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Kent State
by Joe Bialek
May 3, 2012

This letter is in response to the articles covering the Justice Department's decision not to reopen the probe of the 1970 Kent State shootings.
Well, it appears the ghosts of Tin Soldiers and Nixon are coming back to the Kent State Campus.
First, your most ambitious students are being charged more money because they choose to take more credit hours {without any justification for the increased fees}. Second, the annual out-of-control beer party is put down by a armed SWAT team wearing similar uniforms as the Guardsman did 42 years ago {except that this time the tear gas is far more potent}. Now you have a Justice Department under the leadership of a Democratic President that decides they would rather look anywhere but at KSU or for that matter perhaps Dealey Plaza, the Lorraine Hotel and the Ambassador Hotel. Per the article: "The FBI's Cleveland office apparently destroyed the original Strubbe tape in 1979, according to the Justice Department." This begs the question: why wasn't it given to the Smithsonian Museum as a artifact of history? Why the rush to destroy the tape?

Per the article: "Some details of the altercation Allen identified on the recording seem similar to an incident involving Terry Norman, a Kent State law enforcement student who was carrying a concealed .38-caliber pistol during the May 4 protest. Norman was photographing demonstrators for the Kent State University police and the FBI. He claimed he was assaulted by angry crowd members and said he drew his gun to warn them away." Further: "Several witnesses said they heard a Kent State policeman who inspected Norman's gun exclaim that it had been fired four times." And finally: "Some Guardsmen claimed they had fired in reaction to gunshots, possibly from a sniper..."

Listening to the audio tape recording of what transpired that fatal day one can fairly easily trace the sequence of events. What prompted the Guardsmen to fire appears to be their hearing of pistol shots coming from the crowd of protesters.

Now given the hostile environment {they got themselves surrounded by} any type of nearby gunfire would certainly invite such a retaliatory response. Someone in a officer capacity ordered the Guard to shoot because they believed their troop was in harms way. What a bizarre series of events. All this time, because of a deliberately botched investigation by the FBI {as with the other cases mentioned} we the American People have been duped into thinking the deaths and injuries of thirteen students was the result of some rogue element within the Ohio National Guard where in fact it turns out that a under-cover spy sent in by the law-enforcement establishment inadvertently {or perhaps purposely} set off this chain of events when he was discovered by a angry few {who also helped set off the tragedy by their actions}.

The Strubbe tape is the Zapruder film of this historic event; something the "authorities" didn't count on. One has to wonder if there were other audio or even video tapes that recorded this event only to be confiscated by "officials" as they were in Dealey Plaza. All four events have the same common denominator: do not mess with America's war machine because the consequences can be deadly. Perhaps one day other students {or faculty} will have the courage to come forward to tell what they know or perhaps tell what they were told not to say. Maybe KSU will have it's own "Deep Throat" hero emerge shortly before their death so they can reveal what truly happened. Boy would this make for a great Oliver Stone Film; a movie director who is rewarded financially by taking advantage of the lack of accountability by the United States Government. As Colonel Jessup {Jack Nicolson} in "A Few Good Men" shouts "You can't handle the truth" the response by the American people must always be "let us decide what truth we can and cannot handle" otherwise what is the point of the United States Constitution? We must get to the bottom of this tragedy before it is too late. Citizens of this great country: It's up to you.