When Bob Woodward speaks at Kent State on May 4, someone should ask him about an article he and Carl Bernstein he wrote for the Washington Post way back in 1973 (May 17, to be precise). Quoting their infamous source, "Deep Throat," the reporters wrote that the Nixon administration used an array of dirty tricks against protestors of the war in Vietnam, including the use of  paid provocateurs to encourage violence at antiwar demonstrations early in the first Nixon administration." 

     If Woodward can provide evidence supporting this claim (Bernstein could not remember the report when I chauffeured him to a speech in L.A. years ago), the question has to be asked: was one of those paid provocateurs  a part-time Kent State student  named Terry Norman? On May 4, 1970, Norman took photographs of  protestors for both the campus police and FBI. He has always been a compelling and mysterious figure in the debate over what caused the Ohio National Guardsmen to kill four Kent State students. At one point, the late Indiana Senator Birch Bayh even accused him of being the tragedy's "fatal catalyst." 

     Stuart Allen, one of the two audio experts who examined the only continuous recording of the shootings, was convinced that Norman was involved in a scuffle with his fellow students and that he whipped out his concealed .38 caliber pistol and fired four bullets 70 seconds before the main volley. Several witnesses indirectly support this claim; while others, including Norman, insist he never fired at all.  But even if Allen was right, and Norman fired before any Guardsmen did, it seems highly improbable that the National Guard would have twiddled their rifles for 70 seconds before responding. A minute and ten seconds is a very long time to react to gunfire. 

     Still, there are other reasons to wonder about how Terry Norman  fits into the larger puzzle. A photograph surfaced during discovery before the 1975 wrongful death and injury trial revealed that Norman was on what was then the university's practice football field (where a gym annex now stands), and that he was literally surrounded by a semi-circle of soldiers. This photograph was taken approximately five to ten minutes before the Guard retreated up a hill and opened fire. There has never been an explanation as to why Norman, among the thousands of students present that day, waltzed up to the soldiers or whether his presence was even welcome.  

      We do know, though, that shortly after this encounter, Norman positioned himself in between the students and the Guardsmen and threw rocks at the students. Guard captain John Martin witnessed this and asked himself, 'What is that idiot doing?" Norman himself admitted in his pretrial deposition that he threw two or three rocks. And a third witness, Tom Masterson, who admitted that he was the person who jumped Norman (supposedly to take out his frustration over the killings), insisted that the number of rocks Norman threw was closer to "half a dozen, a dozen."

    Why? Was Norman trying to provoke an incident between the students and the Guardsmen, and if so, was he acting on his own or at the behest of the FBI? Could he have been one of the out-of-control informants  that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover warned his agents about? 

     All we know for certain is that Norman supplied the police and the FBI with photographs of antiwar demonstrators because he liked to see them go to jail. And after the shootings, Kent State Detective Tom Kelley wrote Norman a letter of recommendation that helped him secure a job with the Washington, D. C. police department, where he later became a member of its S.W.A.T. unit.
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     Terry Norman's role on May 4, 1970, is of course, only one of the many unresolved mysteries of the killings at the university. So is the question of whether or not the Guardsmen took the law into their own hands and either agreed among themselves to shoot the students, or were ordered to do so by a commanding officer. Six of the eight authors of major May 4 studies, including myself, concluded the shootings were no accident: that they were a deliberate response to the mostly verbal abuse they received from the students.

      By inviting luminaries like Woodward to speak on the anniversaries--or by doing what the university did on the 20th anniversary: inviting thousands of poets to participate in festivities--the university, of course, guarantees that the tragedy itself will be overshadowed and that the university will get some positive publicity. Kent State says it is trying to "bring high-profile, world-renowned experts to Kent State for serious, thought-provoking discussions and conversations.''  

      If only the university were as welcoming to the Bob Woodwards in Ohio who sought what Woodward and Bernstein called "the best obtainable version of the truth." 

​    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.

After I wrote the article about Stuart Allen, saying he detected a second and actual order to fire (which no newspaper in the country, including the Daily Kent Stater, covered) I heard from John Mangels, the Plain Dealer's science reporter. Mangels was the author of the three front-page stories that gave rise to the calls for a new investigation. That made him, as far as I am concerned, one of the unsung heroes of May 4. He reminded me that he interviewed Captain Ron Snyder for his initial story on May 9, 2010, and that Snyder (like Captain Martin and Sergeant Matthew McManus) challenged Allen's finding, claiming the preliminary order did not sound like an order someone in the military would give. 

That had completely slipped my mind, probably because Ron "Cynanide" Snyder is not a source I ever gave much credence to. That is partially because Snyder was not even among the squad that opened fire that day and thus, was not in a position to know what really happened. His unit was on the other side of Taylor Hall when the shootings broke, and the building completely blocked his view.

Also, I still cannot get out of my head something said about Snyder after he originally told author James Michener, the Akron Beacon Journal, and a state grand jury that he confiscated a gun and brass knuckles off the body of slain student Jeffrey Miller. Snyder subsequently admitted he fabricated this claim because he wanted to make the victims seem dangerous, thereby making the shootings look justifiable. Snyder decided to come clean after the Justice Department started investigating this claim. I saw papers on Judge Frank Battisti's law clerk's desk suggesting  the Justice Department seriously considered indicting him for perjury before the original state grand jury.  

I once had a beer with the editor who directed the ABJ's coverage, and he told me: "If he told me his name was Snyder, I still would not believe him." 

Snyder, incidentally, once guest lectured to my class in criminal justice at Kent in the spring of 1973. In a case of bad timing, I only found out about it afterwards. I had played hooky that day . . . 

Another interesting but not exactly earthshattering item: A few weeks ago I received a letter from the Justice Department's Freedom of Information office in response to an appeal I made for any records showing that the Justice Department did anything when they were asked to reinvestigate the new evidence. The Department's appeals division ignored part of my request and claimed they had no records of any such requests for reinvestigation, even though Justice Department officials met with a wounded survivor, other former students, and their attorney in May 2010. The Department's position--that there never were any calls for reinvestigation, and that no records ever were kept of this meeting, sounded highly suspicious to me. 

If the Department was telling the truth, that meant that all the public calls for a new investigation were made for publicity purposes, not to get the investigation. The wounded survivor I mentioned used to repeatedly get headlines by calling for additional investigations. Should not have he have made a formal request in writing? And did he and the others already understand that the only statute that still could be used to prosecute the Guardsmen--homicide--is a state, not a federal crime? The truth is there was not anything the Justice Department could have done anyway, save perhaps ask the National Academy of Sciences to review the tape and provide a second opinion . . .  

Finally, I recently received an e-mail out of the blue from a former Colorado National Guardsmen. He sharhed that that, after watching a film about riot control just before the campuses blew up in May 1970, "we all agreed that, if faced with a riot, we would set our M-16s on rock & roll (full automatic) and mow the protestors down."

This dovetailed very closely with a story that a then Kent State student, told the FBI a year after the tragedy. The student claimed he hitched a ride from someone who told him he was one of the soldiers that fired at the students and that the troops had discussed shooting students before it actually happened. Unfortunately, the hitchhiker was only able to provide the FBI with very sketchy information about the soldier and his car. The FBI never was able to identify him, and that line of inquiry was never pursued by the attorneys who filed wrongful death claims against the Guardsmen.

The letter at least reminded me of the mindset of many of those upholding the law--as well as many in the general public--in May 1970. The war and Kent State divided the country more deeply than any other time since the Civil War. As Time magazine reported even a year before the shootings , there was a sentiment throughout the country that when it came to the antiwar demonstrations, "enough is enough." ​

 One of the things that surprised me about last year's Cleveland Plain Dealer exposes is that not a single Guardsman reacted to the news of Stuart Allen's findings. Over the weekend I came to understand why: some of them were unaware of his conclusions, and had nothing to react to. 

      I finally managed to get the first two interviews any journalist has had with former Ohio National Guardsman who were on Blanket Hill since Allen's conclusions were made public. The first, that is, since the Plain Dealer reported that Allen and another audio forensic specialist, Tom Owens, concluded there was a preliminary "prepare to fire" order to fire at Kent State (and Allen said there was an actual follow-up order).  

      Last weekend I spoke with both John E. Martin, the captain of Company A, the 145th Infantry; and one of his sergeants, Matthew McManus. McManus was one of the eight Guardsmen who were indicted by the Justice Department; in his case, he fired a shotgun into the air that may or may not have caused a student's wounds. (A second Guardsman, Leon Smith, was also charged with shooting the same student.). The case against McManus was always considered to be the weakest of the eight, and a federal judge later acquitted him and his fellow indictees of depriving the victims of due process of law.

      Neither Martin nor McManus were familiar with the new findings and Martin stuck to the story he told all along: that he never gave nor heard any order to fire. McManus claimed the only order he ever heard was the one he admitted issuing long ago. After the firing had already started, McManus gave an order: “Fire over their heads”  (the Justice Department’s version, or, as he tells it, “If you have to fire, for Christ’s sake, fire over their heads.”)
     
      McManus also insisted that the order audio experts Stuart Allen and Tom Owens detected on the tape—“Prepare to fire,” was not an order that anyone in the military would give. After 40 years, he could not remember how a verbal order to fire should have been phrased, but he insisted “prepare to fire” was something one would only hear at a military funeral. In fact, McManus suggested that the words might have been uttered not by a Guardsman, but by a student protestor affiliated with the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).

      This defense had been used once at the 1975 wrongful death and injury trial, when the Guards’ attorneys tried to pin the entire blame for the shooting on the students themselves. At one point the lawyers suggested that Charles Deegan, an ex-Marine who served in Vietnam and subsequently returned to Kent as a student, had heckled the Guard by shouting cadence and issuing fake orders for the troops to follow. Deegan denied  the claim, which I always thought was ludicrous and an act of desperation on the attorneys' part. The claim also reminded me of something else said to me by another of the Guards’ attorneys: “Let’s face it. We’re paid hatchet men.”

      Significantly, neither Martin nor McManus noticed Terry Norman on Blanket Hill. Martin said that several of his men heard a single shot prior to the main volley. McManus told me that just before shooting, he was on the far left of the Guard’s V-shaped formation (and on their far right after they turned around and fired). Before the shootings the only incident of note that he was aware of was between Major Harry Jones and a student who emerged from the crowd, threatening to throw a part of a torn-off tree branch at Jones and his communications officer. McManus said that Jones drew his pistol and told the student to stop. The shooting started shortly after that, and McManus said that that both he and Jones were “mad at the troops for firing.” McManus because, from his position, he could not see a reason to fire (although he was quick to defend his men by adding he could not see everything going on). He was also angry because he was in the line of fire and saw dirt kicking up within a few feet from where he was standing. (I had never heard that story before.) Jones, he said, was so mad he immediately and forcefully pushed the firing soldiers’ rifles in an upward position. We had known that for years. In fact, a private in McManus’ unit, Jeffrey Jones, told me years earlier that the first thing Jones demanded to know was: “Who gave you men the order to fire?”

      As an sidenote, McManus added that on the afternoon of May 3, the day before the shootings, he, another Guardsmen, and some students played euchre and touch football on the practice football field by Taylor Hall.

      McManus also felt “there is never going to be an end to” May 4 and alluded to "all the grief it brought to me,” including family turmoil he did not want to talk about. 

      McManus clearly was not close enough to see what was happening on the other side of the Guards' V-shaped formation, where Troop G of the 107th Armored Cavalry did most of the firing. If nothing else, the captain and the sergeant provided us a preview of what the National Guardsmen's defense strategy would have been had any official investigation had gone forward.