Blood in the Water

Introduction
State Secrets

One might well wonder why it has taken forty-five years for a comprehen­sive history of the Attica prison uprising of 1971 to be written. The answer is simple: the most important details of this story have been deliberately kept from the public. Literally thousands of boxes of documents relating to these events are sealed or next to impossible to access.
 
Some of these materials, such as scores of boxes related to the McKay Commission inquiry into Attica, were deemed off limits four decades ago in this case at the request of the commission members who feared that state prosecutors would try to use the information to make cases against prisoners in a court of law. Other materials related to the Attica uprising, such as the last two volumes of the Meyer Report of 1976, were also sealed back in the 1970s. Members of law enforcement fought hard to prevent disclosure of this report in particular. Although a judge has recently ruled that these volumes can now be released to the public, the redaction process that they first will undergo means that crucial parts of Attica s history will almost certainly remain hidden.
 
The vast majority of Attica s records, however, are not sealed, and yet they might as well be. Federal agencies such as the FBI and the Jus­tice Department have important Attica files, for example, but when one requests them via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), they have been rendered nearly unreadable from all of the redactions. And then there are the records held by the state of New York itself countless boxes housed in various upstate warehouses that came from numerous sources: the state s official investigation into whether criminal acts had been committed at Attica during the rebellion, its five years of prosecuting such alleged crimes, and its nearly three decades of defending itself against civil actions filed by prisoners and hostages. In 2006 I was able to get an index of these files,

CONTENTS
 
Introduction: State Secrets xiii
 
PART I THE TINDERBOX
Frank Big Black Smith 3
1 Not So Greener Pastures 5
2 Responding to Resistance 18
3 Voices from Auburn 22
4 Knowledge Is Power 28
5 Playing by the Rules 31
6 Back and Forth 35
7 End of the Line 38
 
PART II POWER AND POLITICS UNLEASHED
Michael Smith 43
8 Talking Back 45
9 Burning Down the House 50
10 Reeling and Reacting 60
11 Order Out of Chaos 64
12 What s Going On 71
13 Into the Night 83
14 A New Day Dawns 89
 
PART III THE SOUND BEFORE THE FURY
Tom Wicker 101
15 Getting Down to Business 103
16 Dreams and Nightmares 116
17 On the Precipice 139
18 Deciding Disaster 153
 
PART IV RETRIBUTION AND REPRISALS UNIMAGINED
Tony Strollo 161
19 Chomping at the Bit 163
20 Standing Firm 169
21 No Mercy 178
22 Spinning Disaster 193
23 And the Beat Goes On 204
 
PART V RECKONINGS AND REACTIONS
Robert Douglass 223
24 Speaking Up 225
25 Stepping Back 232
26 Funerals and Fallout 242
27 Prodding and Probing 251
28 Which Side Are You On? 256
29 Ducks in a Row 266
 
PART VI INQUIRIES AND DIVERSIONS
Anthony Simonetti 271
30 Digging More Deeply 273
31 Foxes in the Hen House 287
32 Stick and Carrot 294
33 Seeking Help 299
34 Indictments All Around 304
 
PART VII JUSTICE ON TRIAL
Ernest Goodman 311
35 Mobilizing and Maneuvering 313
36 A House Divided 321
37 Laying the Groundwork 327
38 Testing the Waters 334
39 Going for Broke 340
40 Evening the Score 363
41 A Long Journey Ahead 388
 
PART VIII BLOWING THE WHISTLE
Malcolm Bell 401
42 Joining the Team 403
43 Protecting the Police 418
44 Smoking Guns 425
45 Going Public 434
46 Investigating the Investigation 442
47 Closing the Book 452
 
PART IX DAVID AND GOLIATH
Elizabeth Fink 457
48 It Ain t Over Till It s Over 459
49 Shining the Light on Evil 466
50 Delay

HEATHER ANN THOMPSON is an award-winning historian at the University of Michigan. Her most recent book, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy, won the Pulitzer Prize in History, the Bancroft Prize, the Ridenhour Book Prize, and the J. Willard Hurst Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, among other accolades. She is also the author of Whose Detroit?: Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City and the editor of Speaking Out: Activism and Protest in the 1960s and 1970s. She served on a National Academy of Sciences blue-ribbon panel that studied the causes and consequences of mass incarceration in the United States and has given congressional staff briefings on the subject. She has written on the history of mass incarceration and its current impact for The New York Times, Time, The Atlantic, Salon, Newsweek, NBC, Dissent, New Labor Forum, and The Huffington Post, as well as for various top scholarly publications.

Praise for Heather Ann Thompson s Blood in the Water

Gripping . . . Not all works of history have something to say so directly to the present, but Heather Ann Thompson s Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy, which deals with racial conflict, mass incarceration, police brutality and dissembling politicians, reads like it was special-ordered for the sweltering summer of 2016. But there s nothing partisan or argumentative about Blood in the Water. The power of this superb work of history comes from its methodical mastery of interviews, transcripts, police reports and other documents, covering 35 years, many released only reluctantly by government agencies . . . It s Ms. Thompson s achievement, in this remarkable book, to make us understand why this one group of prisoners [rebelled], and how many others shared the cost. Mark Oppenheimer, The New York Times
 
Chilling, and in places downright shocking . . . [Thompson] tells the story of the riot and its aftermath with precision and momentum. Bryan Burrough, The Wall Street Journal

A masterly account . . . Essential . . . Blood in the Water restores [the prisoners ] struggle to its rightful place in our collective memory. James Forman Jr., The New York Times Book Review

A long, memorable chronicle . . . dense with new information . . . Thompson s capacity for close observation and her honesty [are] impressive. Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker
 
Masterful. Lewis M. Steel, The Nation

Thompson s book is a masterpiece of historical research; it is thoroughly researched, extensively documented and reads like a novel . . . Magnificent. Terry Hartle, The Christian Science Monitor

Heather Ann Thompson tracked down long-hidden files related to the tragedy at Attica some of which have since disappeared to tell the saga in its full horror. Larry Getlen, New York Post
 
Writing with cinematic clarity from meticulously sourced material,