Results 1 to 4 of 4
  1. #1
    W4A1 143 43CK? Nbadan's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Nov 2001
    Post Count
    32,408

    Did FBI Informant in gas mask fire the first shot?

    The Kent State Conspiracies: What Really Happened On May 4, 1970?
    By James Renner

    The gunfire has just ended, almost as abruptly as it began. Student Harold Reid maneuvers his way up Blanket Hill among some of the casualties, perhaps a couple hundred feet from the National Guardsmen. That's when he notices a young man pointing a handgun in the direction of another man who is lying on the ground. The armed man obviously is not a member of the National Guard; he's wearing a light sports jacket and tan trousers, and a camera and a gas mask hang around his neck. When the man sees Reid, he begins to run.

    "Stop that man, he has a weapon!" shouts Reid, chasing after him.

    That man — Terrence Brookes Norman — has never stopped running. He has avoided attention for 36 years, perhaps for good reason. He was an FBI informant in 1970, and some believe he fired the first shot at Kent State that day in May, instigating the National Guard to fire on protestors.

    Norman's role and long silence are not the only factors fueling conspiracy theories surrounding the events of May 4, 1970. Although the lives of everyone present were profoundly affected by the 13 seconds they shared, few agree on many specifics. Questions remain. Cover-ups are alleged. And only one thing is clear: Someone has to be lying.

    I'm not supposed to be here.

    Dennis Breckenridge marched up Blanket Hill on the Kent campus with the rest of the guardsman of Troop G of the Ohio National Guard. A barrage of thrown rocks hammered against his body as student activists pursued him and his fellow guardsmen. The students were close enough for Breckenridge to see the anger in their eyes as they pelted him with stones and shouted, "Pigs! Pigs! Pigs!" Their hatred was almost palpable, and he wondered if perhaps they thought the guardmen's M-1 rifles weren't loaded.

    I'm not supposed to be here.

    A 26-year-old sergeant, Breckenridge was supposed to retire from the service a week earlier. But the Teamsters went on strike and before he could turn in his weapon, he was called upon to protect scabs from getting killed on the highway. Then hippies started burning down Kent, and his troop was transferred there.

    The longhairs were mostly angry with President Nixon, who had announced plans to invade Cambodia. After burying a copy of the Cons ution during a demonstration on campus, the leftist students of Kent State had taken to the streets on Friday, May 1. They broke storefront windows and scared residents with their chants of "Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh!" and "One, two, three, four, we don't want your ***** war!" They ignited a bonfire in the street. The mayor declared a state of emergency and Gov. Jim Rhodes called in the National Guard to push the protestors back toward campus using tear gas.

    The rebellion escalated on Saturday, when the ROTC building was torched. The next day, the hippies staged a massive sit-in on Main Street, completely blocking traffic. That was when Breckenridge's troop was sent in. That was when he was first bruised by flying rocks.

    I'm not supposed to be here.

    Hoping to avoid further injury on May 4, he wore thick clothing and rolled his jacket up around his neck, he recalls. And as Troop G retreated up the hill behind Taylor Hall shortly after noon, Breckenridge was so hot he could hardly breath. He felt the adrenaline in his blood, causing his heart to race. He thought he might be hyperventilating. The wind carried tear gas. Some protestors were throwing the half-spent smoking canisters back at the guardsmen. Rocks thrown from several yards arced like golf balls, curving across the sky toward their targets.

    Breckenridge heard someone yell, "We're out of gas!"

    Then, a shot rang out, followed by a continuous volley of gunfire. Breckenridge temporarily forgot his own pain — and the fact that he was not supposed to be there. For the next 13 seconds, he watched as their bullets raced toward the students, dividing the day into vignettes of tragedy.

    One

    John Filo, a senior journalism student with a camera slung around his neck, yells at the students to stop running. He thinks the guardsmen are shooting blanks, trying to scare everyone. Filo snaps pictures as he yells, framing the melee as well as he can manage through the viewfinder of his Nikkormat. Then he watches as a bullet pierces a metal sculpture standing between the guardsmen and the students. It punches a circle of light through the piece of artwork, rendering it priceless forever. These are not blanks.

    Two

    As the guardsmen swing around and raise their weapons, 18-year-old Joseph Lewis flips them the bird. He has been a relatively passive participant to this point, but something about the audacity of the military men's threat of violence angers him. He had worked through high school to save enough money for one year of college and now these men have taken over his campus.

    Three

    Guardsman Larry Shafer spots Lewis's obscene gesture as he pivots and raises his M-1. Shafer shoots the man in the stomach. Another guardsman shoots Lewis in the left leg, just above the ankle.

    Four

    Alan Canfora has been a visible protestor all day, shouting profanities at the guardsmen and defiantly waving a dark flag as they tried to disperse the crowd of students. As the bullets pierce the air, Canfora leaps for cover behind a tree. He isn't quick enough. Someone shoots him in the wrist. It seems they are aiming for him.

    Five

    In the parking lot of Prentice Hall, 270 feet from the guardsmen, Jeff Miller watches them fire into the crowd. He has been in the front ranks most of the day, so many of the guardsmen must recognize his face. One of them puts a bullet directly into Miller's mouth, a symbolic bit of retribution. It exits the base of Miller's skull and his body collapses onto the concrete.

    Six

    Nearby, Miller's friend and fellow activist Allison Krause begins to turn away. She is shot three times in the back. "Barry, I'm hit!" she exclaims, calling out for a friend. The bullet that kills her enters through her left arm and travels to her chest.

    Seven

    Sandy Scheuer is 390 feet away when she is shot through the neck. She falls, her blood spilling onto the ground around her body.

    Eight

    William Schroeder is walking to class, taking a shortcut through the throng of protestors, when the gunfire starts. He's attending Kent State on an ROTC scholarship and has not participated in any protest, but the bullet that kills him doesn't care. It enters his back and shatters a rib, sending fragments of bone and metal out a small hole in his left shoulder.

    Nine

    The men of Company A stand beside Troop G, also firing at the students. Guardsman Robert James fires once into the air, then quickly ejects the remaining seven cartridges. He doesn't trust himself with a loaded firearm in this confusion.

    Ten

    As he unloads his weapon into the crowd with semi-automatic speed, Guardsman William Herschler suffers a mental breakdown. Later, as he is driven to the hospital to be treated for hypertension, he will repeat a simple refrain, over and over: "I shot two teenagers. I shot two teenagers."

    Eleven

    Donald McKenzie runs from the guard. He's about 250 yards away, but is shot in the neck. The bullet strikes his jawbone and exits through his cheek.

    Twelve

    One hundred yards away, Dean Kahler is shot in the side. The bullet tears through his flesh and slams into three vertebrae, paralyzing him for life.

    Thirteen

    Fourteen-year-old runaway Mary Ann Vecchio kneels beside the body of Jeff Miller. As the gunfire ends, her anguish fills the silence. She turns to the crowd, crying out in horror. John Filo captures the girl in his viewfinder and snaps the picture for which he will soon win the Pulitzer Prize.

    The survivors of May 4 remember these 13 seconds in post-traumatic detail, recalling smells, texture and sound as if it had happened moments ago. That gunfire echoes across time, returning them to that day when they least expect it. Each has their own theory about how and why the shootings occurred.

    Who Really Burned Down the ROTC Building?

    By Saturday evening, May 2, it was no secret that the Kent State protestors planned to torch the ROTC building. The structure was a symbol of a corrupt administration, bent on invading sovereign countries for political gain. It was the protestors' primary target.

    At around 8 p.m., a group of several hundred demonstrators converged on the ROTC building. To their surprise, it was unprotected.

    "The Kent State Police Department was located in Kent Hall at the time," explains Alan Canfora, who was among the arsonists that night. Kent Hall is less than a quarter mile from the ROTC building. But for the next hour and a half, the police did not attempt to stop them from burning the place down.

    They broke the windows. Someone set fire to the curtains, hoping it would spread. Another person dipped a rag in gasoline, lit the cloth, then tossed it into a window. Try as they might, though, the fire wouldn't catch. Canfora compares the effort to a Three Stooges routine. Police could have stopped them easily.

    "Why, on this evening, was the building left unprotected? I find that to be very su ious."

    Student activist Steve Sharoff was later interviewed concerning his involvement in the protests. A transcript of that conversation can be found in the files of Charles Thomas, who once worked for the National Archives. His notes are kept by the Special Collections department at the Kent State library. It's not clear who interviewed Sharoff, but the tape of the conversation was saved by Thomas.

    "Throughout all this time, there was not one policeman around, and this was rather a paradox because before, the first signs of anything, the whole campus police force was there," says Sharoff. "And all of a sudden people are burning down a building and no campus police whatsoever."

    "The police didn't come?" asks a separate interviewer on a different tape, questioning student James Woodring.

    "No, nobody," answers Woodring. "I just can't believe that nobody knew what was going on down there … with that many people standing there yelling."

    Only after a local fire crew responded and students began cutting into the fire hoses did the university police get involved. At 9:17, deputies from the Portage County Sheriff's Office assisted them. The police shot teargas into the crowd, pushing the demonstrators back to the commons behind the building. At that time, what remained of the small fires inside the ROTC building were extinguished and the firemen left.

    Alan Canfora returned a half hour later with around 2,000 protestors, hoping to finish what they started. But the ROTC building was already engulfed in flame.

    "When we were chased away, the fire was out," says Canfora. He believes law enforcement actually set another blaze. He points to an incident involving provocateurs from the FBI's counter-intelligence program that occurred three days later. Agents in Tuscaloosa, Alabama later admitted their role in starting a fire inside an ROTC building there on May 7.

    After the ROTC fire, the Ohio National Guard took control of the city. Canfora feels the fire was set on purpose so the city would be forced to turn over its security to federal authorities — the first step in a series of machinations orchestrated from the highest levels of the state and federal governments to put activist students in front of anxious guardsmen and make an example of them for the rest of the nation.

    "Governor Rhodes and President Nixon — I think it goes all the way to the top," Canfora says. "I believe it's possible that someone working for the government finished the job we had started. I think the guardsmen were manipulated by Rhodes and Nixon. I believe the triggermen were victims, too."

    Reached at his home in Oregon, Joseph Lewis says he agrees with Canfora's theory.

    "By some manipulation of events, this was Nixon's attempt to stop dissent in America," claims Lewis. "And Governor Rhodes went happily along with it."

    Even Dennis Breckenridge, the Troop G sergeant on May 4, feels the National Guard were used as political pawns, but he notes that the activists made it easy.

    "Rhodes was an asshole," Breckenridge says. "A Gestapo. We shouldn't have been there. But [the protestors] burned the building down. We got called because the ROTC building was symbolic. But I didn't care about a building. I didn't care about any of it. I just wanted to go home."

    Still, no student was ever prosecuted for the ROTC fire. The FBI later claimed it was set by high-schoolers on LSD.
    Free Press

    From Charles Thomas:

    But there had been a civilian on the scene with a gun. He appears on WKYC-TV sound film running down from the hillside (the slaughter took place on the reverse slope and is off-camera), with a bespectacled black man in pursuit, pointing after him and shouting. <18> The fugitive, a thin-faced white youth makes straight for the National Guard formation and therein seeks out a campus police officer, to whom he surrenders a revolver.

    The campus police immediately took the black man, instructor Harold Sherman Reid, Bill Barrett (a co-pursuer), and the youth, Terrence Norman, to their headquarters. Norman told KSUPD Detective R. F. Winkler that he was “covering the demonstrations” and had gotten separated from the Guard line after following it “for protection”. “I then joined the other photographers for protection.” He heard someone yelling “Kill the pigs!”, so he sought out the Guard again “for a little protection”. Reid deposed that he had first seen Norman “standing with a pistol in his hand pointing it in the direction of a man lying on the ground.” <19> But Norman claimed he had been trying to aid “a hippie type person… bleeding from the face”, when he was assaulted by several persons striking him with their fists and trying to get his camera. “I drew my weapon” and told his attackers they were “going to get it”. They ran off in one direction and he ran off after the Guard again. He added that

    I state at this time that I was requested to take pictures for the purpose of identification and prosecution of violators, by Det. Tom Kelly of the Campus Police and Bill Chapin of the FBI, Akron, Field Office ...

    Tuesday, May 5th. A female KSU student sent a letter to campus security apparently referring to Norman. She had seen a young man outfitted as a photographer “about 5 minutes before the shootings…. He hit a fellow student across the face with the butt of his gun.” “The other kids” took up the cry that the man was armed. “The cameraman turned into an animal” and pointed the weapon at the people around him, threatening to shoot as he backed down the hill ...
    Kent state

  2. #2
    Believe. Beer is Good's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    May 2006
    Post Count
    410
    hmm

  3. #3
    W4A1 143 43CK? Nbadan's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Nov 2001
    Post Count
    32,408
    ...with a bespectacled black man in pursuit
    Here is the bespectacled black man who chased after Terrance Norman being questioned by police:


  4. #4
    W4A1 143 43CK? Nbadan's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Nov 2001
    Post Count
    32,408
    After the firing ceased, the Guard marched back to their original position around the burned-out ROTC building. Within minutes, a young man carrying a gun, a camera, and a gas mask ran over the hill, pursued by another person, yelling, “Stop that man. He has a gun. He fired four shots.”

    Terry Norman, the youth with the gun, was a 22-year-old occasional student at Kent State and a free-lance photographer whose primary interest seemed to be taking photos of campus demonstrations. Apparently, at various times, he worked for the campus police, the FBI, or both. Before the May 4 demonstration, Sergeant Mike Delaney, press liaison for the Guard, had initially refused to issue Norman a press pass because Norman lacked the proper credentials. A campus liaison offered to vouch for Norman but that didn't sway Delaney. He finally relented only after the campus police intervened, saying that Norman was “under contract to the FBI to take pictures.” When Norman reached the Guard line after the shootings, Delaney heard him exclaim: “I had to shoot! They would have killed me.”

    Several students later told the FBI they saw Norman fire his weapon. After stopping at the guard line, Norman was quickly surrounded by the KSU police. KSU policeman Tom Kelly took possession of Norman’s gun, a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver. NBC reporter Fred DeBrine saw Kelly make “a movement, which resembled the action taken when opening the cylinder on a revolver” and heard the policeman exclaim, “My God, he fired dour shots! What do we do now?” Later, however, Kelly claimed that Norman's gun was “fully loaded” and “had not been fired.” In any case, the KSU policemen quickly hustled Norman away from the scene.

    Curiously, when the FBI received Norman's gun, the cartridges they found in the cylinder came from five different manufacturers, leading many to believe that the gun was quickly reloaded with whatever bullets were handy. The FBI agents also concluded that the gun had been fired since its last cleaning, although they could not say when. Three years later, as the House of Representatives threatened to investigate the Kent State shootings, FBI director Clarence Kelley finally revealed that Terry Norman had indeed been on the FBI payroll. On April 29, 1970 – a mere 5 days before the shootings – he had received “a cash payment of $125 … for information which he voluntarily provided to the FBI concerning activities of the National Socialist White People’s Party.” Norman’s connection to the FBI almost certainly explains why he was never subjected to further scrutiny and why his possible role in the shootings was summarily dismissed by the official investigations. Norman later stated in his only sworn statement about the shootings that he did not fire his weapon that day. After that, he remained beyond the jurisdiction of all investigative bodies. “Terry Norman,” declared the Scranton Commission tersely, “a free-lance photographer, was taking pictures of the demonstration and was seen with a pistol after the Guard fired. Several civilians chased him from Taylor Hall into the Guard line, where he surrendered a .38-caliber revolver. The gun was immediately examined by a campus policeman, who found that it had not been fired.” And, officially, that was the end of it. But, for many, the role of Terry Norman remains one of the bigger mysteries of the Kent State shootings.

    Terry Norman was last known to be working for a police department in (where else?) Florida.

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •