# Kent State shooting

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: "Kent State shooting," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/kent-state/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*The 1970 shooting of unarmed student protesters by the Ohio National Guard; John Kiriakou says a family friend's daughter was among those killed — the closing event of a 1968–69 upheaval he treats both as the formation of his own politics and as the historical measure against which he judges the present.*

- **Ordered by (per Kiriakou):** Ohio Governor Rhodes
- **Kiriakou tie:** A family friend's daughter was killed
- **In his household:** Governor Rhodes was '''the devil'''
- **Places it:** A year after the King and Kennedy assassinations
- **Uses it as:** The benchmark for how divided the country is now

The **Kent State shooting** was the 1970 killing of unarmed student protesters by the Ohio National Guard. It is one of the few historical events [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) claims a direct personal connection to, and he returns to it in two distinct registers: as the thing that made him a man of the left, and as the last comparable convulsion before the one he believes is coming.

## The family connection

A friend of Kiriakou's parents lost a daughter at Kent State — *"she was one of the five that was shot and killed,"* as he puts it.[1][2] Asked whether losing a family friend's daughter was a large part of his identifying with the left, he agreed that it very much was.[1]

In his household the Ohio governor who ordered the National Guard to fire was, flatly, *"the devil."* Kiriakou's own framing of the order has stayed the same across tellings: open fire on unarmed students at a peaceful political protest — *"What is this? North Korea?"*[3]

## The 1968–69 sequence

Kiriakou consistently sets Kent State at the end of a run of events he remembers from early childhood — *"I'm just old enough to remember 1968 and 1969. I was a kid."*[4][5]

The sequence begins with him sitting on his father's lap while the news showed buildings on fire. He asked why, and his father said a very bad man had killed Martin Luther King and black people were very upset — a sentence Kiriakou says he still remembers being phrased exactly that way.[6][7] A couple of months later his mother cried all day because Robert Kennedy had been shot and killed.[6][8] In a Cyprus telling he dates the two killings precisely — King in April, Kennedy in June — and describes the gigantic demonstrations, in some cases riots, against the Vietnam War that followed, with Kent State coming a year later.[9]

Compressed, the run he recites is: *"Martin Luther King's assassinated, then Bobby Kennedy's assassinated, then Kent State, and then the summer of love, and everybody's in the street, and the cops are shooting unarmed people."*[10][11][12] He calls 1968 *"nightmarish"* and says it got worse in 1969 with the shooting.[13][14]

## As a measure of the present

The reason Kiriakou raises Kent State is almost always comparative. Having lived through 1968 and 1969, he argues the country is now *"just as split"* as it was then — a division he says he has not otherwise seen in his adult lifetime.[4][10]

His Cyprus account draws the arc out further and ends darker. After Kent State, he says, the country entered a period in which nothing so severe happened; now *"we're getting ready to explode again. Like it's coming. Everybody sees it that it's coming."* What makes it worse in his reading is that the division itself is disabling — *"nobody feels that they have the power to stop it"* — and he expects the consequence plainly: *"it's going to get worse before it gets any better. And worse is going to mean people are going to die."*[15] He also notes he is speaking freely while a pardon application is pending, saying he has *"literally nothing to lose."*[16]

Alongside the same memories he traces the political narrowing he objects to: from what he calls the free thinking of 1968 and 1969 through Watergate in 1974, to a present in which the two parties *"pretend to have these significant political differences"* while *"rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic."*[3]

## See also

- [RFK Assassination](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/rfk-assassination)
- [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)

## Sources

1. 3 Hours with John Kiriakou: CIA Whistleblower on JFK, Conspiracies & Power (2026-06-15), at 1:45:47. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dfXffvHAnU&t=6347s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-06-15-jason-jones-3-hours-kiriakou/
2. Covert Strategies Revealed (2026-07-08), at 24:56. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUxyyvi_ORE&t=1496s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-07-08-covert-strategies-revealed-covert-strategies-revealed/
3. 3 Hours with John Kiriakou: CIA Whistleblower on JFK, Conspiracies & Power (2026-06-15), at 1:46:18. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dfXffvHAnU&t=6378s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-06-15-jason-jones-3-hours-kiriakou/
4. Doug Bopst (2026-05-06), at 08:50. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8iyS5huGMQ&t=530s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-05-06-doug-bopst-doug-bopst/
5. 3 Hours with John Kiriakou: CIA Whistleblower on JFK, Conspiracies & Power (2026-06-15), at 1:44:45. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dfXffvHAnU&t=6285s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-06-15-jason-jones-3-hours-kiriakou/
6. 3 Hours with John Kiriakou: CIA Whistleblower on JFK, Conspiracies & Power (2026-06-15), at 1:45:16. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dfXffvHAnU&t=6316s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-06-15-jason-jones-3-hours-kiriakou/
7. Covert Strategies Revealed (2026-07-08), at 24:24. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUxyyvi_ORE&t=1464s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-07-08-covert-strategies-revealed-covert-strategies-revealed/
8. Former Spy Reveals the Brutal Survival Rules Inside the (2026-05-20), at 42:55. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rf8xsrnBBs0&t=2575s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-05-20-covert-operations-insight/
9. John Kiriakou Fireside Chat (2026-07-23), at 1:13:43. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCB56HbNvOo&t=4423s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-07-23-cyprus-diaspora-forum-john-kiriakou-fireside-chat/
10. Doug Bopst (2026-05-06), at 09:21. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8iyS5huGMQ&t=561s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-05-06-doug-bopst-doug-bopst/
11. CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou: How to Escape The System & Stop Being Manipulated (2026-04-23), at 1:14:30. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fn-yCYLhjo0&t=4470s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-04-23-doug-bopst-cia-whistleblower-escape-system/
12. Covert Strategies Revealed (2026-05-26), at 1:12:49. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhIgw7ac80I&t=4369s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-05-26-covert-strategies-revealed-covert-strategies-revealed/
13. Former Spy Reveals the Brutal Survival Rules Inside the (2026-05-20), at 43:25. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rf8xsrnBBs0&t=2605s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-05-20-covert-operations-insight/
14. John Kiriakou Podcast (2026-05-28), at 43:11. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzSIp9kONVA&t=2591s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-05-28-john-kiriakou-podcast-john-kiriakou-podcast/
15. John Kiriakou Fireside Chat (2026-07-23), at 1:14:13. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCB56HbNvOo&t=4453s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-07-23-cyprus-diaspora-forum-john-kiriakou-fireside-chat/
16. John Kiriakou Fireside Chat (2026-07-23), at 1:15:15. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCB56HbNvOo&t=4515s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-07-23-cyprus-diaspora-forum-john-kiriakou-fireside-chat/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/kent-state/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt