Dennis Kucinich launches probe of FBI role in Kent State shootings

Oct. 15, 2010 Examiner.com by Michael Richardson

Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich has asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation to answer questions about the role of informant Terry Norman in the Kent State shootings. Norman, whose whereabouts are unknown, is believed to have triggered the killing of four Kent State students by the Ohio National Guard with his own gunplay.

Witnesses have alleged that Norman fired four shots with his 38 caliber pistol immediately prior to the National Guard fusillade and now sophisticated sound analysis has confirmed four pistol shots preceded the shooting of the students.

Operation COINTELPRO was J. Edgar Hoover’s clandestine and illegal war on domestic political activists that targeted thousands of individuals and groups including the anti-war movement at the time of the Kent State killings in 1970.

Norman was taking pictures of the Kent State protest when he purportedly was confronted by some of the demonstrators and allegedly fired four warning shots triggering members of the National to believe they were being fired upon.

Norman’s role in the killing of students was previously investigated and he was cleared of any wrongdoing during his spying activity. It is now unclear who exactly Norman was working for during the Kent State protest--a hallmark of a COINTELPRO informant. Newspaper accounts have Norman working for the FBI that fateful day. Police reports contradict witness statements, another COINTELPRO marker.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer hired sound experts Stuart Allen and Tom Owen to analyze a recording of the shootings that was found in a library archive in 2007 by Alan Canfora, one of the wounded students.

Allen recently isolated four distinct gunshots characteristic of a 38 caliber pistol in the old recording. Allen’s colleague, Tom Owen, is perhaps the leading forensic audiologist in America and has been analyzing controversial recordings since 1981 when he examined recordings of the Weather Underground for the New York Police Department.

The Kent State shootings is not Owen’s first COINTELPRO-related crime assignment. In 2006 and 2007 Owen worked on the suppressed 911 call in the Omaha Two case and concluded the police version of the case was false.

In the Omaha Two case involving the Black Panthers, a policeman was killed in an ambush bombing. Officer Larry Minard was lured to a vacant house and his death by an anonymous 911 caller. To make a case against Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa (formerly David Rice) the FBI director J. Edgar Hoover gave the order to withhold a FBI crime lab report on the identity of the 911 caller and the recording of the call was kept from the jury that convicted the two Panther leaders.

The official version of the Kent State killings is that Norman did not fire a weapon. The forensic evidence and witness statements suggest that Norman did indeed fire his pistol. If Norman did spark the National Guard shootings it is not known if the shots were warning shots or the more sinister work of a COINTELPRO provocateur.

Representative Kucinich explained his inquiry of the FBI role in the matter to a Fox news reporter. “Certainly we owe it to the memory of the students who lost their lives and their families and we owe it to the American people to find the truth.”

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