Unraveling the Attica Tragedy

...Spotting knives at hostages' throats, they fired, touching off a barrage of at least 450 shots that sounds like popcorn crackling on the video tape that was made...

...Only the State Police were to participate...

...It cost the public $6,000 a year to keep me in prison and they didn't get anything for their money," commented a former inmate from Jamestown...

...Beyond the human errors that contributed to the Attica tragedy, there remain the more fundamental failures of the prison system itself...

...Thus, instructed that "this is not a turkey shoot," some fired wildly and others held their fire...

...They treat you like a child and then push you back outside...

...Mancusi, in turn, claimed that he had been susperseded by Oswald and Dunbar...

...The governor said he believed the officers considered going in without firearms...

...history...

...But the ultimate solution...

...Questioned later, however, Dunbar could recall only some "prodding...

...He said he was told to stay in his office September 13, since he had become a heated issue with the prisoners...

...Mistrust has surrounded the work of the commission, named after its chairman, Dean Robert B. McKay of the New York University Law School, from the day last fall when it was appointed by the chief judges of the state courts' appellate divisions...

...Senator Dunne, too, saw a gauntlet of swinging clubs and told Oswald's deputy, Walter Dunbar, to have it stopped, which he did...

...Oswald thought that command had reverted to Man-cusi and his deputy, Leon Vincent...

...And so he left to his subordinates the hard task of asserting the sovereign power of the state, without his presence to personify the power and dignify the inevitable cost...

...they said they simply used what they had??.38-caliber sidearms, .270-caliber "big-game" rifles with telescopic sights that fire a type of dum-dum bullet banned by the Geneva convention, and 12-gauge shotguns with deer-slug or double-O cartridges...

...Douglass and Oswald both endured stormy sessions with the observers, who were frustrated by failure, fearful of the force they saw being amassed and suspicous that their pleas were going unheard...

...Kunstler said an inmate negotiator assured him privately that the prisoners would eventually give up the demand for Mancusi's removal and probably yield ground on amnesty...

...Cudmore said...

...Finding the atmosphere hostile, he agreed to continue the negotiations through a large and shifting group of civilian observers??some named by inmates, some by the governor and his staff, some self-appointed...

...He was worried about the revolutionary rhetoric of these "criminal elements" and "this business of taking hostages...

...For the first time I understood what had happened at Mylai...

...National Reports UNRAVELING THE ATTICA TRAGEDY BY READ KINGSBURY In a rare moment of anguish, Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller told the McKay Commission now investigating last September's uprising at New York's Attica prison, "If I could go back 14 years instead of six months, one of the things I regret most is my lack of perception of the tremendous need" to reform the state's prisons...

...The McKay Commission, however, decided it could steer clear of prejudicial material...

...Oswald gave the commission 17 reasons why he felt the inmates' position was hardening, and the governor echoed his view...

...Who is accountable...

...What happened in the grim gray-walled carbuncle on the rolling green hills between Rochester and Buffalo was the bloodiest prison revolt in U.S...

...said Don Head, a guard at Darien Center...

...Money is the key to all these programs...

...He saw no way to compromise without damaging the authority of the state, and his men at the prison did not see any hope of the prisoners compromising...

...He had visited the prison the week before to promise changes and thought he and the prisoners in D yard could come to terms...

...During four days of celebration and fear, the rebels negotiated first directly with prison officials and later through civilian observers...

...The observers and then Oswald and his own aides had "worked very hard and failed...

...in life it's not easy to face a hard decision, particularly when human lives are involved...

...militant young black inmates have refused to cooperate...

...That day tore from those guards the shreds of their humanity," Dr...

...What is the standard...

...Unlike a military force, the State Police are not drilled to follow orders unques-tioningly...

...Rockefeller's problem, Democratic State Assemblyman Arthur Eve contended, was that he was obtaining his information from his secretary, Robert R. Douglass, who was being briefed by conservative upstate legislators among the observers and not by Eve and others whom the prisoners trusted...

...prisoner Francis J. Huen saw it as sheer "confusion," a boiling pot of long-suppressed desires ranging from changes in parole to "getting more pink ice cream...

...Some of us also think men are the answer to it," replied the commission's general counsel, Arthur L. Liman...

...they testified they had not...

...One so-called sharpshooter testified that he had not fired a rifle for three years and had not, of course, adjusted the sights of the rifle he was using as he drew down on three men huddling 100 yards away, hoping not to hit the hostage in the middle...

...Yet the commission's preliminary revelations do offer some answers to at least three key questions: How and why was it finally decided to use force after four days of negotiations...

...The commission found that 45 per cent of 700 inmates examined who were in D yard had suffered reprisal injuries...

...it was feared that corrections officers would not use good judgment...

...In contrast, three observers who were among the last to visit D yard before the assault told the commission that the prisoners' determination was in fact softening, and that time might have brought a peaceful conclusion...

...We can expect the commission's written report, due next month, to come down hard on the state's performance, if only because that was what it could study most intensively...

...Nor does it help settle the debate over the situation in D yard: William Kunstler, the radical lawyer who served as an observer during the revolt, called it an "Athenian democracy...

...From what the commission has disclosed thus far, it is also difficult to determine how many of the men in D yard really wanted to be there, or whether the two cell blocks held by prisoners were in fact the "dangerous jungle" described by some...

...The unauthorized firing took at least two lives, one a hostage...

...Oswald, dismayed by the reports, promised the commission that there would be no amnesty policy for corrections officers...

...At this point, Rockefeller testified, he questioned whether the inmates "were finding reasons not to settle for reform [in order] to politicize the whole action...

...What were the plans and orders for the assault in which 128 persons were hit by gunfire...

...Warren H. Hanson of Warsaw, who went in several times to treat the wounded, judged it a "tyranny...

...It also refused to consider amnesty from prosecution for criminal acts (a guard had died of a beating at the beginning of the outbreak, and three prisoners had been barbarically murdered), or to provide transportation to a nonimperialist country??a demand the governor continues to consider important, though inmates, hostages and observers all told the commission it was not taken seriously in D yard...

...and the alleged leaders of the revolt declined to be interviewed for fear their words would pass into the hands of Deputy Attorney General Robert E. Fischer and be used against them, despite the McKay pledge of confidentiality...

...John Cudmore and three National Guardsmen from Buffalo who removed the wounded and were sickened by the violence they witnessed...

...The beatings continued into the next day and even extended to other prisons where Attica inmates were sent...

...In an outburst of anger and frustration, some 1,200 of the institution's 2,245 inmates seized 38 hostages and took control of the facility's D yard...

...He was referring to the corrections officers who, according to the preliminary findings, fired 74 shots despite their orders to stay out of the attack...

...It was another four minutes before the helicopter equipped with loudspeakers to issue surrender instructions could get over the yard...

...They pleaded for guidance, training, understanding, and support...

...asked commission member Robert L. Carter, former general counsel of the NAACP...

...Kunstler maintained that he passed the word to Oswald, who denied hearing it...

...We have no apologies," Miller said, "but we could have exercised better control over others...

...Matching the inmates' sense of despair was that of the corrections officers, both the hardliners and the sensitive ones, who see change coming and know they are unprepared for it...

...The Attack: The plan was to have sharpshooters on the roofs fire if they saw "hostile acts," while troopers stormed down catwalks and through tunnels to rescue hostages and put down any resistance...

...The investigation does not seem to have turned up any evidence that Kunstler and others urged prisoners to hold out, as was charged last fall...

...But Rockefeller insisted before the commission that his going to Attica would not have helped...

...A Spanish-speaking youth recounted that when he couldn't understand what a man in a gray uniform said to him, the officer shot him in the hip and then trampled on his leg four or five times...

...He trusted them to use the "least dangerous" weapons...

...Douglass' statements show he did speak mostly with legislators, though not exclusively upstate conservatives...

...Repeatedly, the McKay Commission was told of the deadening routine at Attica, the poor diet, inadequate medical care, inconsistent enforcement of petty rules, racial segregation and tension, casual brutalities, the inefficacy of shop and school...

...It isn't for me either, but I think that we have to look at these things not only in terms of the immediate but in terms of the larger implications of what we are doing in our society...

...Critics have predicted a whitewash...

...Had I done then . . . what I [am] doing now, I'm sure this wouldn't have happened...

...The governor's staff suggested he offer to appear there if the prisoners gave up their hostages...

...Lacking first-hand information about the motives and deeds of key inmates who are dead or who have refused to talk, it probably will not be able to decide whether or not the uprising was premeditated...

...as] an accepted method of accomplishing political objectives...

...Head concluded, is to tear down the place where he works...

...Oswald urged him three times to "walk the last mile...

...Republican State Senator John Dunne, Tom Wicker of the New York Times, and Amsterdam News publisher Clarence Jones implored Rockefeller by phone to come to Attica, hoping he would scent the tension and delay the attack...

...from officials taken at private hearings in Rochester and Manhattan...

...Neither the governor nor Colonel John C. Miller, ranking officer of the troopers at Attica and now second in command of the State Police, gave any hope that the lessons of hindsight would be helpful in the future...

...From some 3,000 persons interviewed, it called 51 witnesses, presented excerpts from the testimony of 16 participants in the uprising, and made public testimony Read Kingsbury covered the Attica probe for the Gannett News Service...

...For his part, Fischer was worried that a parallel investigation might prejudice the cases he is building against those who committed criminal acts, since he was undertaking grand jury proceedings at the same time in bucolic Warsaw, seat of Wyoming County, where Attica is situated...

...In omitting details of criminal acts, cross-examinations and conclusions, these presentations painted pictures without frame or focus, but were nonetheless informative...

...Oswald, realizing he had reached the end of the patience of the guards, their families, other prison officials, and finally the governor, ordered the State Police to move in...

...The buckshot load contains 9-12 large, lethal pellets, which at 40 yards spread over a four-foot area...

...The tragedy of perception born too late was only part of the story told in the McKay Commission's televised "hearings" last month...

...The decision: The first day of the revolt guards and troopers quickly retook about half of the prison, but there was not enough manpower available to complete the job when Corrections Commissioner Russell G. Oswald arrived from Albany...

...Representative Herman Badillo (D.-N.Y...

...Who was responsible for allowing the "second riot" of prison officers and lawmen...

...Clearly, the problem was that nobody was in charge...

...Because of the pepper gas dropped over the yard, the sharpshooters could not see well at the crucial moment...

...They felt the group might have tried harder to persuade the prisoners to give up...

...The officers replied that it was a matter of individual responsibility...

...Also revealed was the fumbling of high officials who were forced to make difficult decisions under tremendous pressure, the agony of the mediators who fought to delay the final act, the bewilderment of the hostages who imagined they were as precious to the officers rimming the courtyard as they were to the prisoners holding them within, and the animal rage of the guards who beat wounded inmates after the yard was retaken...

...The state would not consent to the removal of Attica prison superintendent Vincent R. Mancusi...

...The aftermath: Inmates testified that after surrendering they were abused and beaten by corrections officers and troopers, forced to run a gauntlet of swinging clubs, and had their watches, glasses, dentures, and even a glass eye ground underfoot...

...The governor and his aides made clear in their private testimony that they mistrusted some of the observers...

...Oswald accepted 28 of the prisoners' 31 demands, with Rockefeller's blessing...

...the observers said they regarded themselves simply as a channel of communication between Oswald and the inmates...

...When the authorities decided further talks would be useless, they sent in State Police with gas and guns: 29 inmates and 10 hostages were killed in the ensuing assault, bringing the final death toll to 43...

...Oswald denied this, and Mancusi has retired because of his differences with him...

...These complaints were corroborated by Dr...