by Gary Noesner
On the morning of August 21, 1991, a group of detainees awaiting repatriation to Cuba rioted and took control of their unit at the Talladega Federal Correctional Institution in Alabama. They seized eight Bureau of Prisons (BOP) employees and three from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). The FBI has jurisdiction over serious crimes at federal prisons, and so I was immediately sent to Alabama.
This was not the first time that the FBI had confronted angry Cuban detainees. In November and December 1987, Cuban inmates had seized the Atlanta Penitentiary and the Federal Detention Center in Oakdale, Louisiana. The combined uprisings threatened more than a hundred hostages, lasted more than eleven days, and required protracted negotiations to resolve.
Many of the Cubans involved in those prison riots had been arrested after the infamous 1980 Mariel boatlift in which Fidel Castro had emptied his prisons and mental health wards, dumping their residents on an unsuspecting United States. Reports suggest that up to 16 percent of the 125,000 individuals entering the United States in that armada had spent time in Cuban prisons. The INS had detained about 2,500 of these, declaring them “excludable” or unfit to remain in the United States. These individuals were moved to over a dozen federal facilities around the country until their situations were resolved. Cuba initially refused to accept these inmates back, and American authorities could not simply release them. Those with violent criminal records were in perpetual limbo, and their frustrations led to the Atlanta and Oakdale riots. In both cases, peace was restored after a Cuban bishop from Miami was brought in as a mediator, but not before the riots cost the U.S. government more than $100 million and destroyed significant portions of the prison facilities.
The U.S. government eventually persuaded Cuba to take back more than 2,500 of the 3,800 Mariel refugees, and Talladega was the last stop for those being deported after their appeals had been exhausted. The Talladega uprising began one day before thirty-four detainees were scheduled to be shipped back to Cuba. Some of these were resigned to going back home, where they awaited an uncertain future in the Cuban legal system. Some were adamantly opposed to their repatriation. Others, who had served their sentences for criminal offenses committed here in the United States, simply wanted to be set free. All felt betrayed by the “agreements” for immediate resolution they thought they had reached at Oakdale or Atlanta.
At Talladega, our negotiation team consisted of local and regional FBI negotiators, including several Spanish-speakers who had helped resolve the earlier prison uprisings.
We formed two teams staffed with FBI and BOP negotiators, with native Spanish-speakers assigned to each team, and each team on duty for twelve-hour stints. I was the negotiation team leader for the evening shift, with FBI negotiator Pedro Toledo on hand as one of those chosen to communicate with the inmates directly in Spanish. The FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team was also on hand, preparing an emergency assault plan in case violence erupted.
At a glance, Talladega might be mistaken for a large community college campus. A dozen or so modern, no-nonsense buildings in gray concrete were connected by walkways crossing grassy courtyards. The only indications of this institution’s real purpose were the exceptionally small windows and the substantial perimeter fences. Those features clearly marked this as a prison, as did the fact that the BOP had correctional officers in full riot gear—helmets, body armor, weapons—surrounding Alpha Unit, the building the detainees had taken over.
Our teams had set up shop in the prison administration building across the courtyard, about a hundred yards away. We had captured the phone lines in and out of Alpha, but when we called in, either the detainees would refuse to answer or they would answer and immediately hang up. They knew that the FBI and prison authorities had outsmarted them last time, so now they were in no mood to talk. The situations in Atlanta and Oakdale had taught them what every negotiator knows: protracted discussion usually works to the advantage of the authorities. Now they wanted their demands met, plain and simple, end of story. Some were willing to return to Cuba; some were dead set against it. But none of them wanted to linger indefinitely in an American jail with no prospect of release.
It worked in our favor that inmates here had taken over only a single unit, rather than an entire prison, as had been the case in Atlanta and Oakdale. Modern prisons are highly modular so that problems like this can be contained. Alpha Unit consisted of rows of cells on two levels overlooking common areas, but the traditional bars beloved by the directors of old prison movies had been replaced by electronically operated steel doors with narrow slits for windows. Inside this prison within a prison, the detainees had created makeshift weapons and erected barricades behind which they held their eleven hostages.
We had every reason to be concerned about the safety of these abductees. Already, as is usual in a prison uprising, some inmates had used the chaos and confusion to carry out vendettas, with several stabbings as the result. We knew that among the group were dangerous, desperate men who might now reasonably conclude that there was no turning back.
It’s much easier to gather information on hostage takers when the subjects in question are already prisoners. We had ready access to mental health records, criminal history records, and personal insights and observations from correctional officers who had daily contact with the subjects. We used these data to try to identify potential leaders as well as those most likely to carry out violent acts.
In Atlanta, there had been one prisoner so crazy that the Cubans tied him up with duct tape and put him outside. He had been known to throw his own feces at guards, and at one point he actually chewed off one of his own fingers.
There appeared to be no one quite that far gone at Talladega, but several inmates had very violent histories, including murder and rape. When an uprising is opportunistic, as this one seemed to have been—there was no evidence of significant advance planning, and inmates appeared to have spontaneously overpowered officers during prisoner recreation—it usually takes several days before a clear leadership structure emerges. This is not entirely surprising, given that few inmates have meaningful organizational skills or leadership abilities. Their normal behavior for working out differences is not consensus and cooperation but threats, intimidation, and violence. In our negotiations, we would try to encourage the reasonable people, but as of yet, no one would communicate except through banners hung from the rooftop asking the press to get involved and advocate on their behalf. The banners said, We are not hungry for food but for freedom. Give it to us.
On the second day, using the information gleaned from correctional officers, I prepared an assessment for the on-scene commander, Special Agent in Charge Al Whitaker, a man who seemed new to siege management, but who at least had surrounded himself with good people.
In my opinion, the inmates’ refusal to engage in substantive negotiations reflected their lack of clear purpose and goals, as well as their conflicting agendas, which varied according to the status of each prisoner’s case. The point of access I suggested was based on the fact that prisoners are like most people—they get used to creature comforts and a set routine, even if it’s simply watching TV or working out in the gym. They don’t like it when those simple pleasures are withdrawn, least of all food. At Talladega, inmate cooks prepared food in a central facility, after which meals were brought over to each unit. With no kitchen of their own, the Cuban detainees had gone for days now without food. In every brief conversation they demanded that we send in something for them to eat, but we had made it clear that they had to give us something in return. So far this had not led to anything positive, but I judged that hunger, properly manipulated, provided our best opportunity for leverage.
What prisoners want on day one of an incident, or even on day two, is often much different from what they are willing to accept only a few days later, after they come to see that they are not in as much control as they’d initially thought. It’s no surprise, then, that a number of significant prison incidents have lasted around ten days
or less, with the inmates ultimately accepting on the final day the deal that they could have had on day one. Simply put, inmates are more likely to make concessions or act reasonably when they get hungry, bored, and tired.
I suggested that prison employees begin frying bacon and brewing coffee, the smells of which would provide a powerful incentive for the inmates to come out from behind their barricades. This concept of “aromatic warfare,” as I called it, had been used effectively by the NYPD in the 1970s, when Frank Bolz once fried bacon in the hallway of a house where he knew the barricaded subject was hungry.
The next day, at lunchtime, correctional officers set up a large outdoor grill not far from the front of Alpha Unit. Ostensibly, the grill was there to cook hamburgers for the officers in their riot gear, standing as a visible containment line around the facility. They tried not to obviously flaunt the food, but clearly inmates would be able to see and smell the grill.
That night, our Spanish-speaking negotiator, Pedro Toledo, continued to call in, and at last his persistence paid off. An inmate picked up the phone and said, “We want to talk. Outside. Right now.”
This was our first real breakthrough in days, so Pedro and I immediately left the administration building and started walking across the courtyard. Correctional officers had erected mobile units with floodlights that shone on the walls of Alpha Unit. We could see the inmates in their blue denim prison uniforms emerging from the steel inner door of the unit and gathering against the heavy bars of the outer door. With their tattoos, head scarves, and occasional missing teeth, they looked the part of hardened criminals. Many of them had improvised weapons in their hands, shanks fashioned from scraps of wood or metal.
No data show that exposed face-to-face negotiations produce a better result—and all of the dozen or more U.S. negotiators who have been killed performing their duties over the years died in face-to-face situations. In this case, however, the potential payoff appeared to outweigh the risk.
With our snipers on alert, Pedro approached the men and began a dialogue; I followed about ten feet behind. Because a negotiator can easily get caught up in the dialogue and inadvertently put himself at risk, part of my job as his coach was to ride herd on him. Sure enough, in the intensity of his conversation, Pedro kept inching forward, and I kept reminding him to step back. After a while I was actually hanging on to the back of his jacket, tugging on it now and then to remind him not to get too close. I kept him at least thirty feet away from the inmates behind the bars at all times.
My Spanish is limited, but I could hear him saying the kinds of things we always say: “I hear you. We’ll work on it. We need to get on the phone and talk.”
Their most immediate demand was for food, but there were also heated denunciations of U.S. policy and rambling diatribes about what were seen as the injustices of each man’s specific case. Despite Pedro’s best efforts, what we emerged with was a grab bag of complaints rather than a coherent list of demands.
The next morning we handed off our shift to the other team, briefing them on the exchange we’d had the night before. I told the day shift about the weapons we’d seen, and reminded them to keep their distance if they decided to move forward, as we had. But when we returned twelve hours later to relieve them, I saw surveillance photographs lying on the desk showing my colleague Clint Van Zandt, the other negotiation team leader from SOARU, and one of the other Spanish-speaking negotiators leaning on the bars while speaking to some of the same Cubans. They were within inches of one another. In the photographs you could see the makeshift weapons the prisoners were brandishing.
We had a meeting later to discuss this incident, and tempers flared. Van Zandt said that his proximity had been necessary to show the Cuban inmates that we were not afraid of them. He felt that this was important culturally. I didn’t agree with his rationale then and I still don’t. In my mind, while some risks are unavoidable, safety should always be the primary consideration when negotiating. Thankfully this unnecessary safety breach didn’t happen again.
Despite these forays and the limited rapport they created, our engagement with the inmates remained more of a running argument than a true negotiation. All in all, however, we were fortunate to be in a stalemate rather than an escalating crisis. The question of when we might need to take decisive action—an assault—was always on our minds, but so far things had remained sufficiently calm for us to pursue our measured course.
On Wednesday, August 28, seven days into the standoff, the inmates suddenly asked to meet with Cynthia Corzo, a reporter from El Nuevo Herald, the Spanish-language edition of the Miami Herald.
Corzo proved willing, and we agreed to the dialogue, demanding in exchange that the inmates release one hostage. A few hours later, Kitty Suddeth, a twenty-four-year-old prison secretary, appeared at the gate looking like death warmed over. For seven days she had lived in the same clothes, without food, without the chance to wash, and in fear for her life. Correctional officers rushed to support her as she came out into the courtyard. Her ordeal had been so terrifying that she would never return to prison work.
We told the inmates that they could send several representatives to meet with Corzo. Correctional officers put a table and chairs outside the main door to Alpha Unit and set up a canopy overhead to block the sun. Corzo met with them in three separate sessions, allowing the men to tell their side of the story.
Meanwhile, Kitty Suddeth had provided important information that changed our view of the gravity of the situation. She warned us that whatever fragile leadership had once existed was now losing control. The inmates had begun to fight among themselves, and in her opinion, the more dangerous individuals were gaining influence.
Our negotiators continued to hold out the promise of food in exchange for hostages being released. We did achieve one concession when the inmates next agreed to allow prison doctors to assist one of the hostages, a correctional officer with high blood pressure. He came to the front gate, and a medic—actually an FBI agent—checked his blood pressure and provided him with necessary medications. This agent was then allowed to converse briefly with and provide first aid to the rest of the hostages at the front entrance, one at a time. During this exchange, some managed to slip notes to our agent expressing their belief that they were about to die and that this might be their last opportunity to communicate with their loved ones. The grim evidence they cited was that they had been ordered to place their identification cards in a pillowcase. They were told that one card would be drawn and that person would be killed.
Agent Whitaker took this as a sign that it was time to move in with a tactical assault, and I concurred. I still felt that the long-term prospects for surrender were good, but I also felt that it was highly probable that at least one hostage would die before we would be able to bring the inmates to the point of standing down. Given this very real threat, it was time to move.
One of the advantages in dealing with a siege in a prison is the availability of detailed plans of the facility. HRT and BOP tactical officers had removed inmates from another unit within the prison that was identical to Alpha, and they had used it to practice each step of how they would enter, secure the hostages, and subdue the inmates. Then again, prisons are made to keep inmates from getting out, which means that they are none too easy for tactical officers to breach.
A half dozen FBI and BOP officials met in the warden’s conference room to go over the plan. HRT had already assembled all the equipment and personnel required, including several FBI field SWAT teams. They were under the command of Special Agent Dick Rogers, the new commander of the HRT. Tall, with ramrod-straight posture and red hair clipped in a military style, Rogers had served as a noncommissioned officer in the military. He was clearly type A; I noticed that his jaw seemed perpetually tense, as if he was ready to spring on someone at any moment. His nickname, I would come to find out later, was “Sergeant Severe.”
Though a tactical operation was in the works, I emphasized to the others that our job as n
egotiators was not over yet. Crisis management works most effectively when both elements, tactical and negotiation, work in close coordination. Given the challenges of breaking in to a prison, our job would be to soften up the inmates to minimize their ability to resist and maximize the chances that all the hostages would come out unharmed.
During an assault, hostage takers’ first instinct is to preserve their own lives rather than to harm hostages, but the longer an assault drags on, the greater the possibility of hostage execution. Thus the circumstances placed a premium on quick and decisive action.
For our part, the negotiation team developed a plan to lull the inmates into complacency, a plan that I admit sounds like something out of an old folk tale. We recommended that we pretend to give in to their demand for food with no preconditions. We felt that such an apparent victory would make them lower their guard. The risk with this plan was that if for some reason the assault had to be postponed, our having provided them food without getting something in return would weaken our bargaining position. But that was a risk worth taking.
At a more biochemical level, the rest of the plan called for the food to be as rich and plentiful as the prison kitchens could manage. We ordered up steaks and potatoes with gravy, as well as cakes and pies. We really went over the top, assuming that these famished men, accustomed in the best of times to a limited prison diet, would gorge themselves at the first sight of this high-calorie feast.
That evening Pedro got on the phone and delivered what appeared to the inmates to be a major concession. “Okay, you get your food. We’re going to feed you, so don’t hurt anyone. Stay cool.”