What were the plans to resolve the situation?

Frank Douglass: And it was along about 7:30 or 8:00, and I was on the phone all the time with the Governor and he had, he talked to me and the correction commission and the head of the State Police to get the feel of the situation. And we delivered the message that, "Release the hostages, you won't be harmed, there'll be no recrimination unless you're involved in a crime," and they said they'd give us their answer.

And around 8:00, on Monday morning, the answer was "No," and with that they positioned several of the guards in highly visible positions on top of the ramparts and each guard had an executioner assigned to them. The guards were blindfolded, and one had a lead pipe ready to hit him over the head, another one had a knife at their throat.

And we had positioned sharpshooters on the roof of the prison, getting ready for an assault, if we had to do it, and when they positioned the guards for execution, the correction commissioner said that-- got on the phone with the Governor. He said, "Governor, I've done everything I can, we can't let this go on, and we should go in." The Governor said, "Okay," and he said, "We've done it all."

And with that, a plan that had been, been laid out over the weekend, which was to send in a helicopter and drop a form of tear gas just prior to the State Police coming in. And I had met with the State Police just before the assault, and, and I really thought that I wouldn't see some of them again because we had Sam Nelville, the Mad Bomber, was-- I mean, these were, these were the most hardened, toughest of New York's criminal inmate population. These guys were there for long sentences, mostly murder, arsons, rapes. These were the worst of the worst.

And so they were-- the State Police, the Governor made sure that I instructed them that they were not to open fire unless it was to defend themselves or to protect another officer, and they understood that, and they were-- these guys knew what they were doing and they were pretty cool.

And they started the assault, they went in, and they had to get into the yard to get to where the hostages were held, and there was gunfire; it didn't last very long. And within a matter of minutes the hostages started coming out and we were counting them as they came out. The Governor said, "How does it look?" And I said, "Well, we've got so-and-so many out," and he said, "Well, as soon as we get them all out of there then it doesn't matter because we can just seal the prison off."

And, the gunfire ended very quickly. We got the hostages out, and the initial reaction to the thing was that while it was bloody, it was successful. And I think around 38 people got killed, including some hostages. And even with that, the nation was, "Look, they had to do it, they went in, they did it, they restored order."