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Audio Analysis Brings New Revelations From Kent State Shooting

a_nonamiss writes "The Cleveland Plain Dealer is reporting today on new forensic analysis by audio scientists Stuart Allen and Tom Owen on a recently discovered audio tape from the Kent State shootings. The analysis suggests that four shots from a .38-caliber pistol were fired 70 seconds before the National Guard opened fire on a crowd of student protesters, killing four and wounding nine others. The alleged shooter, student Terry Norman, was hired by the FBI to take photos of the protesters. It has been known for some time that he had a .38-caliber pistol on his person the day of the shootings, but he has always claimed that the gun was not fired during the protest, a claim that was backed up in sworn testimony from authorities at the time."

22 of 289 comments (clear)

  1. flowers to a gun fight by dlt074 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    hmm FBI employee shoots his weapon to get something started and then plausibly denys it. nothing to see here.

    on that note. never take a flower to a gun fight. when an armed person(legal authority or otherwise) tells you to stop, leave, get out of his face, and you don't have a weapon. you leave, period. you don't just stay there thinking they are not going to shoot you because you are "peaceful". they don't know that and they probably don't care.

    1. Re:flowers to a gun fight by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Absolutely. Obey authority. Always. Because they will kill you if you do not.

    2. Re:flowers to a gun fight by Seumas · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Government agents infiltrate situations or causes to instigate and manufacture threats, violence, or confusion in order to promote or convince the rest of the country to condone action against said infiltrated group? Tell me it ain't so?

      Also, in other news, the sky is blue.

      It baffles me how people just accept the stories they are fed without ever questioning them. It is downright sickening to see how people just open their heads and let things just pour in, unchecked.

      Next thing you know, someone is going to suggest that governments spread stories through the media outlets or back actual actions -- either of which promote suspicion of and urgency in dealing with foreign threats to justify taking action on a national level -- from sanctions to blockades and tariffs to military action against them....!

    3. Re:flowers to a gun fight by cosm · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Conservatives murder hippie protesters

      It is this polarization between parties that results in nothing being accomplished in America. Blanket statements like that are A) False, unless you can confirm that everybody that landed a bullet was a conservative, B) Begging the questions, for them to be murderers renders them shooters, for them to be shooters renders them conservative, for them to be conservative renders them against hippie protesters, round and round we go.

      How about just saying that the Man fucked up. Screw party affiliation. If we are always blaming left or right, we will always get screwed up the middle by both. Stop viewing the world through the R-D filter and start viewing it as us (people) vs them (people we elect). Oh wait.

      --
      'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
    4. Re:flowers to a gun fight by HiThere · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Or how about noticing that "left" and "right" are pretty much media inventions. To make politics easy to explain using sports metaphors. Yay for our team!

      What this was, was people in power manipulating a situation to disadvantage people without power, and masses of people accepting the explanation, because they didn't have much choice, and anyway only one side was really heard. (Different sides in different places, but still only one side.)

      It was after this that it coincidentally happened that all the major publishers started being acquired by major corporations...which wasn't a directly profitable action, publishing being relatively unprofitable. But which did mean that those publishers wouldn't print anything that the major corporations didn't approve of. (At least nothing they strongly disapproved of. The control was, and remains, indirect. The management chooses the editor who chooses what to publish.)
      In this context it's worth noting that demonstrations now get minimal coverage in any media. This despite the fact that one would expect them to be more newsworthy as that occur less frequently.

      Note that this is not a unanimous group. To call this a conspiracy is probably incorrect. It's merely that people in a position of power have certain interests in common that are not the same as the interests of people who are not in a position of power. And they tend to act to forward those interests.

      Another thing that happened at around this time was that the political process was nominally loosened by allowing the easier formation of political parties while simultaneously centralized by removing the requirement that broadcasting stations allow equal amounts of partisan campaigning by all parties. This made money the central requirement for being heard. (It had already become a major requirement.)

      Also note that in the US the election system (primarily, but not entirely, the means used to count the votes) is so structured that only two parties have a reasonable chance to win an election. There have been only a few times when an incumbent party became so weak that it essentially abdicated it's position to an alternate third party. Even Teddy Rooseveldt wasn't able to overcome this bias. I *think* that Instant Runoff would be quite superior, and I'm quite convinced that Condorcet voting would be superior. And, yes, it's true that it can be proven that no fair voting system can exist, but this doesn't mean that some aren't better than others. And the majority rule system is about the worst. (Not as bad as minority rule, of course.)

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
  2. Re:Cause and Effect by a_nonamiss · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Definitely a fair point. However, if someone starts waving a gun around and firing shots, that's a good way to whip up a crowd of angry people into a fury, where the guardsmen might have legitimately felt threatened. 70 seconds is probably too long for him to have been directly responsible, but just about the right amount of time to have been a crucial catalyst.

    --
    -Arthur
    Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
  3. Actual story by Sara+Chan · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here is a direct link to the actual story in the Cleveland Plain Dealer: "Kent State tape indicates altercation and pistol fire preceded National Guard shootings (audio)"
    --it should have been in TFS.

  4. Re:Not a direct provocation, but... by a_nonamiss · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I am far more bothered by the fact that a) Mr. Norman was on the payroll of the FBI at the time and b) authorities (may have) lied under oath about the fact that Mr. Norman discharged his weapon during the protest. This implies that the FBI was at least indirectly involved in the massacre and directly involved in the cover-up.

    I'll give you that Mr. Norman probably didn't directly trigger the massacre, although shooting a gun in a crowd of angry people probably didn't contribute to happy peaceful feelings at the protest. However, the government at the time seems to have actively and knowingly participated in a cover-up. This bothers me a lot. It should bother everyone. A lot.

    --
    -Arthur
    Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
  5. Re:Not a direct provocation, but... by bcmm · · Score: 4, Informative

    The article states that there is video evidence of Terry Norman being chased by someone claiming he shot someone, running away and handing his gun to an officer that opens it and states that it's been fired 4 times.

    Read more carefully. While the officer was seen opening Norman's gun by a camera crew, it seems they weren't filming at the time. The reason the new analysis is interesting is that it contradicts the FBI's claim that that gun was not fired, while matching up well with eyewitness accounts ("oh my God, he fired four times") which were made by people with no knowledge of the tape.

    --
    # cat /dev/mem | strings | grep -i llama
    Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
  6. Re:Cause and Effect by D'Sphitz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But feeling threatened is no excuse to start picking off uninvolved, unarmed people hundreds of feet away at random. "Someone in the crowd may have a gun, so shoot them all to be safe"

  7. Re:Cause and Effect by john82 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    My brother was a student at Kent State and there the day of the shooting. He had always insisted that the guards did not fire first.

  8. Re:Should Have Shot Them All by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Should have shot all of the traitors.

    Except where would Obama get his advisors?

    if you think shooting "traitors", such as those college kids, is acceptable, then shouldn't you be shot now for your opposition to Obama?

    nice logic!

  9. FBI response to information requests by tomhudson · · Score: 4, Funny

    The alleged shooter, student Terry Norman, was hired by the FBI to take photos of the protesters

    Reporter: We want to interview Terry Norman. Where is he?
    FBI Liazon: He's deceased.
    Reporter: Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. When did he die?
    FBI Liazon: Tomorrow.

  10. Re:Cause and Effect by mspohr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Looks like the FBI fired first.

    --
    I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
  11. Re:70 seconds ??? by sco08y · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's suspected that the Guard believed Norman's shots to be sniper fire.

    Sniper fire from a .38 Special revolver? Not likely. Doesn't even sound similar.

    "Don't worry about those bullets coming from an unknown shooter, men, they're only 38's!"

  12. Re:Not a direct provocation, but... by jedidiah · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Spend any time with the justice system and you will see this for yourself.

    It's not just Hollywood nonsense. Cops actually act like this. It's probably not limited to American cops either.

    Cops won't even make their lies terribly believable. They benefit greatly from the respect they get from most people.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  13. Re:What caliber was used on the students? by kevinNCSU · · Score: 4, Informative

    No one, the Ohio National Guard included, is debating whether the guard opened fired and killed protesters. This is unequivocally true. The question here is whether sometime before the guardsmen open fire if someone else in the crowd fired shots contributing to the shooting by either riling the crowd towards violence or causing the guardsmen to feel threatened and thus clear the area with violence or both.

  14. Re:Cause and Effect by multisync · · Score: 5, Informative

    It doesn't mean it was HIS .38 firing. That's hardly an uncommon caliber.

    More from TFA:

    Some witnesses claim they saw Norman fighting with several students and waving or pointing his gun

    TV footage shortly after the shooting shows Norman running toward a cluster of Guardsmen and police, pursued by a man who yells that Norman has a gun and has shot someone. The TV film shows an emotional Norman hand his pistol to a Kent State patrolman and describe an assault by protesters.

    The TV reporter and sound engineer say they saw a Kent State detective open the pistol's cylinder and heard him exclaim off-camera that it had been fired four times. Officers' written statements contended it was fully loaded and unfired.

    The new analysis of the audio recording lends credibility to existing evidence that Norman fired *his* gun. It's no longer just a case of his word against that of a bunch of hippie protestors, and warrants the further investigation that is now taking place.

    --
    I don't care why you're posting AC
  15. It pays to know older people by Suki+I · · Score: 4, Interesting
    From an older friend who was around then and later was in the military, including the National Guard:

    The Guardsmen waited until being given an order to fire. That wait causes a delay. This tape is not new, it has been around, used in various trials and news specials about the incident since 1970.

    He is working on a blog post about it now.

  16. Re:Cause and Effect by Lord+Ender · · Score: 5, Insightful

    At some point, the soldiers selected targets and fired on them. No matter what the "tension" or "provocation," those men placed their cross-hairs on people who were obviously not a threat and executed them.

    I would love to hear, in the soldiers' own words, how they picked their targets.

    --
    A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
  17. Re:no firearms != unarmed by nbauman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Ever been hit in the face with a thrown rock? It won't just leave a bruise; you WILL require surgery, and pray to God you don't have a fractured skull or spinal column (the likely result if the rock busts through your teeth into your mouth).

    This sounds as if you were hit on the face with a thrown rock. Were you?

    I actually researched this once, in the context of the Israeli soldiers killing Palestinian rock-throwers and justifying it with the claim that stones were "lethal weapons."

    No Israeli soldier was ever killed by a Palestinian throwing a rock at him.

    As it turned out, Slate had an article on the more general subject ("Getting stoned: how many police officers have been killed by rocks?"), which reported 3 police officers killed by rocks, 1 of them thrown, since 1792, and none in the last 70 years (out of 18,983 fatalities). Police departments teach that a rock isn't deadly beyond 50 feet.

    I can't imagine how a policeman wearing riot gear, which includes a helmet and face shield, could be killed by a thrown rock.

    (Actually, I was hit in the face myself with a thrown rock, by a neighborhood kid who was pelting my house with stones. He broke the window I was looking through. I had a minor cut from the glass, but no serious damage. I caught the kid and brought him home to his parents, who were profusely apologetic and fixed the window.)

  18. Re:no firearms != unarmed by arthurpaliden · · Score: 5, Informative

    Was hit in face with a rock. Lost an eye.