Attica prison riot whistle-blower on the case decades later

WESTON, Vt. -- The whistle-blower who spurred a state investigation of the 1971 Attica prison uprising is still on the case four decades later.

Ex-prosecutor Malcolm Bell, now 82 and retired to the Green Mountains of Vermont, recently filed papers in support of opening long-sealed investigation volumes about the retaking of the prison in western New York that left 29 inmates and 10 prison staff members fatally shot.

Bespectacled, his hair now gray, Bell remained soft-spoken and matter-of-fact while discussing his aggressive pursuit of the full story and suspension as a prosecutor in 1974. He has also recently finished a new epilogue to his 1985 book about the case.

"I am certain that my superiors in the investigation were afraid that the system was going to work, and that's why they shut me down," Bell said.

Bell joined Attorney General Louis Lefkowitz's Organized Crime Task Force in 1973 and spent the next year building grand jury cases toward indicting a half-dozen state troopers for murder or manslaughter, 60 or 70 for reckless endangerment and several ranking officers for what he believed was a cover-up. He was first reassigned from the shooting cases to the cover-up cases, then reassigned out of the grand jury, then suspended, in what he regards as an effort by Lefkowitz to protect Republican Gov. Nelson Rockefeller.

The 1,300 inmates who rioted over conditions and controlled part of the maximum-security prison had clubs, knives and makeshift weapons and had killed a guard and threatened to kill hostages. Negotiations broke down. They were tear-gassed. Police had rifles, shotguns and pistols and wore gas masks. Some guards also fired guns.

Rockefeller gave the order to retake the prison. Two years later, he was on his way to becoming vice president.

"The officers of Attica fired over 450 times, hitting 128 people and killing 10 hostages and 29 inmates," Bell wrote in a 1976 newspaper column. "Insofar as those shots were not fired to save someone from an imminent threat of death, they were not justified and were probably criminal."

When Bell, an Army veteran, Republican and former corporate lawyer, became convinced his boss deliberately thwarted his efforts to indict officers, he complained directly and then through channels. He was suspended for an unauthorized meeting with a confidential source and resigned.

He wrote to Lefkowitz and later sent a 160-page report to Gov. Hugh Carey, describing what he believed was a cover-up and a failure to pursue justice.

Carey appointed Judge Bernard Meyer to investigate Bell's allegations. Meyer found "important omissions" in evidence gathered by state police but no intentional cover-up by prosecutors. Carey later appointed him to the Court of Appeals, New York's highest court.

Bell started a private law practice. He says he has no regrets.

In 1976, Carey pardoned seven inmates, barred disciplinary action against 20 troopers and guards, and commuted the murder sentence of one inmate. A reckless endangerment indictment against one trooper had already been dismissed. Lawsuits ended years later.

Bell wants the last two Meyer Commission volumes out in the open now, even if any details prove him wrong.

A state judge ruled in April that Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman, who has the last two volumes, can make them public after removing grand jury testimony. Schneiderman has said it's time to reveal the full history of the nation's bloodiest prison rebellion.