William A. Gordon, Kent State tragedy expert, photographed studying the FBI reports, July 1980

     During the Kent State trials it was widely assumed that someday a scholar (or scholars) would diligently study the mountains of evidence deliberately preserved for history, sift fact from fiction, and finally answer the questions that dominated the public debate. The most important question was: "Why were four students killed by Ohio National Guardsmen during a campus protest on May 4, 1970?"

     To date, only one person has even tried to accomplish this almost herculean feat. That person is William A. Gordon, a 1973 graduate of the university who, as a freelance journalist, covered the aftermath and wrote numerous articles and opinion pieces over a period of 19 years.

     Mr. Gordon, who is now a full-time author and publisher, was a quiet yet virtually ubiquitous figure in the aftermath. He reported on events as they actually unfolded, attended the trials, reviewed thousands of pages of official documents, and talked to as many of the key players in the Kent State tragedy as he could.

     His research included over 200 new interviews with 170 people, including eyewitnesses to the shootings, Ohio National Guardsmen, high ranking Justice Department and White House officials, attorneys in both the criminal and civil trials, surviving wounded students and the parents of the fatalities, an Ohio governor, and local law enforcement officials.

     Mr. Gordon was also the only journalist to review the extensive pretrial depositions taken for the wrongful death and injury trials and the 44-volume, 13,000-page trial transcript. Along with other journalists, he also filed Freedom of Information Act requests which resulted in the release of the FBI's 8,000 page investigative file and other internal Justice Department documents. 

     On top of that, Mr. Gordon conducted additional research in the archives at Yale; Kent State; the Ohio Historical Society in Columbus, Ohio; and Richard's Nixon presidential papers, which were then housed in Arlington, Virginia. 

     The result of Mr. Gordon's efforts is Four Dead in Ohio, a book which remains the first and only study to re-examine the various explanations why the four students were killed by Ohio National Guardsmen at Kent State.

   Mr. Gordon concluded that there was no conspiracy among the enlisted soldiers, but there probably was a localized order to fire issued by one of the officers at the scene.

     His argument is based on FBI interviews of eyewitnesses, which consistently suggest that the soldiers turned and fired in unison, and other evidence compiled after the tragedy.The shooting broke out just as the troops reached a campus landmark, the Pagoda near Taylor Hall, and were about to round the corner of the building and pass out of sight of the demonstrating students.

      The Guardsmen successfully thwarted investigators by falsely denying that hand signals to fire existed; by removing their name tags so that investigators could not subsequently identify which soldiers might have received the order to fire; and by telling tales of being endangered by encroaching students. A Justice Department summary of the evidence reported that none of the four students killed were close enough "to pose even a remote danger to the National Guard at the time of the firing."

     Two key witnesses (ironically, both ex-Marines who saw combat in Vietnam) testified that Sargent Myron Pryor gave a hand signal to fire, while others implied that Major Harry Jones gave the firing signal by motioning with his riot stick. Both the sergeant and the major denied under oath giving the order to fire.

     Mr. Gordon stops short of pointing a finger at either individual, but he relentlessly ridicules their denials and their other sworn trial testimony, which repeatedly were at odds with witnesses. He concludes: "While the smoking gun still eludes us . . . there appears to have been extensive perjury at the trials. Even considering all the mitigating and extenuating circumstances, the Guardsmen literally appear to have gotten away with murder."

   Mr. Gordon was able to penetrate secret federal grand jury testimony and learn that in 1974, the Justice Department asked a federal grand jury to indict eight Guardsmen on conspiracy charges. The grand jury balked and instead indicted eight soldiers on charges they violated the due process rights of the four slain and nine wounded students.

   Previously undisclosed FBI files reveal that:

     1. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover felt the victims deserved to be shot; 

     2. Hoover eagerly followed Nixon's instructions to "knock down" (that is, discredit) accurate news reports that the shootings were not necessary and that the Guardsmen could be prosecuted; and 

     3. After Hoover relayed that order, one of his top aides boasting of "scotching" those accurate news accounts.

   Both the FBI and campus police covered up of an incident involving an armed undercover photographer who was seen brandishing a .38 caliber pistol at students shortly after the Guard fired. Because the photographer, Terry Norman, was the only civilian with a weapon, he was initially suspected of being the man who fired the first shot.

     The author discovered that 13 Kent State police statements mysteriously disappeared from the desk from an officer when the FBI asked to see them; that Norman's sponsors in the KSU police department attempted to influence the statements of at least two eyewitnesses who thought Norman fired; that Norman positioned himself between the students and the Guardsmen and threw as many as a dozen rocks at the students; and that both the FBI and campus police, in "Mission Impossible"-style tried to disavow any knowledge of the actions of their undercover informant.

     A newly discovered FBI lab report of Norman's pistol also raises the question of whether Norman fired his gun at some point during the May 4, 1970 incident. However, acoustical tests commissioned by the Justice Department prove that even if Norman fired his gun, he could not have fired the first shot and thus could not have been, as Senator Birch Bayh once charged, "the fatal catalyst" for the Kent State tragedy.

   Kent State administrators prevented the public from discovering that six KSU police officers alleged that KSU's police chief, Donald Schwartzmiller, was drunk during the burning of the University R.O.T.C. building on May 2, 1970, and could not take command.

     This is important because KSU police never attempted to stop the arsonists, and the burning of the R.O.T.C. building was the one act of violence which resulted in the calling-out of the National Guard.

     Had the arson attempts failed (and the university's own investigation concluded: "The persons involved in the actual incendiarism were few, were separated from the main crowd, and could easily have been apprehended by the police"), the Guard never would have been called to campus, and no one would have been killed on May 4.

   In an extensive and exclusive interview for the book, President Richard Nixon's chief domestic adviser John Ehrlichman claimed that Nixon initially secretly nixed the federal prosecution of the Guardsmen at the request of Ohio Governor James A. Rhodes. Ehrlichman also said it was fair to say that Nixon "calculatingly exploited" antiwar protestors for political gain.

Mr. Gordon also raises questions about why:

   No student or Guardsman indicted by the state and federal grand juries ever spent a day in jail as a result of the criminal proceedings;

   A high school student named George Walter Harrington, who gave an extraordinary confession to the FBI in which he admitted that he facilitated the burning of Kent's R.O.T.C. building (a confession that was mentioned prominently in memos circulated among top FBI officials) was never prosecuted or publicly identified before now; 

   The KSU police made no attempt to prevent the R.O.T.C. fire when their own intelligence warned them of the impending arson. One detective even admitted telling a camera crew: "Don't pack your cameras. We are going to have a fire tonight"; 

   Alan Canfora, one of the surviving wounded students, lied to the FBI and a civil jury not only about how close he was to the soldiers when he was shot, but about his involvement in the three nights of violent protests that preceded the tragedy on May 4, 1970. Canfora, who tried to convince a civil jury that he was never an activist and a member of the infamous SDS (something he now proudly proclaims) and was just merely an innocent bystander, has since admitted to a reporter he was "in the thick of things" and was surprised that he the only indictment brought against him was for second degree rioting.

Individuals who can shed additional light on any of these questions are encouraged to e-mail Mr. Gordon at BGordonLA@aol.com.