Audio recording of Kent State shootings reveals 'prepare to fire' order
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-kent-state-20100509,0,5086613.story
Forty years after four students were killed and nine wounded, audio
experts say someone ordered the National Guard to 'prepare to fire.'
May 9, 2010
Cleveland A new analysis of a 40-year-old audio recording reveals
that someone ordered National Guard troops to prepare to fire on
students during a deadly Vietnam War protest at Kent State University
in 1970, two forensics experts said.
The recording was enhanced and evaluated by New Jersey-based audio
experts Stuart Allen and Tom Owen at the request of Cleveland's Plain
Dealer newspaper. Both concluded that they hear someone shout,
"Guard!" Seconds later, a voice yells, "All right, prepare to fire!"
The recording was enhanced and evaluated by New Jersey-based audio
experts Stuart Allen and Tom Owen at the request of Cleveland's Plain
Dealer newspaper. Both concluded that they hear someone shout,
"Guard!" Seconds later, a voice yells, "All right, prepare to fire!"
"Get down!" someone shouts, presumably in the crowd. A voice then
says, "Guard! …" followed two seconds later by a booming volley of gunshots.
Four Kent State students were killed and nine were wounded.
"I think this is a major development," said Alan Canfora, who was
shot and wounded in the wrist during the protest on May 4, 1970.
Canfora, who has long believed that the troops were ordered to fire,
located a copy of the tape in a library archive in 2007 and has urged
that it be professionally reviewed.
The original reel-to-reel audio recording was made by Terry Strubbe,
a student who placed a microphone in a window sill of his dormitory,
which overlooked the antiwar rally.
Allen, president and chief engineer of the Legal Services Group in
Plainfield, N.J., removed extraneous noises wind blowing across the
microphone, for example that obscured voices on the recording.
Without a voice sample for comparison, the new analysis can't
determine who might have issued such a command or why.
Most of the senior Ohio National Guard officers directly in charge of
the troops have died.
Ronald Snyder, a former Guard captain who led a unit that was at the
Kent State protest but was not involved in the shootings, said the
prepare-to-fire phrasing does not seem consistent with how military
orders are given.
The FBI investigated whether an order had been given to fire and said
it could only speculate. One theory was that a guardsman panicked or
fired intentionally at a student and others fired when they heard the shot.
In 1974, eight guardsmen tried on federal civil rights charges were
acquitted by a U.S. judge. The surviving victims and families of the
dead settled a civil lawsuit for $675,000 in 1979, agreeing to drop
all future claims against the guardsmen.
On Tuesday, the 40th anniversary of the shootings, hundreds of people
among them relatives of the four students killed gathered at Kent
State to remember the events of that day.
Ninety-year-old Florence Schroeder spoke about her son, William, who
was shot in the back. At 12:24 p.m. 40 years to the moment when
Guard members fired a bell was rung 13 times in memory of the
students who were shot.
The section of campus where it happened was formally added to the
National Register of Historic Places last week.
The university also dedicated a new audio walking tour of the site.
.
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