Blood in the Water

by Thompson, Heather Ann

  20

  Standing Firm

  On the morning of Monday, September 13, Governor Nelson Rockefeller and many of his aides were in Manhattan, “sitting down to scrambled eggs, bacon, toast and coffee” in his Fifth Avenue apartment, awaiting news of Attica’s imminent retaking.1 The troopers outside Attica were busily loading rounds into their guns, and the prisoners in D Yard were beginning to awaken in tents soaked from the previous night’s cold rain.

  Although the men in the yard had no idea that they were about to be attacked, things for them were already very grim. They had been in the confines of D Yard for five days now and it had become a mud slick with neither a working sewage system nor a source of clean drinking water. The night before, prison officials had cut off their water supply. As desperate as conditions had become, however, the prisoners and hostages clung however irrationally to the hope that Tom Wicker’s interviews with the hostages the previous afternoon would bolster productive negotiations that day. As one man explained, they still hoped that outside pressure would convince Rockefeller to show up, and still “really believed we could get amnesty.”2

  To find out exactly when the negotiations would resume, Richard Clark went straight to A Gate when he awoke Monday morning. No one was there. Then, around 8:00 a.m., sentries from A Tunnel advised Clark that Oswald had sent word that he wanted to talk with him. By 8:25, Oswald, Dunbar, and General O’Hara were standing across the gate from Clark, ready to deliver the final version of the statement they’d drafted. The commissioner told Clark that he needed to persuade the men in the yard to let the hostages go, and he instructed him to make sure that they all heard this new missive. As he handed the message over to Clark, Oswald said to him beseechingly, “Mr. Clark, I earnestly implore you to give the contents of this memorandum your most careful consideration…I want to continue negotiations with you.”3

  Clark looked carefully at the letter but was mystified by Oswald’s solemn demeanor. He also was perplexed as to why Oswald was making such a big deal about this new statement, since, from what he could tell, it said the same thing as the note that had been given to him on Sunday that the men had already voted down. Still, he agreed to convey the message to the men in the yard, and he asked for thirty minutes to get their reaction and report back. Oswald said fifteen minutes. They compromised at twenty.

  When Clark arrived back in D Yard he grabbed the loudspeaker and read out the latest message from Oswald:

  For four days I have been using every resource available to me to settle peacefully the tragic situation here at Attica. We have met with you; have granted your requests for food, clothing, bedding and water; for medical aid; for a Federal Court Order against administrative reprisals. We have worked with the special Citizen Committee which you requested. We have acceded to 28 major demands which you have made and which the Citizen Committee had recommended. In spite of these efforts, you continue to hold hostages. I am anxious to achieve a peaceful resolution of the situation which now prevails there. I urgently request that you seriously consider my earlier appeal that:4

  1. All hostages be released immediately unharmed; and

  2. You join with me in restoring order to the facility.

  I must have your reply to this urgent appeal within the hour. I hope and pray your answer will be affirmative.5

  The yard erupted. Wasn’t this exactly what Oswald had said the day before? What was different? Hadn’t he paid any attention to the reporters’ interviews with the hostages? Didn’t he understand that even the hostages wanted him to grant amnesty so that there could be a peaceful end to this situation? As the minutes ticked away Clark reminded the group that they had to vote on whether to agree to Oswald’s appeal or to reject it. To the question of whether they agreed to release the hostages and surrender now, the silence in the yard was deafening. Only one voice could be heard supporting this position. “Why not take it?’ ’ one man shouted, “You got 28 out of 30 demands…you can’t get no better than that.”6 But in the wake of CO William Quinn’s death, all understood that amnesty was a must. Any or all of them could be charged with felony murder and those who had acted as leaders and spokesmen would be particularly vulnerable.7 As one man put it, he “just couldn’t agree, you know, to throw the guys that…acted as spokesmen…to the wolves.”8

  Clark restated the question, asking whether the men were rejecting Oswald’s request for surrender. The roar of approval that echoed through the yard was overwhelming. As hostage Frank Wald marveled, “From where I sat, it sounded almost as if everybody agreed to not accept it.”9

  However, the men in D Yard had no inkling that Oswald’s request was in fact a demand. As prisoner Dalou Gonzalez said later, the vote might have looked very different “if they had said, either release the hostages or we’re coming in shooting.”10 As important, especially after having brought newsmen in to interview hostages the night before, the men still could not believe that amnesty was not on the table. According to Gonzalez, “A lot of prisoners wanted to hear it from Rockefeller….If he had said no amnesty and had given us an ultimatum, it would have made a lot of prisoners reconsider their position.”11

  Back in the Steward’s Room, DOCS deputy commissioner Walter Dunbar handed out to the observers a copy of the statement that had just been delivered to Richard Clark.12 He tersely advised them that the building was being cleared for the retaking. If they planned on staying, they would not be allowed to leave the room until it was over. Arthur Eve couldn’t believe it had come to this. Eve declared that if Rockefeller wouldn’t even come to the aid of the “38 men who are on his staff [referring to the hostages]…he’s not fit to be the governor of this state.”13 As Dunbar backed out the door, eager to extricate himself from the bitter remarks and incredulous stares of the observers, one question did stop him momentarily: Would gas masks be available to them if they stayed? No, Dunbar replied, they would not.14 A correction officer accompanying Dunbar added, with a cold stare, “The truck bringing your gas masks got lost.”15

  Senator Dunne already knew that he was going to stay. Now that he had become personally involved in the retaking—consulting with Attica’s officials as well as with the governor’s aides at the prison, he was no longer really a member of the observers committee. He, unlike the majority of the observers, had accepted the view that the prison had to be retaken by force, though he also felt that it was Rockefeller’s refusal to come to Attica (a “most crucial mistake”) that had made a forcible retaking the only option. His only hope now was that even this would end all right.16 After all, as he had pointed out on more than one occasion in the last few days, the jail riot in Queens the year before had been forcibly ended and no one died.17

  The other observers were not at all persuaded by Dunne’s optimism, and most made no secret of the fact that they were terrified at the prospect of being in the prison when the hundreds of armed state troopers and correction officers they saw outside the window were unleashed. A vital difference between this and every other prison retaking, they reminded him, was that no firearms had been utilized in the others. From the moment that the door closed behind Dunbar, the observers struggled between their desire to flee and their feeling of responsibility to witness the retaking for the prisoners’ sake. No one doubted that it would be violent, but some of them, including reporter Jim Ingram of the Michigan Chronicle, Congressman Herman Badillo, and D.C. public interest lawyer Julian Tepper, hoped that their presence in the prison might exert a tempering influence, although they too might be in danger. Too often they had experienced the hateful glares of the correction officers who periodically looked in on the group, and all had clearly heard the whispered threat of “we gonna get you motherfuckers” from one of these men.18 As Ingram noted wryly, “They got guns and tension, we just got tension.”19 Still, the majority decided to stick it out.

  Meanwhile, the sentries in A Tunnel sent word that Richard Clark wanted to see Oswald again. After making sure that the “State Troopers assigned to the assau
lt were now in position and ready,” Oswald, Dunbar, and General O’Hara headed back to the DMZ.20 To their astonishment, however, Clark did not offer a response to their recent call to surrender. Instead he told them that “the inmates’ committee did not understand certain aspects of the offer, particularly in reference to the 28 proposals” and, therefore, they wanted to meet again with the observers committee. Clark was doing his best to buy time, time to persuade Rockefeller of the importance of coming to the prison, time to persuade officials of how crucial amnesty was to any surrender. “Absolutely not!” Oswald exclaimed and Clark’s heart sank. It began to dawn on him that this might, in fact, be the end of the line with the commissioner. All right, he said to Oswald, in that case, could he just have some more time to further discuss Oswald’s request with the men in the yard? Disgusted, Oswald spat that he could have twenty minutes and, turning on his heel, he left Dunbar and a state trooper at the gate with a radio. They were instructed to alert him the moment that Clark returned with his final answer.21

  Oswald made his way to Superintendent Mancusi’s office to report back to Douglass and the rest of the governor’s men awaiting word. Sheepishly, he had to admit that he had given the men a bit more time. Silence fell on the room as the clock ticked, and the deadline passed. After some discussion, the men assembled decided to move in at 10:00 a.m.22 Robert Douglass got up to call Rockefeller. After reporting that the second deadline given the prisoners had just come and gone, Douglass handed the receiver to Oswald and then Hurd. When all three men had finished speaking to the governor, it was clear that he was done with any more discussions. Rockefeller’s only parting instruction to the men was, “Keep me informed.”23

  Although Richard Clark thought it was possible that Oswald was bluffing, deep down he was scared. It was, he acknowledged, a bad sign that no observers had come that morning since the state likely would keep them out if an attack was imminent. Still, he didn’t know and wasn’t sure whether he should be sounding an alarm in D Yard or preparing the men for more talks. Uncertain of what to do, Clark and his compatriots decided that they somehow had to impress upon Oswald that if by any chance he was planning a forcible retaking that day, he should reconsider.

  The centerpiece of their plan depended upon one critical thing: that state officials did indeed care what happened to the hostages. In the predawn hours of that morning there had already been some discussion of how to use more effectively the state’s desire to protect its own employees. According to Big Black Smith, there had been “no escalation of anger toward hostages,” but around 4:00 a.m. some of the prisoners had begun to wonder if it was now time to remind state officials that they did, in fact, have the ultimate power over their hostages so that these same officials wouldn’t order an attack.24

  As the clock ticked, hearing nothing that indicated the observers were on their way, the men in D Yard decided that they would randomly select a group of eight hostages to take up onto the catwalks. They would surround each hostage with at least three prisoners carrying homemade knives and spears to suggest to the state that if it chose to come into Attica with force rather than to negotiate, it was risking the lives of its own men. As Roger Champen explained, “We felt that by having hostages we would also have the ability to more or less force them to keep their word.”25 Killing these men “definitely was not” their intention. He went on, “We wouldn’t even consider harming the hostages,” because they “were our only means of negotiation.”26

  However, the very act of moving the hostages intensified anxiety in the yard. Within minutes prisoners were arming themselves with whatever they could find—pieces of lumber, baseball bats, anything. Others just began “lots of praying” and “looking for cover.”27

  Seeing prisoners suddenly making their way over to the hostage circle greatly alarmed those within it as well. “They started to tie our hands and feet, put blindfolds back on our eyes,” Pappy Wald recalled, and then without explanation some of the hostages were walked over to the catwalks.28 While he was worried about why he was being taken away, Wald was also well aware that his captors had, so far, been “protecting us” and that they had “done an excellent job of doing this” so he was more concerned about what was happening outside the prison walls to cause them to be moved.29 Some of the prisoners did try to explain what their plan was. Hostage Mike Smith was slightly relieved to learn that the prisoners were simply “trying to get the time extended,” but he also concluded by the panicked looks of some of the men surrounding him that they would indeed kill him if they thought it would save them, or if they were given the go-ahead to do so.30 Civilian hostage Ron Kozlowski hoped it was true that the prisoners intended to use them “as insurance to deter anyone from trying to retake the prison.”31 Still he was worried, and didn’t quite know what to think—whether he was being soothed or groomed for death—when his captor cut his wrist binding, combed his hair, and gave him a Tums as well as a cigarette while they waited for the state to register their presence on the catwalk.32 As hostage Curly Watkins was being marched to the catwalk, he too was terrified but hoped for the best as he chatted nervously with his captor “about shared acquaintances.”33

  Even those hostages who believed their move to the catwalk was a bluff were petrified by how risky this all was. For one thing, they weren’t sure that the men assigned to be their “executioners” understood that they really weren’t to be harmed. One of the prisoners had actually scrawled the word “executioner” on the handmade weapon he now held up on the catwalk and it wasn’t clear to the hostages if this was to deter the state or to indicate to the hostages what was in fact coming. More alarmingly, the hostages now wondered if the state really cared what happened to them. The governor had surely been shown the news footage of them begging for him to come to Attica; he had not come. Surely he had been told that they too supported amnesty and wanted him to reconsider his position. And yet, he had not done so. Now, they fretted, what made these prisoners think that seeing homemade knives at hostage throats or spears at their sides would prompt officials to do the right thing?

  But the prisoners were desperate and could think of no other tactic to keep troopers out of D Yard. At 9:22 that morning, immediately after the hostages had been placed on the catwalks, a group of prisoners went into A Tunnel with a loudspeaker to tell state officials that they meant business about resuming negotiations. “We want the Citizens’ Committee in D Block yard,” they yelled out. “There are eight hostages up on the roof—it’s up to you. Come in now with the Citizens’ Committee and Oswald.”34 Walter Dunbar heard this, and then hinted that if they released the hostages such a meeting could take place. But when the prisoner reply came back “negative,” Dunbar simply left.35

  Up on the catwalk, prisoners and hostages alike waited with hearts pounding for what might happen next. Wobbling slightly because it was hard to keep one’s balance while blindfolded, hostage Mike Smith began having a serious conversation with one of his so-called executioners, Donald Noble. Noble was one of the two prisoners who had gone to great lengths to protect Mike from harm when the rebellion broke out five days earlier, and Mike was greatly relieved to hear this man’s voice next to him once he had finally made it through D Tunnel and up onto the catwalk.

  Waiting up on the catwalk (From the Elizabeth Fink Papers)

  Mike had been worried for a few days now that the state might choose to sacrifice him and his fellow hostages, and he had felt the need to write a letter to his wife, Sharon, in case he didn’t make it out of Attica alive. He had gotten hold of a pen from one of the other hostages, who had somehow managed to keep it hidden in his pocket, and secretly written her a note that he then secured deep in his wallet. With the minutes ticking by, Mike and Don both expressed deep sadness that the last four days had come down to this. Then, after telling each other how to reach their loved ones, they made a solemn pact that if anything happened to either of them they would find the other’s family members and make sure they knew how much they were lo
ved.36 Mike told Don about the note to Sharon in his wallet, and Don promised to deliver it.

  A helicopter heads toward D Yard as New York State Police file into the prison. (Courtesy of the LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

  No sooner had Mike Smith and Don Noble finished exchanging their personal information than they heard a sound that sent a chill down their spines. It was the ominous roar of helicopter blades revving up. “Besides being able to hear it,” Mike Smith recalled in horror, “you could actually feel the concussion of the propellers.”37 A Conservation Corps helicopter was flying over Attica in order to survey the situation in D Yard before troopers would go in.38

  One of the prisoners holding Richard Fargo hostage up on the catwalk also quaked at the sound of the helicopter and he decided that the only way the state wouldn’t attack was if it truly believed the hostages’ lives were in jeopardy. Desperately trying to change the course of events, this prisoner then leaned over to give Fargo a nick on the neck—one that he hoped the men in the helicopter could see—while assuring the guard in a whisper, “It’s a sham boss, it’s a sham.”39 CO G. B. Smith wanted to believe that these new, more aggressive maneuvers were indeed for show. He very clearly “could hear somebody hollering, ‘Stand the hostages up so they can see they are all right.’ ”40 Nevertheless, he was nearly immobilized with fear. If the state was willing to risk the lives of the hostages, then this couldn’t possibly end well.