The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison (23 page)

Bowles made it sound simple, and for him, it was.

In late May Cuban informants, paid off with extra packs of cigarettes, told guards in C cellhouse that a riot was being planned. It had been nearly six months since the Cubans had destroyed the prisons in Atlanta and Oakdale, and the detainees now realized that the concessions they had won by agreeing to a peaceful surrender hadn’t improved their lot. They were being held under harrowing conditions in the Hot House, the Immigration and Naturalization Service was going ahead with plans to deport them, and Washington bureaucrats had lost interest in their plight as soon as the riots had ended.

The informants claimed their fellow detainees were planning to start trouble sometime during the week of June 12, when the INS was scheduled to announce the names of the first wave of Cubans to be sent home. This riot was going to be different from the December uprisings, the informants warned. A hostage would be executed to draw attention to the Cubans’ frustration, anger, and desperation.

Warden Matthews and Associate Warden Connor immediately began planning for the worst. Guards in the Cuban units were ordered to inspect the locks on each
cell door and examine the chains that were wrapped through the doors and cell bars to make certain none had been cut. All keys in the two cellhouses, except for those that were absolutely essential, were removed, and the keys that were left were split up among the guards so that the Cubans would have a difficult time collecting all of them.

As the week of June 12 approached, the noisy cellhouses grew quieter. Guards noticed that the Cubans cleaned their plates at every meal regardless of what was served. They were obviously hoarding food.

On the morning of June 11, Warden Matthews told his associate wardens that he had decided to implement what he described as a “divide and conquer” plan. The INS had given him a list of the 205 Cubans at the Hot House who were going to be deported. These unlucky inmates represented less than one-third of all the detainees. “I want to move all the Cubans who are going to get their deportation notices into C cellhouse,” Matthews said. “We will move the others into D cellhouse.”

Obviously, the Cubans scheduled for deportation were the ones most likely to riot. But the others, Matthews explained, still had a chance of being recommended for parole by the INS. They had a lot to lose if they participated in a riot, because the INS would immediately add their names to the list of deportees.

“If my plan works,” said Matthews, “we shouldn’t have any trouble with the Cubans in D cellhouse, just the ones in C, and that means we will only have to concentrate on one group.”

He wanted the Cubans divided that same night. Shortly after four in the afternoon, Lieutenant Monty Watkins began handing out riot gear to the members of the SORT squad. Each man was issued a black helmet that looked like the one worn by Darth Vader in
Star Wars
, a black jumpsuit, and a padded black vest much like those used by baseball umpires. Associate Warden Connor had told Watkins to keep the SORT team in the
basement, out of the inmates’ sight but ready to respond within seconds if trouble erupted when the detainees were being shuffled between C and D cellhouses.

Shortly after midnight, when most of the American convicts were asleep, a special squad began moving Cuban prisoners one by one. Each detainee was handcuffed before he was taken from his cell and escorted by a covey of guards to a new cell either in C or D cellhouse. None of the Cubans knew at this point why they were being moved, and none of them resisted. By dawn some two hundred had been relocated.

Both prisoners and guards remained edgy throughout the day of June 12. Guards paired up. “Every time you ran down the tier because some Cuban was yelling, in the back of your head you wondered, Well, is this it? Is the shit storm about to kick off?” one guard said. But there were no unusual incidents.

On June 13, INS officials began notifying the 205 Cubans in C cellhouse that their requests for asylum had been denied and they were going to be returned to Cuba. As the INS workers broke the news, guards in D cellhouse went from cell to cell assuring the detainees there that they were not on the deportation list.

Almost immediately, the mood in D cellhouse relaxed. Across the rotunda, however, in C cellhouse the Cubans became sullen. During the next two days, guards worried. “It’s weird,” said one. “No one is getting slimed. We haven’t had to four-point anyone in their cell. It’s like there is some kind of lull going on.”

On June 16, a Cuban in C cellhouse started a fire in his cell and yelled, “
Vamos a hacerlo!
” (Let’s do it!) Guards sounded an alarm and raced down the tier. The fire was quickly extinguished and the Cuban moved into a waiting cell, where he was chained in a four-point position. More than forty employees, an unusually high number, had responded to the alarm. They had expected other Cubans to join in the ruckus, but none did.

The next day, a Friday, Matthews met with his associate
wardens and stressed the need to keep the Hot House operating as routinely as possible. “We don’t want to take any privileges away from the American convicts or get them upset,” he said. “We don’t want to be fighting both groups at the same time.”

That evening the guards assigned to the prison auditorium reported a record attendance by the U.S. inmates at the nightly movie. The film was
Friday the 13th—The Final Chapter
, and whenever the indestructible villain impaled another teenage victim, the inmates cheered.

On Saturday morning, June 18, Associate Warden Connor received word that a handful of Cubans at the penitentiary in Lompoc, California, had tried to instigate a riot. They were being flown to the Hot House and would be coming that afternoon. Connor had them moved into individual cells in C cellhouse as soon as they arrived. At 10:30
P.M
., three of the troublemakers from Lompoc began ripping up the plumbing in their cells. Water gushed across the floor into the tier. They began screaming “
Vamos a hacerlo!
” just like the inmate earlier in the week. But this time, all the detainees joined in. Within seconds, cups, magazines, toilet paper, light bulbs, even clothing, came flying out of the cells. Some Cubans broke the pipes in their cells, others started fires. Matthews and Connor, who had gone home for the night, hurried back to the penitentiary, as did members of the SORT team. Some Cubans had rubbed their plastic toothbrushes against the concrete floor to sharpen the handles. “Watch your eyes,” a guard yelled. “Don’t let them poke you in the face.”

Amid the flooding water, rising smoke, debris, and screams, Connor calmly took charge. He sent Lieutenant Watkins and the SORT team to deal with the Lompoc troublemakers. He ordered the water in cells that were flooding turned off. He sent guards to the basement to collect tear-gas canisters and gas masks. He
told other guards to get fire extinguishers and stand ready.

Watkins, a bulky Vietnam combat veteran, led five members of his SORT team down the tier. Urine and feces splashed against the clear plastic facemasks attached to their riot helmets. When they stopped at the cell of a former Lompoc prisoner, Watkins yelled, “Cuff up!”

“Fuck you!” the Cuban replied.

Watkins didn’t bother unlocking the padlock that secured the chain wrapped through the cell door. He snipped it with bolt cutters, opened the cell door, and ordered his team to attack. Within seconds, the Cuban was chained to his bed. Watkins and his squad moved on.

During the next half hour, the SORT squad chained twelve prisoners to their beds. When Watkins came to the thirteenth cell and gave the order “Cuff up,” the detainee stepped forward and stuck out his wrists. It was over. Two hours later, Matthews, Connor, and the SORT team went home.

When Matthews inspected C cellhouse at 9
A.M
., all the debris from the riot had been cleaned up by Cuban orderlies.

“Some of our Spanish-speaking guards heard the Cubans talking,” Matthews explained later that day. “They said we were too well prepared. They didn’t think we would be ready for them.” And then, with pride, he added, “I guess they learned that this is Leavenworth and we do things differently here.” A short time later, Matthews called the guards from the Cuban units together in the prison chapel. Some were worried that they were going to be fired because rumors about staff brutality were still circulating through the Hot House. When they arrived at the chapel, they found a table covered with warm apple-filled pastries and coffee. Matthews thanked them for “upholding Leavenworth’s reputation
as a can-do penitentiary” and made a point of shaking each man’s hand.

“Unfortunately,” Matthews told them, “I’m afraid this was only the first round.”

(Recalling the July 31, 1973, riot at Leavenworth, in which Officer Wayne L. Selle was murdered by inmates.)

As a teenager Thomas Little thought being a criminal was glamorous. After he was arrested and three inmates in a county jail tried to rape him, he learned otherwise. And then the novice bank robber’s luck got even worse. Little was sent to Leavenworth.

Thomas Silverstein had never killed anyone until he found himself in a federal prison, and was quickly accused of three inmate murders. After he stabbed a prison guard to death, he was put in a basement cell where the lights were never dimmed and all he could hear was the buzz of the fluorescent bulbs.