Kent State Audio Experts Allege FBI Lab's Analysis of Tape Based on 'Beyond antiquated' software

​    The FBI has finally released a summary of its report showing how it tested the tape of the Kent State shootings, and the summary confirms that the tests used to dispute two audio experts' claims that there was a "prepare to fire" order were based on technology that is "beyond antiquated."

     That is what audio forensics expert Stuart Allen told me after I read to him the summary the FBI report made available after numerous Freedom of Information Act requests. The report states that the FBI used RAP-R 2, SoundForge3, AvidPro Tools, AdobeAudition3, and ES-4 as opposed to SoundForge10 and the more advanced Russian S.I.S. Sound Cleaner. Allen's fellow forensics expert Tom Owen similarly dismissed the FBI's tools as "off the shelf vendor stuff" that cannot replicate the results Allen and Owen obtained.

     At issue here is whether or not a command "prepare to fire" was issued by someone in the Ohio National Guard shortly before the troops fired into a crowd of protestors at Kent State on May 4, 1970, killing four students and wounding nine others. The soldiers denied under oath at the 1975 civil trial that any such orders were issued, and if Allen and Owen's interpretations are correct, it means at a minimum there was extensive perjury at the trials. Some survivors of the May 4, 1970 tragedy believe that it also proves the Guard committed murder. A presidential commission in 1970 concluded the shootings were "unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable."

     Although most of the contributing causes of the May 4, 1970 killings have been identified, the precipitating cause remains the subject of debate. The controversies surrounding the killings are not acknowledged in the university's new May 4 Visitors Center, which will be celebrated this Saturday, the 43rd anniversary of the killings, with panel discussions and a speech by filmmaker Oliver Stone.