Attica whistleblower still pushing full disclosure four decades later

WESTON, Vt. – The whistleblower who spurred a major state investigation of the 1971 Attica prison uprising is still on the case four decades later.

Ex-prosecutor Malcolm Bell is now 82 and recently filed court 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 dead.

He was presenting testimony to a grand jury, planning to seek indictments against state troopers on charges ranging from murder to obstruction.

Suspended as a prosecutor in 1974, he sees that now as an effort to protect then-Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, who ordered the prison retaken.

Bell has also recently finished an epilogue to his 1985 book about the case.