Blood in the Water

by Thompson, Heather Ann

  The prisoners’ bodies, unlike the hostages’ bodies, had not been sent to funeral homes, nor would they be for several more days, because Simonetti prevented the medical examiner’s office from releasing them. Sometime later that night, or early on the morning of the 15th, Edland was told that, in addition to Westchester County ME Henry Siegel, Dr. Michael Baden (the pathologist who years later would become well known as the chairman of the Forensic Pathology Panel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations that reinvestigated the John F. Kennedy assassination) would also be reviewing each of the autopsies.8

  Before even getting results from the new autopsies they had ordered, officials from the Department of Corrections began a concerted effort to raise public concern about Edland’s political views and, thus, his professional integrity. Gerald Houlihan, the PR director for DOCS, not only made sure that reporters knew that “a top pathologist was being flown up to check the findings of this clown the coroner, Dr. Edland,” but others were also spreading the rumor that Edland was “a radical left-winger.”9 It soon became gospel both that there were eyewitnesses who saw the hostages being murdered by having their throats cut and also that “there were various types of arms in the possession of the inmates that could have inflicted bullet-type wounds.”10 Deputy Commissioner of Corrections Wim Van Eekeren, without any hard evidence, suggested in his own statement to the press that the gunshot-like wounds might have come from so-called zip guns made by the prisoners.11 Then, DOCS announced that five National Guard teams would be going to Attica to sweep the yards for metal weapons that might have been buried by these same prisoners.12

  The governor’s office felt no need to comment publicly on much of anything pending verification of his autopsy results by outside experts. Throughout the afternoon and evening of September 14 the door to Rockefeller press secretary Ronald Maiorana’s office remained locked even though at least “25 assembled newsmen waited outside in the adjacent press room.”13 Still, there was one man who would most definitely expect some sort of explanation of these new revelations: President Richard Nixon.

  Before Rockefeller managed to reach the president, though, Nixon had already made the strategic decision to support the governor publicly. In fact, John Ehrlichman had already broken the news to him that troopers at Attica were the ones who had killed the hostages, to which Nixon could only gasp, “Oh God.”14 Since he had already decided that this was “a black business,” though, Nixon still believed that Rockefeller had done exactly the right thing.15 As he put it about the governor, “he’s got a hellofa lot of guts,” and, what is more, he felt that “we have got to be tough on this,” because this involved “the Angela Davis crowd…the negroes.”16 Ehrlichman agreed. In his view what really drove Rockefeller’s decisions at Attica was that “the word is around that this is a signal for the black uprising, that’s got him a little worried.”17 In any case, as Nixon pointed out, by standing with the governor on this, Rockefeller “owes us one now; that is just a matter of fact.”18

  And, thus, when Rockefeller spoke to Nixon about the Edland revelations, all was fine. Nixon made it clear that he thought the governor had had to make “a very hard decision,” and he gave him his assurances that he would “support him.”19 As the president pointed out to Ehrlichman in the Oval Office, “First, they started it all…second, they murdered one, there is no question. Third, they threatened to murder the others….What the hell, it looked pretty good in my opinion.”20 Again Ehrlichman was in full agreement: if nothing else, he noted, the “4-1 kill ratio…is gonna give convicts in other prisons a second thought.”21

  Members of the press, however, were now far more critical of Rockefeller’s actions. Indeed, from the second the Times-Union piece about the results of Dr. Edland’s autopsies appeared, reporters from virtually all outlets were furious at having been misled because they too now had to scramble to explain why they had so readily printed outrageous stories of castration and throat slashings without a shred of corroboration. Many sought out Gerald Houlihan, the man who had first told them these tales, and began shouting at him angrily. Houlihan only escaped by promising them that Oswald would soon answer their questions.22

  At 11:00 the night of Tuesday, September 14, Oswald found himself standing just inside the main gate of Attica talking to a crowd of reporters and conceding that the throat slashing stories were false.23 But, he reminded reporters, “You know, I never told you this.”24 As for how the hostages might have been shot, the commissioner offered up the possibility that “hostages could very well have been used as shields or forced into the gunfire.”25 And, lest the reporters miss the real point about the dangers the State Police had faced, Oswald went on, “Approximately 400 homemade weapons were recovered in the prison area directly after the action to recover the prison. Today, additional hundreds of weapons were uncovered…[and] minesweepers are now being used to uncover other weapons.”26

  In the absence of any satisfactory answer from either the governor’s staff or the Department of Correctional Services regarding how they could have given the press such serious misinformation, reporters began their own damage control. Some journalists insisted that they had done the best reporting they could have based on the evidence they were given. As Stephen Isaacs from The Washington Post put it, “Perhaps the press can go too far in self-flagellations” because it was the commissioner of corrections himself who, “slowly moving his head from side to side as if in mourning, and pointing to the prison yard below, told me that, yes, a hostage had been castrated ‘right down there.’ ”27

  Other reporters were willing only to admit that their coverage had been sloppy but maintained that it had not been at all dishonest.28 There had been, many argued, a number of alleged eyewitness accounts to what they had reported. As the AP news service explained it, for example, its reporters had covered the events at Attica as they had because this was the story they had been told, had heard, and had good reason to believe. Indeed, it was not the case, as some critics of the coverage had suggested, that “the press was too ready to accept as fact the word of the officials.”29 According to the AP, it had “set up a coverage command post in a private home 150 yards from prison walls” and the very first stories reporters filed were not from DOCS but “were based on the sounds of the assault, the choking odor of tear gas that spread over the prison walls, and what some reporters were able to pick up monitoring police radio.”30 The first news of the hostages’ deaths had, they maintained, come to them “in the gasping, choking voices of those who had been inside, in fragments of conversations as they stumbled, walked, or were led away.”31 The fact that an official representative from the state, Gerald Houlihan, had appeared at Attica’s gate at 11:15 on the morning of the assault and had said categorically that “ ‘several hostages had their throats slashed’ ” had only confirmed what they had been hearing firsthand.32

  However, there were reporters who felt guilty about the lies they had perpetuated and sought to grapple in print with the reasons why they had proceeded with their stories when there had been virtually no hard evidence to support them.33 As two reporters from the New York Post acknowledged ruefully, “Everyone—prisoners and prison officials, mediators, the Rockefeller people, the press—tended to believe whatever confirmed their own preconceptions, their own fears.”34

  More state-critical stories might have followed Edland’s revelations had it not been for the attempts of editors to manage reporters’ stories, if not outright censor them. The two reporters from the New York Post who had offered mea culpas were forced to redraft that particular piece countless times because their paper’s editor in chief, Dorothy Schiff, felt strongly that each draft was “flagrantly biased in favor of the inmates and certain members of the Observers’ Committee.”35 In her opinion, “our staffers reflect the opinion of the radicals and the liberals, who are inclined to confuse these hard-core criminals with rebellious students—the black ones, anyway.”36 In Schiff’s view, a better story to write on Attica would
be one that explored “why the individual committed whatever crime he was convicted of….How does he feel now about what he did then? Is he defensive, or does he think it was a mistake or is he repentant?”37

  Reporters were also under pressure from state officials. When The Washington Post’s Stephen Isaacs learned that a hostage at Attica had been hit during the retaking with a “dumdum—an expanding bullet considered so maiming that the 1906 Geneva Convention banned them from use in international warfare,” he first corroborated the story and then decided to print it, only to receive a call from the press spokesman for Deputy Attorney General Robert Fischer, who denied that the story was true, and then, according to Isaacs, “asked me not to report the story. The Washington Post, he said, would be ‘acting irresponsibly’ to publish such unconfirmed, inflammatory material.”38

  While members of the press were trying to do their job of getting at the truth, so too was Dr. Michael Baden, whom state officials had hired to redo Edland’s autopsies. When Dr. Baden first arrived from New York City on Wednesday, September 15, both Commissioner Oswald and Superintendent Mancusi stared at him “in dismay.”39 In vetting possible candidates, Walter Dunbar had demanded that whoever was chosen to do the autopsy reviews be someone who was “politically clean,” as this was “not a medical matter…it’s a political-administrative thing.”40 So Oswald and Mancusi accordingly expected someone older, buttoned-down, “someone more bureaucratic,” yet there stood a man who was “thirty-seven, had long hair, and looked like a hippie.”41 Oswald was “certain there had been a mistake.”42 Still, both men tried to make the best of the situation. Oswald made it clear to Baden that Edland must have had some political agenda, “a communist plot of some kind,” otherwise, “Why else would Edland lie?”43 To Baden “the idea that Edland was part of a communist plot did not seem plausible.” In fact, Edland was “known among MEs as a right winger,” and, more to the point, “He was also very good.”44 But there was no use in arguing; all he could do was get to work.

  Before he set out that morning Baden had called Dr. Edland to let him know that he was going to “view the bodies of some of the hostages and then come to [his office] at 5:00 p.m. for a critique.”45 At 9:00 a.m., an hour before his call from Baden, Edland had already met with Westchester County’s ME, Dr. Siegel, who had viewed five of the eight hostage bodies the night before. To Edland’s relief, but not surprise, Siegel “confirmed the presence of gunshot wounds.”46 Edland fully expected Baden to do the same.47

  Baden, committed to reviewing all of the autopsy findings in person, proceeded to visit the various funeral homes where the hostages’ bodies lay, and also scheduled time at the Monroe County morgue to reexamine bodies and go over previous autopsy findings.48 The cause of death for all of the hostages was as clear to Baden as it had been to Edland: gunshot wounds.

  When Baden’s work concluded, days after Edland had first broken the news that all deaths were from gunfire, Deputy Attorney General Fischer called for all of the MEs who had worked on the bodies—Edland, Abbott, Baden, and Siegel—to meet with Anthony Simonetti, along with other members of the Task Force on Organized Crime, and members of the NYSP, back at Attica prison.49 Nervously Edland and Abbott got into the car sent for them and soon found themselves, again, explaining the results of the autopsies they had conducted. Over six grueling hours the doctors answered questions regarding their findings; but no matter how the questions were posed, and how much the NYSP officials wished differently, the answers remained the same. “It was the consensus of the pathologists present that they agreed on the causes of death and that such a statement should be released.”50

  Still, the state officials present at Attica were unwilling to accept these conclusions, and ended the meeting with plans to hold another meeting on the subject on Thursday, September 23. Acting independently, Dr. Baden and Dr. Siegel went ahead and published their findings in their press releases, now a full week after the assault on Attica had ended. The doctors not only stood by Edland’s original finding but, most disturbingly for state officials, Dr. Baden had stated that, in his opinion, six hostages had been shot in such a way that looked “like an execution.”51 This, he explained, was because a trooper had “discharged buckshot at a prisoner” and the spray of pellets had hit these hostages in their heads.52 However, he also offered state officials one bit of good news. Under considerable pressure from state and police officials to consider scenarios other than deliberate homicide for how prisoners such as L. D. Barkley had come to be killed, Baden had reexamined Barkley’s autopsy report and concluded that “the bullet had gone in sideways. It was a tumbling bullet [which] had hit something else first, which meant it hadn’t been meant for Barkley originally.”53 This finding was crucial because it suggested that, contrary to the firsthand accounts of prisoners and state politician Arthur Eve’s own firsthand report that Barkley had been alive a full hour after the retaking, he had not been deliberately killed by a state trooper after the incident was over but rather during the initial retaking. For many decades to come Baden’s autopsy would stand as the definitive answer to the question of L. D. Barkley’s death, seeming to exonerate the New York State Police of any wrongdoing.54

  Edland felt a huge sense of relief that Baden’s overall findings about the many deaths at Attica matched his own.55 He had endured so many threatening phone calls, so many chilling sightings of trooper cruisers idling outside his home, and so much hate mail that he needed Baden’s support. One handwritten, unsigned letter sent to him on September 14 had said, “May your throat be slashed and violence come upon you and your family.”56 As unnerved as Edland was, though, he never had any intention of backing down, because “you have to call them as you see them.” Still, he considered the day he went public with his findings on the Attica victims “the worst day of my life.”57 Sadly, the threats and character assassinations would continue to plague Edland for many years to come.

  Once Baden publicly confirmed that all deaths at Attica on the 13th had been caused by law enforcement, state officials had no choice but to acknowledge these facts. But, ever on the offensive, in the news conference held jointly by Deputy Attorney General Robert Fischer and Major John Monahan of the New York State Police, the state chose, as one later critic put it, “not to apologize for, or…correct the false press release about the stabbing and castration, but [instead] to show pictures of all the weapons found in D yard—clubs, knives, screwdrivers and hammers.”58 As for the large number of wounded and dead, none of whom had in fact died from any of these “weapons,” the state explained simply that many of the men had been shot either accidentally in the crossfire or from ricocheting bullets.59

  Now Rockefeller was ready to speak with the press too—only his second meeting with reporters since the retaking. The governor also promoted his “crossfire” explanation for the retaking-related deaths at Attica. And he returned to his central argument that he had had no choice but to order that the prison be retaken by force.60 This time, though, he went much further, suggesting that there had been consensus among all parties, including the observers committee, that the retaking was necessary. Incredibly he said: “The decision to use force had not been made until after Tom Wicker of the New York Times, along with other committee members, had ‘agreed no other move could be made.’ ”61 Regarding his decision not to come to Attica, he maintained that it would have been irresponsible for him to meet with dangerous criminals, and it would have been bad public policy to set such a precedent. Rockefeller’s statement followed the playbook set out for him by his speechwriter: he was to focus on “the philosophy of the actions taken: Initial reasonableness, willingness to meet legitimate complaints, the rejection of concessions that would tear apart the social order, the judgments to act before deterioration progressed further, the rejection of social change through violence, coercion, blackmail, etc.”62

  Those who had served as observers at Attica were stunned by Rockefeller’s rewriting of such recent history. As Herman Badillo t
old anyone who would listen, “it was made absolutely clear to Rocky’s staff that they were not asking the Governor to come in physical contact with the prisoners….The idea was to have the committee act as a shuttle between the prisoners and the Governor and possibly have the Governor address the inmates over the public address system.”63

  Even members of the press were taken aback that, given recent reports regarding what had caused such carnage at Attica, Rockefeller was still claiming that he had done everything possible to avoid this ugliness and, perhaps worse, was now claiming that the deaths at Attica—due to “crossfire”—were “morally,” if not legally, justified homicide.64 New York Post columnist James A. Wechsler simply couldn’t believe that the governor would make no concession to the fact that there had indeed been alternatives to a retaking with guns.65 As he put it, the Tombs riots the previous year “were halted without a shot being fired, without a single fatality among hostages, prisoners or guards—and without general amnesty.”66 New York City mayor John Lindsay, who had faced not one but several major jail protests in his city the previous year, also criticized the governor’s handling of Attica. Lindsay reminded the press that “he had met with rebellious prisoners [and]…he had finally quelled the insurrections at the Manhattan and Queens houses of detention with unarmed correction officers rather than armed policemen.”67 To drive home the point, Lindsay added, “Not a single firearm was permitted when correction officers went in.”68

  Still, many people sided with the state, including family members of the slain hostages. Juanita Werner, who lost two family members in the retaking, continued to insist that “the State Police did not kill all of those hostages” even after Edland’s findings were confirmed.69 As John D’Arcangelo’s widow remembered, “My entire family believed that somehow, no matter what we were told, the inmates must have gotten guns….Because it defies logic that anyone would be killed by their own employer.”70 Dead hostage Elmer Hardie’s brother Jim said that he “could accept that some, but not all, of the eight were killed by police bullets.”71 Cindy Elmore, the daughter of an Attica CO, Lieutenant Elmore, agreed. “Townspeople do not believe troopers killed the hostages ‘because it’s just not true.’ ”72 When guard John Monteleone’s brother heard the news that officer bullets had killed John, he simply said, “Bull.” He too worked at Attica but had decided to quit his job because he felt that there had been too much coddling of the prisoners from day one of the riot. As he put it, “I don’t want to work there so long as this state is run by the Oswalds, the Dunbars and the niggers.”73 In fact, as one reporter noted after canvassing the various local towns near Attica, “Few people can be found on the rustic roads who accept the Medical Examiner’s report that the hostages who died during the state assault on the prison were killed by gunshots,” even though the governor himself had just conceded that those shots “had probably come from the weapons of state policemen.”74