Producer's Notebook: My Trip To Supermax

(CBS)  60 Minutes producer Henry Schuster took an off-camera tour of the Federal Correctional Complex in Florence, Colo., also known as Supermax. Below he shares some impressions from his visit.

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It looks like my old high school. That was my first thought when I drove through the Federal Correctional Complex in Florence, Colo. and pulled up to Supermax.

They don't call it Supermax, of course, at least not on the signs. It is the United States Penitentiary - Administrative Maximum. But everyone uses the nicknames. ADX. Supermax. The Alcatraz of the Rockies. That last phrase is the one you find on the hoodies and T-shirts for sale in a case just past the visitor's entrance - all proceeds going to an employees organization.

There is a certain sort of architecture you see in the suburbs and exurbs of America, modernist brutalism, lots of brick on the outside, poured concrete on the inside and no windows that began in the 70's and reached its perfection in the 1990's. Prisons and public schools seemed to share an affinity for the style, which is heavy on the sensory deprivation.

I remembered how much I hated walking into school and the hours of windowless fluorescent lighting as I walked into Supermax. It had taken months to get here and as claustrophobic as the experience was going to be, that was in a sense precisely the point.

We had spent months researching our story about life behind these walls. The Bureau of Prisons is famously tight-fisted with information, hence the 30-plus Freedom on Information Act requests for Supermax records. They did not want us here and a spokeswoman had even tried to dissuade us early on from doing the story by telling us that it was perhaps the least interesting of federal prisons because, in her words, nothing much happened there.

Right. A prison that houses the Unabomber; the shoe-bomber; one of the Oklahoma City bombers; some of the al Qaeda embassy bombers; most of the first World Trade Center bombers; the Olympic Park bomber, the man who wanted to be one of the 9/11 hijackers; an FBI agent turned Soviet spy; the so-called American Taliban; and the leaders of the notorious Aryan Brotherhood prison gang is somehow boring?

If they ever let us in with cameras, we could shoot enough interviews to fill an entire season of 60 Minutes.

So here we were. We'd done our shooting outside the prison, hiking up to the fence line and seeing the mirrored glass of the gun towers. We'd even heard what sounded like a rock band playing from at the neighboring U.S. Penitentiary (which is a high-security facility itself).

The BOP decided to let us in, but only with other invited journalists, and there was no way we were going to be allowed to bring cameras. That was after pointing out to them they already allowed VIP tours and even visits by graduate students.

They chose 9/11 for our visit, which somehow seemed appropriate. Not just because of the al Qaeda members who were here. Not just because we had already interviewed officers at the prison who told us how the inmates cheered when they got news of the attacks. But also because the leader of the first World Trade Center bombing, Ramzi Yousef, is the nephew of the man who masterminded 9/11 and finished the attack that Yousef started back in 1993.

There was coffee and Danish and fresh fruit accompanied by a lecture from the current warden, Ron Wiley, in a surprisingly nice, paneled conference room with plasma televisions on the wall.

During Wiley's remarks before and after the tour, we didn't get any information that we had not already dug up on our own -- in fact, there was much less. There were a few pages of handouts that were short on statistics and a typed agenda which made it clear that we were going nowhere near the most interesting parts of the prison.

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[Ree-4358]

I am inundated with the news about ADX and solitary confinement I do it to myself the truth about the torture is not readily available and others like me dig it up and pass it around. What can be done to change this especially for American inmates, we have the 8Th amendment,why is thistorture still going on?.While this is an old article there are people, one that I know, that are still there 27 years in solitary confinement and counting. As a media person do you yourself have proactive suggestions someone like myself could pursue? Rather than sit idly by just reading about this wretchedness.
thank you

[ericmichael1]

Answer:

Security, security, security.

A U.S. Penitentiary is a maximum custody facility. In Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, a max custody inmate communicated with friends that he was about to be transported to a local hospital. A young correctional officer who was unarmed was killed by gunfire exiting the hospital. Another officer was wounded in the arm.

It is a dangerous job. But they do it every day. To tell a relative that a max custody inmate is at a downtown hospital is a great security risk.

I wouldn''t have told you until he was back in the prison, either. Security.

[palfordc]

May I add that what happens to prisoners who are at the mercy of the guards and their action, certainly effect law abiding citizens like myself.

[palfordc]

My son was in Atlanta USP suffering from PTSD due to a JAN'' 05 attack from 3 men on the prison grounds and was not to have a cell mate when a prison guard placed a fighting man (man had just had 2 fights w/other prisoners) in my son''s cell. Prisoners notified me that my son was in Grady Hospital on Life Support due to the brain''s bleeding and swelling and other injuries substained in the attack in which that man kicked and stomped him. When I got to the prison, the assistant warden wanted to know who notified me and that he had to ask me to leave the premises and without information about my son''s condition. I then went to Grady and walked the ICU floors until I saw my son there on a ventilator and a stent in his skull. I kneeled at the door''s threshold and prayed for Devine intervention, and a prison guard came to tell me to "get away from the door", I finished praying and replied "not even the federal government has a higher power than me". My son was comatose for 6 weeks plus, and hospitalized at Grady, South Fulton Medical Center and the Hospital for Federal Prisoners in Springfield,Mo. for a total of 7 months. He was injured in Sep.''05 but was not found nor received medical treatment until Oct.''05. God has other things for my son to do, so therefore God assisted all those teams of trama, brain, eye surgeons and neurologists as well as the support teams of nurses and aids. I do not know why the prisons do not notify family members when their loved one are in such grave conditions.

[ericmichael1]

Ramzi Yousef: convert to Christianity? Paul was a prisoner and a band of Jewish zealots had bound themselves with a curse not to eat or drink until Paul was assassinated. Did they convert to Christianity? No, they would rather die.

It is similar. To understand Ramzi Yousef, you must understand his world view. He sincerely believes that he is an agent of God, a soldier in a divine war. To him, it is Good vs. Evil. Any pretense he makes to have security restrictions lifted is just that, pretense. He will strike out at the kufir (unbelievers) at the first opportunity he is given.

This is a world view unlike any other we have come to know. To expect a man who sincerely believes he is a prisoner-of war in a universal struggle to convert to the religion of his mortal enemy is just unrealistic.

Look at Yousef''s history. He was the same man who plotted the assassination of the Pope and only gave up on it because his bomb lab was discovered. He was on the run from plot to plot from the World Trade Center bombing of 1993 onward. He envisioned himself as the 007 of the radical Islamic terrorist movement, and, indeed, he was. He killed without remorse and will yet kill again if he can. The Bojinka plot he helped to craft was the precursor to 9/11.

Yousef and others like him belong at the ADX. It is a necessary evil because there is pure evil---like Ramzi Yousef---that needs to be contained there.

Eric

[grammawhamma]

The comment I felt was stupid was something to the effect of "look at his eyes...he looks like Charlie Manson". Ok...my deceased husband looked like Charlie Manson also...but he didn''t have a mean bone in his body.

[purplelady155]

no looks do not meal alot but you can look at an inmate and see/feel the hated and evil in them, its a sickness and in most cases will not ever be cured.

[sandcrabby]

I thought the comment by the former warden that one of the terrorists was "the real deal" and had not been converted to Christainity may have been too cynical. After all, the Apostle Paul-- formerly Saul -- was "the real deal" whose passion was to rid the world of Christianity and scared the heck out of his new Christian brothers when told of his conversion. Let''s not forget the power of God to change even the hearts of hated terrorist...IF it is true...what a message he could bring to the world. Remember Eldgridge Clever...it happened to him.

[purplelady155]

remember these boys are not locked up for singing too loud at sunday school, they will reoffend, they are the hardened ones that only live to perpetuate evil

[cjprobof]

What is the BOP hiding? Curious that they force feed inmates but deny these human beings other life sustaining sustenance! If an NFL player treated his dog this way he''d be up on charges. The dangerous staff shortages compromise staff safety and the safety of our nation. The Dept of Justice and the BOP need to target our resources so we can incarcerate those who need to be incarcerated in a safe and humane manner. Why is our government treating inmates and staff like this? Because they can - let''s change that!

[purplelady155]

do you not understand that the only responsibility the doc has towards these inmates is control and custody, if it makes it easire just imagine how "humane" they were to their victims,staff shortages are a fact of life and that needs to be taken up with the government, not the officers- they too wish for more co-workers too.

[grammawhamma]

I have visited in the Z Unit and near by there is a mentally insane man screaming and screaming for hours on end. Can you imagine being locked in a cell for 23 hrs (sometimes 24) a day listening to that poor man''''s screams. It was almost more than I could bear and I was just visiting.
posted by yendys33

Sorry...but I disagree with you. (You can be a resident at a nursing home and have to listen to people scream non stop.) Maybe it is good for the murderers imprisoned to hear screams to remind them of their victims final screams. I might sound harsh but prisoners are there to be punished...not coddled.

As far as your brother...you obviously love him, therefore in your eyes you see him as the shining example of a perfect prisoner. The prison system, however, sees him as the most dangerous of criminals. I would believe they are correct in their judgement of your brother because you are biased by being his sister. Good luck to you and your family...it must be a hard thing to deal with.

[purplelady155]

be grateful that is all he can do to your brother is scream, I could think of worse things to happen

[grammawhamma]

My question about this story that I hope someone can answer is: Why are they force feeding the prisoners that go on hunger strikes with feeding tubes three times a day? If the prisoner is offered the food and refuses it I don''t see any reason to force feed.