Forensic Scientist to Present New Evidence of Command Responsibility for Campus Shootings at Final Kent State Truth Tribunal in NYC

Audio Tape Pointing to Government Responsibility to be Broadcast Live on MichaelMoore.com.

NEW YORK, Oct. 5 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- On October 9-10, 2010 filmmaker Michael Moore will again livecast the hearings of the Kent State Truth Tribunal (KSTT), streaming real time accounts of participants, witnesses and family members of the 1970 Kent State shootings that left four students dead and nine others injured. The livecast will include stunning, new evidence about the 1970 shootings at Kent State and will be broadcast at www.MichaelMoore.com from 10am-5pm EST daily. This final truth tribunal is the third in a series and follows a tribunal in Kent, Ohio in early May which marked the 40th anniversary of the campus shootings and an August KSTT in San Francisco.

Close to 100 personal narratives have already been recorded and preserved from people of all backgrounds whose lives were impacted by the killings at Kent State in 1970, representing a comprehensive oral archive of this historic event. It is the first American truth-seeking initiative to be broadcast live on the Internet.

Three days after the original Kent State Truth Tribunal the Cleveland Plain Dealer broke a major story about a recorded order to fire given to the Ohio National Guard. A key focus at KSTT-NYC will be the examination of this 40-year-old audio tape, which was recorded from the window ledge of a Kent State student's dormitory at the time of the shootings. The Kent State tape started recording minutes before the shooting and ran until after all of the shots were fired, verifying an audible order to "Prepare to Fire."

Laurel Krause, founder of the KSTT, said, "We have invited the Department of Justice to audit the presentation of the new evidence but they have not confirmed their participation. Though we will make the a copy of this revealing interview available to them at any time, we strongly encourage the DOJ to witness the presentation as a gesture of commitment to resolving a judicial matter that still haunts America. The Ohio National Guard and their commanders have repeatedly claimed since the time of the shootings and over years of litigation that there was no order to fire. This critical evidence clearly disputes their sworn statements, suggesting that there has not been full accountability for those responsible for the Kent State shootings."

Tribunal organizers are asking the United States government to acknowledge the "wrongs" of May 4, 1970, in the hope of reclaiming what was lost that day – freedom to protest and to peacefully assemble and the democratic right to question the government and hold it accountable for wrongdoings.

Other participants of note include Pentagon Papers whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg and Lawrence Dowler, chief archivist at Yale University Library, where he created the most comprehensive archive of the 1970 Kent State shootings. The only recording of the Kent State tape was discovered in this collection in 2007.

The KSTT was convened by family members of students killed at Kent State in order to record and preserve the stories of those directly affected by the shootings. The Ohio National Guard has never publicized the findings of its investigation of command responsibility for the shootings. And there has never been a public inquiry to record the stories of those directly impacted by what happened on May 4, 1970 at Kent State.

Interviews are recorded by award-winning filmmaker Emily Kunstler and will be simultaneously livecast on the home page of www.MichaelMoore.com. Archived interviews can be found on http://TruthTribunal.org/testimonials. The footage and mementos from the tribunal will also be physically archived and available for viewing by the public as part of the permanent collection at the renowned Tamiment Library at New York University.

The east coast tribunal will take place over the weekend of October 9 and 10, 2010 at the offices of Mile End Films Inc., 19 W. 21st Street, Suite 901, New York City. Organizers are asking for all original participants and witnesses of the 1970 Kent State shootings to pre-register at www.TruthTribunal.org/preregister For more information, visit: http://www.truthtribunal.org

SOURCE Kent State Truth Tribunal