Supermax security concerns are being addressed, AG says

Staffing levels adequate; mail, calls monitored

Dick Foster, Rocky Mountain News

Thursday, February 22, 2007

FLORENCE - All the mail and telephone calls of terrorists housed at Supermax, the nation's highest-security prison, are being monitored under new tighter security procedures, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Wednesday after touring the prison.

Less certain are other security improvements sought by the prison's staff and the townspeople of Florence, including more corrections officers and a perimeter fence around the four-prison federal complex that includes Supermax.

Supermax's 475 inmates are considered the most dangerous in the country's federal prison system and include a roster of international and domestic terrorists: Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef, shoe bomber Richard Reid, Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, and Olympic and abortion clinic bomber Eric Rudolph.

Security troubles cast the prison into the national spotlight last fall after a Justice Department inspector general's report found that a shortage of Arabic translators prevented the screening of dozens of letters from convicted terrorists to Islamic extremists between 2002 and 2004.

That problem has been solved, said Gonzales, who toured the prison with Colorado's two U.S. senators, Wayne Allard and Ken Salazar, and Rep. Doug Lamborn, whose congressional district includes the prison.

"I am confident that we're doing what we should be doing monitoring communications in and out of the facility," Gonzales said.

About 30 Supermax prisoners have been designated terrorists by the courts, making them subject to special security measures.

Federal Bureau of Prisons officials said that since last October it has monitored 100 percent of the mail and phone calls of the designated inmates.

The Bureau of Prisons also has beefed up its counterterrorism unit to enhance monitoring of terrorist inmates' communications and two FBI agents have been assigned to the prison, officials said.

Other prison security improvements may not come about as quickly.

The Supermax staffing level was 15 percent to 25 percent below what the Bureau of Prisons defined in a 2005 "mission critical" report as the minimum staffing level to operate the prison safely, officials of the prison employees' union said last summer.

Since then, the staff has been increased from fewer than 180 to 193, with several of the new employees coming from the neighboring high-security and medium-security prisons in the Florence complex.

"It's robbing Peter to pay Paul," said Barbara Batulus of the Association of Federal Government Employees, which represents the federal prison staffers.

But Bureau of Prisons Director Harley Lappin, who accompanied Gonzales Wednesday, said he was comfortable with the current Supermax staffing level.

fosterd@RockyMountainNews.com or 719-633-4442