohhhh shittttt!”

Then before my eyes, the officers morphed into a platoon of Ohio National Guardsmen marching onto my land through the gate.  A soundtrack played in my head and everything went fuzzy:

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,

We’re finally on our own.

This summer I hear the drumming,

Four dead in Ohio.

Gotta get down to it

Soldiers are gunning us down

Should have been done long ago.

What if you knew her

And found her dead on the ground

How can you run when you know?        –“Ohio,” Neil Young, CSN&Y

In that split-second, I was back at Kent State University in 1970 when the Ohio National Guard shot and killed my sister, Allison Krause, during the Vietnam War protests on campus.  My time was up, les jeux sont faits and now they were coming for me too.

This was the first time I flashed back and revisited the utter shock, raw devastation and feeling of total loss since Allison died.  Back in early May 1970, I remember hearing my first news of Allison from a neighbor as I arrived home from junior high that afternoon, “Allison has been hurt.”

As the emotions took over, I began to physically, mentally and spiritually re-feel the learning of my sister’s death at the doorsteps of our home.  I broke down and couldn’t maintain control of anything in our environment, myself included.  I watched the progression of events outside of myself, as a witness instead of really being there, and having this happen to my family and me.

Later in life I learned that I was born into this world, the child of Arthur and Doris Krause and little sister of Allison Krause, to integrate balance into my surroundings and live in harmony.  In following this life path, I have sometimes yielded to the signposts of life that pop up to offer guidance.  Other times I have shielded my view of them, denied them or ignored them altogether.  As I’ve aged, I have had this opportunity to come to terms with myself.

I’ve learned that until health, balance or resolution is achieved and harmony is found, the signposts only get stronger, or shall I say, fiercer…and they continue to revisit until the message is finally decoded and hopefully integrated.

Focusing on my breath, I buckled to the ground while painful emotions ran through me, returning me to the moment.  Here I was experiencing one heck of a signpost as the sheriff’s deputy steadied me on the deck of my home and flashed the search warrant in my face to snap me back to reality – they were here because I was cultivating medical marijuana.  They cuffed me and read my rights as I sobbed hysterically.  While the cops searched through everything in my home, I was arrested and taken to jail.

Whether I missed the date or stood him up that day, there was no doubt I blew it with my suitor.  But it was nonetheless true that this Friday in late February was personally unforgettable and life changing.  It wasn’t exactly the kind of day I had imagined earlier or would have even asked for, but sometimes we are simply receivers of environmental impact, having little control or power over circumstances.  As we navigate through key life situations, there are choices and decisions we must make and therein lies our power: how we manage and exert our essence.  The outcome of events largely depends on how we respond to the situation, hopefully by creating an opportunity for positive growth to take away from it.

Arriving back home that night to my ravished land, I found doors left open, the gate was thrown off its hinge and the inside of my home strewn with debris from the enforcement teams raiding my property. It was hard to believe that my land, a place I had personally toiled on and developed these past five years, felt so negated and exposed.  In the supposed safety of my beloved home, I was scared, ravaged and vulnerable.

It wasn’t until the second month following my bust that I put together the pieces and realized the telltale signs of post-traumatic stress disorder.  Even though the sheriff’s men didn’t pull their guns on me during the arrest, once I saw the guns in their holsters, I feared for my life.  As they marched onto my property, I believed they were going to shoot and kill me, just like Allison.

Back in that state of mind, I again felt the same pain I experienced losing Allison nearly forty years ago. This is how PTSD manifests. This was how I took care of myself back then, what I did at the onslaught of extreme loss on a personal and cosmic level.

Cricket, one of Allison’s friends from Kent State and a therapist, suggested one late night phone call after the bust that PTSD doesn’t ever go away.  She suggested that the best way to deal with the pain of PTSD was to make something good come out of the remembrance, the suffering and the pain.

That’s when I decided to make the bust something good for me, good for all.  It was my only choice, the only solution to cure this memorable, generational, personal angst.  My mantra became, “This is the best thing that ever happened to me.”

And it has been.

Recounting my bust six months hence, I continue to confuse my words.  I replace the sheriff’s deputies with national guardsmen.  At night in dreams I see the guardsmen marching through my gate in unison.  My bust triggered the post-traumatic stress I experienced from my sister being murdered at Kent State in 1970.  She was protesting against the Vietnam War, most specifically, the Cambodian Invasion along with Nixon’s verbal harassment of the protesting students, calling them ‘bums.’  My sister, Allison Beth Krause, was shot dead by the National Guard with dum-dum bullets that exploded upon impact, as she protested more than a football field away from her killers, the U.S. government.

Back in 1970 with my parents in the room where Allison laid lifeless, I watched from outside in the hospital hall.  I saw what used to be ‘her’ lying there.  I noticed that her spirit had already left, and everyone was a mess.  My parents identified her body and as we walked the halls in the hospital, we heard others murmur, “they should’ve shot more.”

Like any fifteen-year-old, my coping mechanisms were undeveloped at best.  Every evening, I remember spending hours in my bedroom practicing calligraphy to Neil Young’s ‘After the Goldrush’…artistically copying phrases of his music…smoking marijuana to calm and numb my pain.  Feebly attempting to come to terms with the loss of my sister, and like so many others, the loss of feeling safe in the United States.

Years later I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of what happened to Allison.  Over thirty years later to help alleviate the effects of this emotional disorder, which is commonly characterized by long-lasting problems with many aspects of emotional and social functioning, I began cultivating my own medicine, marijuana.

How ironic, I thought. The medicine that kept me safe from experiencing PTSD now led me to relive that horrible experience as the cops marched onto my property.  There was no getting away from it.  No matter how much medical marijuana I smoked, I couldn’t change the fact that my sister was killed and I had not healed from it. None of us had healed from it.

Right after my bust, I could barely put a sentence together, yet after a few days back home from jail, I got really mad.  As a medical marijuana caregiver/patient, I had the proper documents and made every effort to grow marijuana legally on my rural, gated property, and I ended up getting arrested.  How did this happen?

Two weeks later as I entered my ‘not guilty’ plea in court, I learned that the seeds of my bust were sown with nuisance complaints.  Mendocino County nuisance ordinances encourage anyone who doesn’t like his or her neighbors, to send anonymous letters to the Sheriff complaining of ‘foul odors’ and road traffic.  These anonymous letters are basically crafted templates to complain of fabricated nuisances…at least in my case.  Taking advantage of this ordinance, hateful residents in Mendocino County found a way to make trouble for their neighbors by criminalizing them, especially the newcomers to the community.

I moved to the Mendocino coast five years ago, when I purchased five acres of undeveloped land in a rural area next to an agricultural preserve.  It was the first and only property my real estate agent showed me in 2004, and there was no doubt this magical spot called me.  When I arrived, it felt as if I was summoned, and now it’s clear that Allison and Dad were those pulling forces.

I remember parking my car at the end of the dirt driveway and looking out, enchanted by the view and turning to ask my friend, “Is that the ocean?”  I knew it was.  I saw this awesome, remote landscape before me and was captivated by the beautiful ecosystem of life.  The rolling meadows extending miles to the sea with hawks soaring above the fields, searching for prey.  Mice sheltering in the grasses that feed the cows continually grazing as they wander their weekly path across vast acreage that I observe each day, intending to minimize my impact.

My neighbors however, did not share my enthusiasm for my active life here, and they quickly judged me as a ‘city slicker.’  I had somehow missed their angry sentiments when I decided to make my move to the coast.   But the fact remained that I had already sunk everything I had into creating this fantasy-come-true and with the the bust, I was thrown down an even deeper financial hole.  My dream was crashing in on me.

After my bust, sporadic harassment continued as neighbors pulled pranks, engaged in petty vandalism and pursued other childish haunting tricks.  As I watched with dread, I felt exposed, off-balanced…almost shameful.  Then I remembered the Kent State hate mail my family received for over a decade after Allison was killed. While there were many very supportive, loving people and notes that came forward, the hatefulness of those scribbled letters had tremendous resonance.  Over time, I learned that the letter writers’ issues and angst sent our way (and now at me again) had very little to do with us.  I now see it as a manifestation related to duality, polarization and prejudice…us v. them, conservative v. progressive, rich v. poor, powerful v. downtrodden.

The days following my bust crept by; I burrowed in and rarely left my land.  In an effort to heal, I opened myself up and dug deep into my essence, asking for divine guidance.  That Spring, I often created rituals at my firepit, beckoning for direction and instruction.  I was asking to hear how I could be of best service to all.  That was when I heard Allison and my Dad come forward.  They wanted me to get active…to do something important for them.

As I recovered, I noticed that I was decoding the signposts in my life easier and quicker than usual, with increased clarity.  I realized the persecution I was living through was similar to what many Americans and global citizens experience daily.  This harassment even had parallels to Allison’s experience before she was murdered at Kent State almost forty years ago.

I began to see the interconnectedness of these events.  Full circle, I saw how the enduring effects of Kent State continue impacting today through powerful reverberations  Unresolved energy and extreme disharmony of this magnitude continued to reappear, rerunning on similar themes from the past, becoming stronger and continuing to add more insult to injury until we make things right. It became clear that this is true on a personal level as well as in collective consciousness.

The universe had already begun to push me towards searching for the truth with the signposts and alarming events. I started to understand this wasn’t something I could simply run away from.  At a very deep level, there was unfinished business surrounding cause and effect of certain events in my life and I was encouraged to take a hard look at it.

One fateful day in early April, the telephone rang.  My friend Alan Canfora, a wounded student in the Kent State Massacre, called to invite me to speak at Kent State University’s 39th memorial event. Normally I don’t relish public speaking, yet I quickly accepted.

So I began tailoring a speech for the Kent State memorial with Delaney Brown, a young activist living in the area.  Through the process of writing Speaking Your Truth, we were compelled to learn more about the recently re-discovered audio tape that recorded the Kent State protest on May 4th, 1970.  On that day, a student placed a microphone outside his dorm room window to record the protests on campus.  A copy of a copy (at 4th or 5th generation), hidden away and unearthed from the Yale Library only two years ago in 2007, the original audio tape has never been studied, forensically examined or explored.  Listen to tape here.

Those among the community directly involved in the Kent State Massacre, agree this audio tape holds the key to unlocking the truth at Kent State.  This new information or ‘truth’ is critically important as it contains documented evidence of a recorded ‘Order to Shoot’ that has been continually denied.  With the discovery and proof of an order to shoot, we finally document the intent to kill and ultimately reveal the truth about what occurred.  This is the truth that was so long ago suppressed and denied as guardsman and government officials continually perjured their testimonies to support their cover-up.  The contents of this audio tape shall play a dramatic role in the history of the Kent State Massacre as well as our own individual, national and global perceptions of the event.

I realized I had to focus my energy on that tape and become involved in isolating the ‘Order to Shoot’ given by the Ohio National Guard, to finally learn the truth about Kent State.  As the Strubbe tape had never been explored or analyzed, I wanted to help make that happen and follow it down.

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