By Gary Craig
Democrat & Chronicle

As the never-ending fusillade of gunfire erupted around him, and bodies fell to his right and left, Attica inmate Raymond Rivera crawled into a manmade hole in the prison yard, hoping to escape the deadly mayhem.

Unarmed, “Rivera had squeezed himself down into the hole to shield himself from gunfire,” historian Heather Ann Thompson writes in her new book, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy, published by Pantheon.

“Nevertheless, a state trooper lowered his shotgun into the edge of that hole and fired off a round of buckshot into Rivera’s leg whereupon he quickly bled to death,” writes Thompson, a history professor at the University of Michigan.

The trooper later claimed that he had acted in self-defense and had seized the shotgun from a rampaging prisoner — but that defense was clearly a lie because the Attica inmates “had no firearms," Thompson writes.

The history of the nation's deadliest prison uprising has long been littered with brutal stories like this; 29 inmates and 10 prison employee hostages were fatally shot when State Police recaptured the prison from inmate control on Sept. 13, 1971, after a four-day standoff. Few prison riots have been chronicled like the Attica rebellion, which spawned multiple books, documentaries, and officially-sanctioned government dissections of all that went wrong. In all, 43 people died during the uprising.

But Thompson’s book, to be released Aug. 23, provides previously unknown details, including — and these are likely to be the book’s most controversial revelations — the names of the state police and corrections officers suspected of fatally shooting inmates and hostages during the retaking.

The Democrat and Chronicle, the first to report the book's findings, received an advance copy of Blood in the Water.

"I am well aware, and it haunts me, that my decision to name individuals who have spent the last 45 years trying to remain unnamed will reopen many old wounds and cause much new suffering," Thompson writes in the book's introduction. "That old wounds were never allowed to heal, and that new suffering is now a certainty, however, is, I believe, the responsibility of officials in the state of New York. It is these officials who have chosen repeatedly, since 1971, to protect the politicians and members of law enforcement who caused so much trauma."

Michael Smith, who was a corrections officer held hostage at Attica, was shot multiple times in the retaking and nearly died.

Smith said Wednesday that he supports the publication of the names of the men suspected of killing others in the retaking. "The victims' names have been out there all this time," he said. "Nobody was ever held accountable for any of their actions."

Thompson said that every survivor of Attica who has sought information, whether inmate, hostage, or their families, has been stymied by state officials unwilling to lay bare the ugly truths of the riot.

"The state has sat on the secrets," she said. "Both hostage and prisoner families have suffered through this silence. This book finally reveals what the state knew."

Many of the histories of the Attica uprising were written in the 15 years after the uprising, but, since then, a federal civil lawsuit by the inmates and the advocacy work of an organization representing Attica employees killed or injured in the riot has brought to light even more information. For her book Thompson harnesses all of this material, and much that has not been previously made public, and transforms it into what, for the time being, will likely stand as the riot's definitive history.

Also, Thompson was once given access — mistakenly by an Erie County court clerk's official — to documents that remain under seal to this day. Those records, including grand jury minutes of post-riot prosecutions that were eventually halted, detail the suspicions of which law enforcement authorities were responsible for killings, whether the shootings were believed to be accidental or purposeful.

"I don't call anybody a murderer," Thompson said in an interview Wednesday. "I say that this is what the state thought."

The book offers other revelations, some of which have been hinted at or partly documented before but not as thoroughly reconstructed as by Thompson, who worked on the book for 13 years.

For example:

• State officials had decided to forcefully retake the prison the morning of Sept. 13, even as inmates inside the prison were led to believe that negotiations could still result in a peaceful end.

• The events at Attica were being monitored in the upper echelons of the federal government. President Richard Nixon, in fact, supported Gov. Nelson Rockefeller's decision not to go to the prison during the standoff. To this day, many Attica survivors think that Rockefeller could have brought the stalemate to a peaceful end had he not refused to go to the prison.

• The State Police took multiple steps that would later impede attempts to re-create the deadly retaking, including using personal firearms. Troopers also did not complete firearm discharge forms, which was a standard protocol.

• Similarly, the State Police continued to thwart post-riot investigations, possibly to ensure that no one could be held criminally responsible for killings, even when there was evidence of an intentional shooting.

Thompson said she confronted many tough decisions while researching and writing the book, none as difficult as the choice to include the names of government employees suspected of responsibility for the deaths of inmates and hostages.

The Democrat and Chronicle is not publishing those names until the individuals or the families of deceased individuals can be contacted for comment.

As a historian, she said, "it is my obligation to tell the story wherever it leads me, even if it leads me to an uncomfortable place, as it did many many times in this book."

The Attica riot began on Sept. 9, 1971, as a small disturbance mushroomed into a full-scale conflagration. For months inmates had complained of deplorable conditions, and the atmosphere at the prison had long been tense.

The inmates took control of the prison, holding corrections officers and civilian employees hostage. Four days of negotiations ensued, with major civil rights figures, including lawyer William Kunstler, shuttling demands between inmates and state officials.

William Quinn, a young corrections officer who was seriously injured during the initial upheaval, died on Sept. 11 at a Rochester hospital. His death cast a pall over the negotiations, especially since inmates were pushing for amnesty for any crimes linked to the seizing of the prison.

Thompson's book recounts both the violent acts of some inmates during the uprising — there were inmate-on-inmate sexual assaults and three inmates were killed by other prisoners — and she also tells of the kind acts by other Attica prisoners. During the initial mayhem, some inmates protected prison employees, getting them to safety, and during the standoff a group of inmates ensured the hostages were not harmed.

With tensions high and the negotiations sluggish, state officials decided to storm the prison on Sept. 13 — a decision that led to a helter-skelter assault, a barrage of gunfire, and the deaths of the 39 men. State Police led the attack, but some corrections officers also joined.

Though it has been known that the state's first versions of the deaths were wrong — reporters were told inmates killed the hostages — Blood in the Water provides evidence that the claims by officials were self-protective falsehoods and not errors made in a period of chaotic uncertainty.

State investigations led to attempted prosecutions of inmates and also of law enforcement officials suspected of reckless and even murderous acts during the retaking. One inmate was shot through the neck "at a range of two to five feet, breaking his neck and killing him instantly," Thompson writes.

Malcolm Bell, the lawyer charged with building prosecutions against police, would later claim that his work was upended by the State Police and state officials who did not want him to succeed. He would later write a book about the experience. The book is scheduled to be re-released next year with new information and a new title: The Attica Turkey Shoot: Justice on Trial.

The allegations of a cover-up at Attica were so rampant that not only was there a state investigation into what happened before and during the riot but a separate investigation into the allegations of a conspiracy to hide the facts. That report concluded there was not a cover-up but major missteps and moments of faulty judgment with the post-riot investigations.

Most of that report also remains under seal, but Thompson secured much of it for her reporting through protracted Freedom of Information requests and chance access to crucial original documents.

Trying to close the book on Attica, Gov. Hugh Carey finally decided to grant amnesty and freedom from prosecution for inmates and state employees.

Her reporting, Thompson said, shows that Bell and state investigators were serious about trying to determine who killed whom on Sept. 13, but that their efforts ran into constant roadblocks. "The evidence against these guys was absolutely strong enough for an indictment," she said.

Joseph Heath, an attorney who represented Attica inmates in criminal and civil actions, has read earlier drafts of the book and said it adds proof of the state's attempts to derail scrutiny of the decision-making that led to the Attica killings.

Despite the volumes of post-Attica investigations and books, "unfortunately too much of the truth about Attica is still hidden," he said. " ...If we don't learn from this, it's very unfortunate."

Attica survivors have long known that Blood in the Water was set to be published, and many — inmates and corrections officers alike — helped Thompson with her research. But, some say, the publication of the book could reopen painful wounds, especially with the 45th anniversary of the riot only weeks after the book's release.

"I worry about how our group is going to deal with this information," said Dee Quinn Miller, a daughter of William Quinn and one of the leaders of the group, the Forgotten Victims of Attica, or FVOA.

FVOA is a group of prison employee survivors of the riot and the families of those killed at Attica. The group has long sought the release of all Attica records.

Families of slain hostages will surely look for information about their suspected killers, she said. Had the state dealt with the killings decades ago, there could have been healing and reconciliation, she said.

"We've lived in a community that has been full of secrets for so long," she said.

The union representing State Police troopers has opposed the release of the grand jury minutes from investigations into the shootings by troopers. It would be unfair, union officials have said, to release the names of law enforcement officials who have not had the opportunity to defend themselves.

Malcolm Bell also has, in fact, opposed the release of the names. He has argued that the records should be released, with names redacted.

The records from his investigation, obtained by Thompson, were "a work in progress," he said.

"I've been religious about not naming anybody," Bell said.

Still, Bell said, state officials could have found ways through the decades to release the controversial records that Thompson used for her research. Because they didn't, he said, the legacy of Attica is constantly revisited, often with troubling new information.

"The state has kept it alive with its recalcitrance," he said.

Editor’s Note:

The Attica Prison Uprising has yet to give up all its secrets. Tens of hundreds of documents in various locations hold details of the events of 1971 and its 45-year aftermath.

Even records that are accessible through Freedom of Information requests from the Justice Department and the FBI are, in Heather Ann Thompson’s words, “nearly unreadable from all the redactions.”

Thompson was able to make breakthroughs for her history of the Attica uprising through the determined use of Freedom of Information requests over many years, and a couple of terrific strokes of luck. In particular, the timing of a visit to the Erie County Courthouse in 2006, allowed her to see information from the state’s own investigation into whether crimes had been committed during the rebellion and the retaking of the facility.

A similar opportunity in the warehouse of the State Museum of New York provided more insights.

“All of the Attica files that I saw in that dark room of the Erie County courthouse have now vanished, and all of the Attica artifacts that the New York State Museum had been willing to share have also been removed from anyone's view.” Thompson writes in her introduction.

Of particular interest to students of the Attica Uprising: sections of the New York State Special Commission on Attica sealed at the request of some commission members over 40 years ago, and 340 pages of the 1975 Meyer Commission Report.

On April 24, 2014 Erie County Supreme Court Judge Patrick H. NeMoyer ordered Volumes 2 and 3 of the Meyer report released, but also required that grand jury testimony be sealed or redacted. In May 2015 the state

Attorney General’s Office released 46 pages of the Meyer report, following the judge’s order.

Grand jury testimony is typically protected by secrecy and the Police Benevolent Association and the State Police have consistently argued against release.

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