Blood in the Water

by Thompson, Heather Ann

  [The governor] must give them clemency. He must give them clemency from criminal prosecution….I mean this is cut and dry. That is all there is to it….This is not a joke. This is not some kind of little tea party we have here. You have read in the paper all these years of the My Lai massacre. That was only 170-odd men. We are going to end up with 1,500 men here, if things don’t go right, at least 1,500.47

  Cunningham also said:

  I wish you would take any of the men that belong to us off the roof and any of the troopers out of here, because you get these shaky guys shooting off or getting up in a group or something, someone is going to get excited and we are all going to pay.48

  The prisoners were heartened by Cunningham’s candor and his willingness to stand up to his employers, particularly when reporters raised the issue of Rockefeller and amnesty. He stated emphatically, “If he says no, I am dead.”49 Champ was incredulous: “And that is the toughest fuckin’ sarg’t on the job. He is the brute. Put more guys in keep-lock than any 40 hacks around. And you hear what he say now?”50

  CO Mike Smith, the hostage who had read over the men’s initial letter to Oswald asking for reforms back that July, was also unequivocal about the need for Rockefeller to make an appearance at Attica. He told the reporters that the governor “should get his ass here now,” and gesturing toward the prisoners in the yard, he stated firmly, “We’re not scared of any of you people. We know it’s not you, it’s the people outside.”51 Casting his eyes upward, Smith went on, “Anybody with a weapon, anybody with anything of a militant manner, leave. Just get them off the roof.”52 Then the reporters turned to listen to a young white prisoner, Blaze Montgomery, whose Southern accent was as thick as Wicker’s. Montgomery said solemnly, “I want everyone to know we gone stick together, we gone get what we want, or we gone die together.”53

  While the interviews with hostages continued, so did the speeches up at the negotiating table. Kenyatta kept trying to take the microphone, but was forced time and again to hand it back to others, such as the still very upset and nervous assemblyman Arthur Eve, who spoke openly with the prisoners of his feeling that Oswald had betrayed the observers and that securing amnesty was still important to them all. William Kunstler suddenly found himself the center of attention when Herb Blyden asked him pointedly if there were indeed foreign countries that would take in rebel Attica inmates who wanted to leave. Kunstler was ready for this question per his earlier call to the Black Panther Party. Yes, he said, there are four “third-world and African” countries that were in fact “prepared to provide asylum for everyone who wants to leave this country from this prison.”54 This was, of course, an exaggeration. No country was ready simply to whisk prisoners away from D Yard, but Kunstler was desperately trying to impress upon the men that the world was watching their struggle and that they were not alone. As important, Kunstler wanted the men in the yard to know that he had in fact worked hard on their behalf and, personally, was on their side. To drive that point home, he closed with a flourish, telling the crowd that Bobby Seale wanted them “to know that in every city with a black, Chicano, Puerto Rican poor community” the people were “watching Attica Prison. The Gringos talk about Remember the Alamo. Remember Attica.”55

  The longer Kunstler spoke, the warier some of the other less radical observers grew. First Eve’s reemphasis on amnesty, then Kunstler’s talk of foreign political asylum might have bolstered these men’s reputations with the prisoners, but these observers worried that such talk could also be dangerous in that it might raise false hopes. On the other hand, it was clear that the men very much appreciated Kunstler’s words. Hardly shy to express the opinion that fellow observers such as Kunstler might be going “too far,” reporter Tom Wicker this time did not think that either Eve’s or Kunstler’s speeches had given the prisoners “any cause to believe that if they just hang on a bit longer, they were going to get amnesty and go home free.”56

  With little more left to discuss, at 6:00 Sunday night the observers made their way back to the administration building. This time the goodbyes seemed foreboding and final. No one was certain how this crisis would end, but all suspected that it wouldn’t go smoothly. As the observers took their final walk across the now fetid, rutted, and filthy D Yard, the prisoners expressed a deep gratitude for what the observers had tried to do for them. Big Black Smith, who had spent the preceding four days in a state of steely and wary alert, felt an unexpected and powerful surge of warmth toward the team he was escorting out of the yard. He reached out to Tom Wicker and gripped his hand tightly. Feeling overwhelmed, Wicker managed, “Good luck. Good luck, Brother.”57

  Since he was the one to have just interviewed the hostages, Wicker felt that it was his duty to go out into Attica’s parking lot to update the anxious crowd about their relatives and townspeople. His reception there immediately confirmed his worry that Big Black Smith and the other men in D Yard would need all the luck they could get. As Wicker climbed on top of a car so that he could be seen by the crowd, a cold drizzle was again falling. Trying to read the ever-dampening notebook in his hand, he began to summarize his interviews. All the hostages, he said, “requested strongly that as much consideration as possible be given to granting full amnesty to the prisoners.”58 He added that they had all “requested strongly that Gov. Rockefeller come here physically” and finally that “they urged the prison authorities here at Attica and Commissioner Oswald not to allow any troops to [make a] show of force on the roof or anywhere inside.”59 He was clear that everyone—the observers, the hostages, and the prisoners—now feared a massacre should the governor not step in.

  Wicker addresses the crowd. (Courtesy of The New York Times)

  His audience erupted. “What about my son?” Steven Smith, hostage Mike Smith’s father, yelled up at Wicker with tears on his face and rain soaking his body.60 “We have to go in and bring those people out!” he continued in anguish.61 “Wet nursing those convicts won’t do it!”62 Galvanized by Smith’s impassioned outburst, other townspeople surged toward Wicker hurling epithets and demanding that the state step in. “I’d like to show them a little brutality,” screamed one woman; another cried out, “Those troopers should have gone in there for them!”63 Hostage Frank Strollo’s brother Tony, one of the hundreds of state troopers standing by and also listening to Wicker, couldn’t have agreed more. He was certain that this observer was spinning tales about what the hostages really thought, and he was more eager than ever to end this riot once and for all by going in. Others, like hostage John Stockholm’s wife, Mary, were more scared than angry once they heard Wicker speak. They were alarmed by Wicker’s dire message about possible bloodshed should someone not step in. “Until that point,” Mary Stockholm remembered, “I had believed this would end peacefully.”64 As the crowd grew moblike and the noise became deafening, Mary fainted. Wicker looked out at the desperation and chaos feeling more disheartened and helpless than he could ever remember.65

  Wicker returned to the administration building, where he and the other observers debriefed Oswald about their most recent visit to D Yard. It soon became clear that Oswald had no remaining faith that he could still make a difference in how this standoff ended. They even played Oswald a taped message from Richard X Clark, which made clear the prisoners’ view that “anything that results will be the result of the commissioner moving—not us.”66 Oswald just stared at the wall for a moment, then got up, told the observers that no one would be going back into D Yard, and on his way out said forlornly, “I’ve given everything.”67 From there, the commissioner went back to his office. At 7:20 p.m., he instructed that the phone in the Steward’s Room be cut off immediately. He worried that some of the observers had somehow been sending “code messages that the rebels would pick up on their transistor radios.”68 It was only a matter of time, Oswald knew, before his superiors were going to order this prison protest ended once and for all.

  18

  Deciding Disaster

  By Sunday night, the fou
rth day of the Attica uprising, troopers filled the swath of lawn between the prison’s gate and the administration building, as well as the asphalt that ringed the prison walls. There were so many men that it was hard for them to move without running into one another. And they were fed up.1 As one trooper later bluntly explained, “Everyone was getting frustrated by the length of time it was taking to resolve the riot. We just wanted to get it over with and get on with our lives.”2 Technical Sergeant F. D. Smith, a state trooper who’d been filming the goings-on in D Yard from the catwalks since the afternoon of the first day of the uprising, felt that “an attitude of disgust was apparent among troopers and guards on Sunday, the 12th….A number of our people were heard to be wishing for ‘something to happen even if it’s the wrong thing.’ ”3 The COs felt the same way. They had come from counties near and far to retake the prison and they were tired of the waiting.

  It was obvious to anyone who was at Attica that members of law enforcement were so riled up that it would be difficult, if not impossible, for them to do their job dispassionately should they be sent in to retake the prison. Yet, by deciding that negotiations were now over, Oswald ensured that these were exactly the men who would be sent in to end the rebellion. As if feeling that he needed to make it clear that this was out of his hands, and that the governor himself had, in fact, made the decision to stop all discussions with the prisoners, Oswald began distributing copies of the statement that Rockefeller had drafted earlier in the day with Douglass:

  From the beginning of the tragic situation, involving riots and hostages at the Attica Correctional Facility which imperils the lives of many persons, including 38 innocent citizens and dedicated law enforcement officers, I have been in constant, direct contact with Correction Commissioner Russell Oswald and my representatives on the scene.

  Every effort has been made by the state to resolve the situation and to establish order, hopefully by peaceable means. I have carefully considered the request conveyed to me by the committee of citizen observers for my physical presence at Attica, as well as the demands of the inmates that I meet with them in the prison yard.

  I am deeply grateful to members of the committee for the long and courageous efforts to achieve a peaceful settlement. The key issue at stake, however, is still the demand for total amnesty for any criminal acts which may have occurred.

  I do not have the constitutional authority, because to do so would undermine the very essence of our free society—the fair and impartial application of the law.

  In view of the fact that the key issue is total amnesty—in spite of the best efforts of the committee and in spite of Commissioner Oswald’s major commitments to the inmates—I do not feel that my physical presence can contribute to a peaceful settlement.

  Commissioner Oswald has offered 28 major proposals recommended by the inmates and the committee of citizen observers. I fully support the Commissioner’s proposals and concur with the considered opinion of the Commissioner that the inmates must now be offered a direct opportunity to respond to his offers.

  I join personally with the Commissioner in an urgent appeal to the inmates that they now:

  1. Release the hostages without harm

  2. Cooperate in the peaceful restoration of order

  3. Accept the Commissioner’s good-faith commitment to the 28 major proposals offered to the inmates4

  Rockefeller’s statement only reiterated what Oswald had been saying to the observers all along. Many of these men had hoped that Rockefeller’s mind would be changed by the newsmen’s interviews with the hostages, since they had talked about how important it was for the governor to come. The prisoners had also placed great faith in these interviews—everyone could now see for themselves that the hostages were safe. They too had hoped desperately that the governor would appear, since, as one of them explained, such a visit would have given the men “a way for us to get out with some dignity and real assurance with muscle behind it that we’d not be physically hurt.”5 In lieu of amnesty, said another, the governor’s visit “could have insured that only the individuals responsible with a particular act, you know, would be prosecuted.”6

  But State Senator Dunne had been right when he predicted that Rockefeller would decide it was too politically costly to make the trip to Attica. Several observers, including Dunne, suspected that the governor had been persuaded by Robert Douglass not to come, and that Douglass was really the one who was deciding that the Attica rebellion must be ended.7 One thing was certain: by refusing to visit the prison, the governor had pleased the men whose approval he most wanted: the leaders of his own political party. “After issuing the statement,” said a confidential report written by the governor’s closest aides, “Rockefeller spoke with the President [Nixon], who expressed strong support for the Governor’s position.”8

  Some of the observers clearly hadn’t given up hope that Oswald might be able at least to sway the governor on the amnesty issue. For quite some time Sunday evening, back in the Steward’s Room, a number of them had made extremely emotional pleas to the commissioner to do something, anything, to forestall an assuredly disastrous attack. And, unbeknownst to the observers, Oswald did communicate these pleas to Governor Rockefeller later that night. As he explained it to the governor, “Kunstler argued vigorously for amnesty, drawing on the British response to the seizure of hostages by Arab guerrillas….Kunstler also suggested that one hostage could be released every week and talks extended over a longer period. Wicker made an impassioned plea quoting from the Bible.”9 But no amount of begging or cajoling or reasoning on the part of the observers or the commissioner could budge the governor.

  And so the final decision to end the negotiations at Attica was indeed the governor’s. By 10:35 p.m., the exhausted, bitter, and deeply discouraged men on the observers committee had heard nothing new from Oswald. They knew they had done everything they could to change the governor’s mind and now had only to decide whether to leave or stay in the prison once an assault began. Most chose to leave, but nine decided to stay all night in case something more positive developed or, as they believed more likely, to be witnesses to the attack.

  An assault was more imminent than even they understood. At 11:00 p.m. General Buzz O’Hara called Rockefeller and asked his permission to coordinate with others for an assault on the prison the next morning. “You have it,” replied Rockefeller.10 With the governor’s go-ahead, Buzz O’Hara sat down with Oswald, Douglass, Rockefeller lawyer Howard Shapiro, Norman Hurd, State Senator John Dunne, and State Assemblymen Clark Wemple and James Emery to inform them of what would now happen. For all of the flak that Kunstler took for being brought in as an impartial observer but then agreeing to represent the prisoners in D Yard, this meeting made clear that at least three other observers were also representing an interest—in their case, that of the state.

  The actual dirty work of the retaking would fall “to the two local representatives of police and correction” at that meeting: Major John Monahan and Superintendent Mancusi.11 That, in itself, was odd. Both of these men had far less expertise than many others in both the Department of Correctional Services and the New York State Police—even others in this very meeting. And, notably, another more obvious person to be in charge, the head of the NYSP, William Kirwan, was conspicuously absent not only from this meeting but from Attica itself. Superintendent Kirwan had been on vacation when Attica exploded, but for reasons unclear, he had been allowed to continue to enjoy Lake George as one of his state’s biggest crises unfolded. That such a potentially disastrous assault on Attica would be overseen by Mancusi, and undertaken by Major Monahan, one of his lowest-ranking officers in the NYSP, strongly implied that Rockefeller had his own reservations about how this retaking might unfold.12 Distancing his top-ranked NYSP and DOCS officials from the actual assault also meant being able to distance the governor’s office from anything that might go wrong.

  At least one of the men at this strategy meeting late Sunday night felt deeply uncomfortable
at the way the plans to retake the prison were shaping up. John Dunne was well aware that the prisoners were counting on him, and yet, now, he was sitting there again discussing how their rebellion would be ended with force. Thanks in no small part to Dunne’s influence, every previous plan to storm the prison had been stalled, including the most recent one that morning.13 But it was now a certainty that a forcible retaking of the prison would commence the very next morning. In short, Rockefeller was done. In his opinion, Attica-like rebellions would likely “become epidemic in prisons throughout the state and the nation” in the future and he wanted his retaking of Attica to send a strong message of deterrence.14 As an investigative body later put it, “The decision to retake the prison was…a decisive reassertion of the state of its sovereignty and power.”15

  And, notwithstanding what many would later claim, it was crystal clear to all at this late-night meeting—Dunne, as well as those charged with carrying out the retaking—that this assault would come at a staggeringly high price. Not only would there likely be many prisoner fatalities, but as Assemblyman Clark Wemple put it, “there was absolutely no doubt in anyone’s mind that if we went in there, the guards would be killed.”16 General O’Hara concurred: “It was the general consensus of opinion by all the officials present that…if the prison was retaken by force the hostages would be killed.”17

  A bloody outcome was virtually guaranteed by the NYSP’s choice of weaponry.18 Two six-man teams of troopers would position themselves on the rooftops of A and C Blocks with rifles at the ready to provide cover for the men launching the assault below. The men leading the assault on D Yard would themselves be armed with pistols and shotguns, which utilized unjacketed bullets, a kind of ammunition that causes such enormous damage to human flesh that it was banned by the Geneva Conventions.19 Many of the other troopers and COs preparing to go in were also carrying other weapons that would have a particularly brutal effect, such as shotguns filled with deadly buckshot pellets that sprayed out in a wide arc. As all state officials knew, although there were some gas guns in the yard that could fire tear gas, no prisoner in the yard was carrying a firearm.20