In May 1970 revelation of President Richard Nixon’s covert military action in Cambodia sparked demonstrations on college campuses across America. Students at Ohio’s Kent State University rioted on May 1 and burned the campus ROTC building on May 2, prompting Governor James Rhodes to mobilize the NATIONAL GUARD. Another demonstration was in progress on May 4, when Guardsmen opened fire with rifles and at least one pistol, killing four unarmed students and wounding nine more. Nixon described himself as “deeply saddened” by the deaths at Kent State and others in a similar shooting at Mississippi’s Jackson State College.
FBI agents were assigned to investigate the Ohio shooting, while Nixon appointed a President’s Commission on Campus Unrest (better known by the name of its chairman, former Pennsylvania governor William Scranton) to do likewise.
G-men submitted 8,000 pages of testimony to the Scranton Commission, while Director J. EDGAR HOOVER complained that the investigation cost $274,100 in overtime pay. (Staff members at Kent State told their congressmen that agents spent much of that time examining classroom lesson plans and probing the political beliefs of various professors.) Long before the investigation was finished, Hoover told White House aide Egil Krogh that “the students invited and got what they deserved.”
In fact, Hoover’s own agents documented an 11- second burst of undisciplined and indiscriminate gunfire, including at least 54 (and perhaps 60) shots fired by 29 of the 78 Guardsmen present. None of the four students killed had been demonstrators; they were shot at ranges between 85 and 139 yards from the Guardsmen, two with their backs turned and one while lying prone on the ground. Of the nine students wounded, only one appeared to be a demonstrator, shot while making “an obscene gesture” to the Guardsmen from 20 yards away; the rest were shot at distances of 37 to 250 yards.
A JUSTICE DEPARTMENT summary of FBI reports likewise dismissed claims that the Guardsmen believed themselves to be under sniper fire. At the time of the shootings, the National Guard clearly did not believe they were being fired upon.
No Guardsman claims he fell to the ground or took any other evasive action and all available photographs show the Guard at the critical moments in a standing position and not seeking cover. In addition, no Guardsman claims he fired at a sniper or even that he fired in the direction from which he believed the sniper shot. Finally, there is no evidence of the use of any weapons at any time in the weekend prior to the May 4 demonstration. Furthermore, six Guardsmen (including a captain and two sergeants) also “stated pointedly that the lives of the members of the Guard were not in danger and that it was not a shooting situation.”
As for the 11 Guardsmen who later expressed mortal fear, the Scranton Report concluded: “We have some reason to believe that the claim by the National Guard that they thought their lives were endangered by the students was fabricated subsequent to the event.”
A report in the Akron Beacon Journal (May 24, 1970) corroborated that claim with a quote from one of the Guardsmen: “The guys have been saying that we got to get together and stick to the same story, that it was our lives or them, a matter of survival. I told them I would tell the truth and couldn’t get in trouble that way.”
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