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Article: Held Hostage;Inside the Oakdale and Atlanta Prison Uprisings: Mind Games and Survival Tactics
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- January 12, 1988
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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Two days before Thanksgiving, at 7 p.m., chief psychologist Carl
Gates stood in the federal prison in Atlanta and looked at his watch.
He thought: "I want to know the exact time that I am going to die."
It has been nearly two months since the largest prison hostage
crisis in U.S. history, and many questions about the uprising of
Cuban prisoners in two federal prisons have yet to be answered. But
the lessons learned from events at the Oakdale, La., and Atlanta
prisons are already rewriting the script for dealing with future
hostage crises.
Government officials now acknowledge that the danger to the
hostages was far greater than the public realized at the time.
More than a dozen hostages ...