A year and half ago, when I let Howard Means off the hook for plagiarizing my book, (http://kentstatedevelopments.blogspot.com/), I was inexplicably thinking that he had to have copied my text word to word in order to be guilty of plagiarism. I do not know why I thought that. Perhaps I did not want to believe he was capable of theft . . . or maybe I did not want to make a big issue of it. We are, after all, competitors and anyone who knows anything about the cesspool that May 4 has become would understand that he did not hurt me as much as others have.
In any event, after I was reintroduced to the Chicago Manual of Style, it appears that I was wrong about Means. The Manual's guidelines suggest he did in fact steal from my work without crediting my original reporting. Section 4.85 of the Manual, which defines what constitutes fair use and what constitutes plagiarism, states: "With all reuse of others' materials, it is important to identify the original as the source. This not only bolsters the claim of fair use but also helps avoid any accusation of plagiarism. Nothing elaborate is required: a standard footnote will suffice." Means used no such footnote in passing off my research as if it were his own. Last year, in my blog post of April 6, 2016, I noted that on page 43 of his book Means basically lifted from what I wrote about in the updated e-book edition of Four Dead in Ohio published a year earlier. In my book (Kindle location 414-450), I cited my sources in reporting that two individuals had finally admitted to being involved in the destruction of the university ROTC building on May 2, 1970. two days before the killings. Before that, no one had ever admitted being responsible for the arson (although I did report in the original hardcover edition of my book (1990) that one of the individuals involved, the late George Walter Harrington, was prominently mentioned in memos sent to and from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. If you will forgive my footnote fetish, I raised the question as to why Harrington was never indicted, especially since he admitted to the FBI that he played a key intermediary role in the initial attempts to burn ROTC down). Instead of revealing how he came across this information, Means cited only "an anonymous source" in identifying the second arsonist, Thomas "Aquinas" Miller. I first reported about Miller, citing a report in an unrelated book (Fortney Road) which reported Miller's subsequent involvement in a cult. Means' claim that he used "an anonymous source" does not withstand the smell test. Journalists typically grant anonymity when they have to protect whistleblowers who might be fired if their identifies were publicly revealed. Kent State, on the other hand, is strictly an historical event. In this case, both of individuals involved in the arson (Harrington and Miller) have been dead for over 30 and 40 years. There was no compelling reason for anyone to ask for anonymity, or for Means to grant it. Given that I was the first to link Harrington to Miller and write about them together a year before the Means' came out, it strains credulity to believe that Means' "anonymous source" was anything other than my book. The Chicago Manual makes it clear that an author (Means) cannot take "a free ride on the first author's labor." I also noted in my blog that Means' work as a whole was far less original than his book seemed to suggest. In the final analysis, he did not break any new ground but essentially seconded more than 20 conclusions I reached 26 years earlier. And what could be more suspicious than the fact that Means pretended my exhaustive research did not exist? Means never once cited my book in his source notes and even excluded it in his selected bibliography. That bibliography, by the way, cites every other other essential book on May 4, 1970. As I wrote last year: "it was almost as if he did not want anyone to compare his book with mine." Means also wrote as if no previous May 4 author came before him. I am sure Means will come up with some excuse, as if a 70-something-year-old author of over ten books did not know that plagiarism is the most serious journalistic sin a journalist or popular historian can commit. This issue suddenly became important again after the announcement that producer/director Jay Roach intends to turn Means book, 67 Shots, into a motion picture using the same title as Means. The proposed movie is being packaged by Roach's production company. Other producers include Tina Fey and her composer husband, Jeff Richmond, a graduate of Kent State.
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Kent State: Death and Dissent in the Long Sixties, Thomas Grace, University of Massachusetts Press, $90 hardcover/$19.95 paperback
Above the Shots: An Oral History of the Kent State Shootings, Craig S. Simpson and Gregory S. Wilson, Kent State University Press, $28.95 67 Shots: Kent State and The End of American Innocence, Howard Means, da Capo Press, $25.99 This spring three new books will revisit the May 4, 1970 shootings at Kent State. Two of these books were written mostly for academic audiences, while the third was written by a professional author. The first study was written by Thomas Grace, a KSU alumnus who was severely wounded when an Ohio National Guard bullet shattered his left ankle, leaving him with a limp. Grace is now an adjunct professor of history at Erie Community College in College in Buffalo, NY, and the only one of the nine wounded survivors I have never met. I had plenty of opportunity, but had no desire to, after he told a friend “the only way you get justice is to pick up a gun.” It is not clear whether Grace still subscribes to that view, but his heart and mind still belong with sixties militants. His book is mostly an academic history of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and antiwar protest at Kent and throughout the United States, followed by a detailed recounting of the events of 1970, which culminated with the four unnecessary deaths on May 4, 1970. Grace devotes a good 200 pages to this pre-1970 history, but never adequately explains why he joined the SDS. Nor does he try to connect the dots between the behavior of former SDSers (which, as a group, had been officially banned from campus) and the May 2 destruction of the university's ROTC building and the killings on May 4. In fact, Grace removes himself from the equation so completely that you forget he was an active participant in the protests. The Justice Department concluded that Grace, as well as Canfora, waved a flag and encouraged people to throw rocks at the Guardsmen. Grace was also close friends with Thomas "Aquinas" Miller who was involved in the arson of the ROTC building. Grace does not acknowledge what his friend did, and his portrayal of himself as an innocent bystander in all these events struck me as being disingenuous. As knowledgeable as Grace is about the events of May 4, he seems to holding back on everything he knows. His Kent State is definitely not a tell-all book. One is tempted to call it closer to what the Nixon administration used to call (during the Watergate cover-up) "a limited, modified hang-out." The second book, the bizarrely titled Above the Shots: An Oral History of the Kent State Shootings, was co-written by Craig S. Simpson, a former archivist at Kent, and Gregory S. Wilson, a history professor at the nearby University of Akron. Although the title makes it sound like these scholars were in an invisible blimp watching the action below, Simpson explains in his introduction what he really meant: "We, as authors and historians, have sought to stay above the din and present a multitude of perspectives, respecting (if not always agreeing with) the views of the narrators." The narrators in this case are mostly former students and faculty members who shared their recollections with Kent State's Oral History Project organized some 20 years after the fact. The majority of the statements were collected at least ten years after more than 8,000 pages of FBI reports and a 13,000 page trial transcript became available, making the oral history project redundant at best. The book at least publishes excerpts from some of the better narratives, while intermittently lecturing on the theories of oral history. I would say that I am not a big fan of this Weenie School of History--where historians are too afraid to weigh in on any controversy--but my wife says I should always find something positive to say about other people's hard work. So I will say this: after four and a half decades and half a dozen books published by the Kent State Press, Kent State has finally found two scholars who will at least acknowledge there was a debate. Mazel tuv, Kent State. 46 years later, you have taken another baby step! At least Howard Means, the author of the third book, 67 Shots: Kent State and the End of American Innocence, was willing to wade into that debate. His book is the 36th on what is known by shorthand as May 4 (if you count all the children's books, novels, and subdisciplinary scholarly works.) In telling the story Means, a professional author, relies extensively on the same oral histories as Simpson and Wilson. His book, however, is better written, and he does a better job distilling the collection’s few nuggets and molding them in a mostly chronological narrative. In an attempt to be fair, Means faithfully reports what all sides claimed. His book may not break any new ground, but the book's real significance is that Means is now the sixth of the eight major May 4 authors to agree that the shootings were deliberate. That in itself is a pretty damning statement against the Ohio National Guard. Finally, there is one issue that casual readers probably would not pick up on, but which actually is emblematic of the often atrocious behavior quietly taking place behind the scenes. Personally, I found it annoying that even though my own book on the shootings (Four Dead in Ohio: Was There a Conspiracy at Kent State?) clearly influenced Means (Means seconded over 20 major conclusions I reached 26 years earlier), Means refused to mention me once. (For that matter, he refused to credit all the other authors for their original reporting and research.) Both casual readers and scholars who check his source notes might jump to the wrong conclusion that everything Means reports in his book originated from Means himself. Here’s an example: on page 43 of his book, when discussing the arson of the university's ROTC building two days before the students were killed, Means reports that two previously unidentified individuals (the both now-deceased Thomas “Aquinas” Miller and George Walter Harrington, the brother of another of Grace's friends), were among those who helped set the university’s ROTC building on fire. This information–-specifically, the identities of these two arsonists--did not originate from Means' research. It was actually lifted from the first chapter of the updated e-book version of my book, which was the first book on the killings to identify the arsonists. Despite this, and the almost identical conclusions we both reached--Means never once acknowledged the existence of my book. He even excluded Four Dead in Ohio from his bibliography, while mentioning virtually all the other essential May 4 books. It was almost as if he did not want to anyone to draw comparisons between his book and mine. Just to be clear, Means does not actually plagiarize anyone; he simply makes all the previous chroniclers of the Kent State tragedy magically disappear. After a 13-year lull, Alan Canfora has revived his campaign to damage my reputation and dissuade people from reading my book on the 1970 Kent State shootings. Not only is he trying to undermine my expertise, but he is also trying to intimidate me into silence. In doing so, he only succeeds in reminding us that he is his own worst enemy.
My book seems to infuriate him for a number of reasons, including the fact I am not on board with his attempts to wholly rewrite the history of the Kent State murders. As I see it, far from being a hero or a patriot (as he has variously described himself), Canfora was one of the bad actors who stupidly tested the limits of the National Guard's patience. He was the one person who emerged from the crowd of protestors, walked within 100 feet of the Guardsmen, and provocatively waved what his sister has described as a "black flag of anarchy," much like a bullfighter in a ring. While Canfora remains proud of his actions, there is little question that his recklessness put himself and his fellow students in danger. Perhaps not mortal danger (the Scranton Commission, after all, determined the shootings were "unnecessary, unwarranted and inexcusable"), but he made it much easier for the troops to pull the triggers, resulting in the deaths of four students and the wounding of nine others, including Canfora, who received a minor wound when was shot in the wrist. My book also undoubtedly infuriates Canfora because I do not give a crap about what he repeatedly refers to as "our revolt." Like many college students at the time, I was opposed to the war in Vietnam but I certainly never joined a group advocating violence to end violence like Canfora's Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). I believe that if you commit a crime you should be prepared to do the time, and that everyone who committed crimes at Kent State (students and Guardsmen alike) should have been brought to justice. If new evidence is to be believed, Canfora may have even participated in the destruction of the university's Army ROTC building two nights before the shootings. A new book, Fortney Road, devotes a chapter to Canfora's close buddy Thomas "Aquinas" Miller, a Kent State dropout, local drug dealer, and fellow member of the SDS offshoot "the Kent Krazies." The book reports that Miller told his brother John that he helped burn down Kent's ROTC building. Since Canfora and Miller seemed practically joined at the hip on May 4 (both waved the anarchist flags), it is not unreasonable to ask if Canfora joined his friend in the repeated attempts to burn down the building. Canfora is no doubt also upset that I've been the first author to expose his four-decades-long record of either outright lying and/or deceiving the press and the public about all kinds of matters pertaining to May 4. No one else at the university dares to challenge or correct him whenever he starts propagandandizing, lest they receive the same treatment he has given me and numerous other people involved in the Kent State case. In the recently released expanded e-book edition of Four Dead in Ohio I wrote: “COMPULSIVE, HABITUAL OR PATHOLOGICAL?: Alan Canfora’s disproven claim that the words, “Right here. Get set. Point. Fire,” appear on the tape of the shooting was hardly the only time Canfora misled the public . . . Another untrue statement Canfora made came under oath at the 1975 wrongful death and injury trial, when he testified he was never an activist or member of the SDS (Krause vs. Rhodes, Vol. 16, pgs. 3719 and 3727) . Canfora has since proudly admitted publicly that both of these claims are true. In a January 18, 1982 interview for this book, he admitted to me that he lied to the FBI (again while under oath) when he told them that he was 50-75 feet farther away from the soldiers then he actually was. Canfora told me the reason he lied was because he was worried about being indicted by the state grand jury (which he ultimately was). He also testified at the trial that he did not participate in the ROTC fire and only watched it from a distance of 400 feet (Krause v. Rhodes, page 3653). Canfora later referred to “our original crowd” (ProActivist.com, June 24, 1999), as if he were a leader, and [wrote] how “we were thrilled that about 2,000 students left their dorms and joined our anti-war march.” In 2000 Canfora was even quoted by Erin Kosnac, a reporter for the the campus yearbook, the Burr, as saying he was in the “thick of things” during the pre-shooting protests, and that he was relieved that he was only indicted for second degree rioting. (“The Human Side of History,” Burr, Spring 2000, p. 41). That admission strongly suggests he is still covering up his involvement in more serious crimes . . . Canfora’s lack of truthfulness at the 1975 wrongful death and injury trial so concerned Arthur Krause, the father of slain co-ed Allison Krause, that he confided to friends that he feared losing the case “because of Canfora’s lying.” That is not all. Years later, Canfora conned William Canterbury, a reporter for the Akron Beacon Journal, into writing a front-page story that Universal Studios would, in 1997, make a major motion picture about his life (“Kent State tragedy heads for silver screen,” Akron Beacon Journal, February 12, 1996). It turned out that all Universal did was option the rights to his still unpublished book, which he has claimed to have worked on since at least 1984 and which he has yet to produce. The proposed movie never went beyond the initial development stage and was abandoned by Universal long before Canfora eventually conceded the movie would not be made. While Canfora had told reporters all he wanted was to find the truth about the shootings, and that he was not interested in revenge, he proved otherwise by establishing a web site, “Kent May 4th Central,” on the 30th anniversary of the killings. "Kent State May 4th Central also included a telltale link to his so-called "charity," the "Kent May 4th Center." Although Canfora denies any involvement in the establishment of the site, one does not have to be a linguist to recognize that “Kent May 4th Central” used language identical to what Canfora wrote in his other postings. “Kent May 4th Central” also included two telltale links: one back to Canfora’s personal website and the other to his so-called “charity,” the “Kent May 4th Center.” “Kent May 4th Central” published the names, home addresses, and in some instances the telephone numbers of the Guardsmen who were on Blanket Hill on May 4 and urged his fellow activists to visit these men at their homes, ask them questions, and take their pictures. It was essentially an invitation to harass the soldiers a full 30 years after the fact. Canfora removed the site after a few days, presumably so the site’s existence would not be traced back to him. However, as most readers know by now, once something appears on the Internet, it never can be completely erased. Canfora was caught in yet another lie when he told reporters that as the “charity”’s director, he was volunteering his services for free. At the same time he made this declaration Canfora submitted a budget to the IRS (later made available to this author) indicating he intended to pay himself a salary of $30,000 a year. Canfora also pretended to be a spokesman for the parents of the dead students and the other wounded survivors. While all of the parents wanted the soldiers who killed their children to be held accountable, none of them, as far as I can tell, gave a damn about his “revolt” or his glorification of student protest . . . Canfora also fabricated out of whole cloth claims that I was “the National Guardsmen’s best friend,” despite the fact I did more than he did to get the soldiers prosecuted. He also falsely claimed on his website that I was in cahoots with the author of another book on May 4, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Philip Caputo (whom I’ve had no contact with). And he maliciously repeats his fabricated claim that I was a disruptive person and was thrown out of meetings between the victims and their attorneys during the 1975 civil trial. It never happened. While it is true that I had attended earlier strategy meetings before the litigation started, I never attended any of the attorney-client trial meetings Canfora referred to. Moreover, I have never been thrown out of a meeting in my life or been involved in a disruptive event. I am simply not that type of person. The “disruptive” tag, however, fit Canfora himself like a glove, and I have long noticed how he projects his own worst qualities onto others whenever he fights with them. (Part One of Canfora at the bottom of the page) Firefox https://outlook.office.com/mail/inbox/id/AAMkAGQxNjkyMTRlLT... 5 of 6 9/23/2022, 4:38 PM POSTSCRIPT: When Canfora claimed the words "Right here. Get set. Point. Fire," were on the tape of the shootings, he deceived reporters by claiming those words were confirmed by an acquaintance of his, Ian MacKaye of the rock band Fugazi. MacKaye had enhanced the tape as a favor for Canfora, using his band's sound equipment, not the more sophisticated state-of-the-art tools later used by Stuart Allen. Mackaye later told me never heard the words Canfora attributed to MacKaye, which means Canfora's so-called "discovery" was either wishful thinking on his part or an outright purposeful hoax. After Canfora's death in 2019, the university subsequently honored Canfora for his activism. Poor Kent State. It never figured out that it had been conned. (End of Part One. Part Two to follow.) |
AuthorThis blog is written by William A. Gordon, a Kent State alumnus and the author of "Four Dead in Ohio" and three other books. It offers commentary on the still unfolding developments in the Kent State shooting case. Archives
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Kent State Shooting Expert
William A. Gordon Email: BGordonLA@aol.com Website: www.KentStateShootingsExpert.com |