ALBANY, New York – Almost 45 years after America's bloodiest prison rebellion, a historian's new account names troopers and Attica prison guards that investigators believed killed hostages and many unarmed inmates.
Heather Ann Thompson also writes that authorities knew hostages would die, and details Gov. Nelson Rockefeller's secret efforts afterward to establish an acceptable narrative of what happened.
Rockefeller ordered the retaking of the New York prison in 1971.
The 1,300 inmates who rioted over conditions four days earlier and controlled part of the prison had clubs, knives and makeshift weapons and threatened to kill hostages.
State police and guards fatally shot 29 inmates and 10 hostages.
Thompson cites from court documents in "Blood on the Water" scheduled for release this month. Details from the book were first published by the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.
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