Nearly 500 people attended Kent State University ceremonies Saturday commemorating the four students killed and nine wounded when Ohio National Guard troops opened fired during a Vietnam War protest in 1970.
Speakers included journalist Bob Woodward, who released previously unheard audio of then-President Nixon comparing protestors to Attica prison inmates. Kabir Bhatia of member station WKSU in Kent reports.
The two-time Pulitzer Prize winning reporter spoke about his career at The Washington Post as well as the 1970 shootings on Kent State’s campus, which left four dead and nine wounded.
He also quoted newly discovered tape from 1971, in which President Richard Nixon equates the Kent State students with inmates involved in the Attica State prison uprising.
“‘You know what stops them? Stops them? Kill a few.’ ‘Sure,’ Haldeman said. Nixon: ‘Remember Kent State? Didn’t it have a hell of an effect?’””
In preparing for his Kent State speech, Woodward got the tape from one of the nation’s leading scholars on Nixon’s secret Oval Office recordings.