Obama Officials Refuse to Investigate New Evidence in National Guard 1970 Kent State Shootings

This Can't Be Happening
Linn Washington Jr.

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

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

That blocking action by Obama officials includes an apparent unwillingness to investigate new evidence providing damning insights about that shooting orgy forty years ago, which heightened criticism about U.S. foreign policy in Vietnam and about the abuse of domestic political dissidents.
The inaction on this case comes as opposition grows to Obama’s escalation of the unpopular war in Afghanistan and its expansion into Pakistan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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