Wilbert Rideau The Real Story

           One of the things that always fascinated me about the “Wilbert Rideau story” is just how easy it was for him to snooker most journalists who visited and interviewed him at the Louisiana State Penitentiary. Journalists, as a rule, do not know anything about either the official administration of prisons or the inmate culture that rules them. They do not know which questions to ask or how to interpret the information they receive about these places.

            The famed “convict-editor” of The Angolite exploited this journalism ignorance to his advantage—and he did it with the help of penal administrators motivated by the desire to garner as much positive media attention as possible about the Louisiana prison system. The Rideau story made good copy—a illiterate black inmate who taught himself how to read and write by the proverbial “candlelight” and who became the first black editor of a previously all-white prison publication in one of the nation’s most infamous and violent prisons.

            If that media angle does not bring your journalism to a gumbo boil, then try this on for size. This groundbreaking inmate, with the help of the Louisiana Corrections Department chief, C. Paul Phelps, establishesd a “free penal press” with all the powers to investigate official wrongdoing and expose corruption within the prison system. That’s a compelling story, particularly for liberal-minded journalists who too often let their social and political views interfere with “just the facts” reporting.

            A litany of New York Times and PBS journalists, with a host of others, declared Rideau “founder of the only free penal press” in the history of American penology. He garnered more “positive” media attention than any inmate ever has in the Louisiana prison system, and probably the nation. Life Magazine had its head so far up Rideau’s rear end that the magazine in 1993 dubbed him “the nation’s most rehabilitated prisoner.”

            The problem is that there was no “free penal press” in the Louisiana prison system, or any other in this country. While The Angolite may have dealt with some subject-matter normally not permitted in penal publications, there were no articles in the magazine that dealt with official wrongdoing or corruption. The liberal press did not read The Angolite, nor did they ever question ”why” Rideau was foisted off on them by penal administrators. They were too busy salivating about the “feel good” story they were going to get.

            The Angolite itself was actually a corrupt operation under Rideau editorship. In 1984 Edwin Edwards was sworn for the third time as Louisiana’s governor. Edwards had a long history of political corruption, especially in the state’s clemency process. Clemency was the only way out for inmates, like Rideau, serving life sentences. But the process first had to navigate through a very politicized five-member pardon board which served at the discretion of the governor. Edwards made it a policy to appoint the most corrupt, or at the very least, the most subservient members who would adhere to the back channel wishes of the governor and his staff.

            That’s why Edwards appointed Howard Marsellus as pardon board chairman in 1984. The former Baton Rouge educator could be relied upon to handle those “special” clemency requests emanating from the governor’s office. He was even extended official leeway to create his own “special” cases for which he received money, jewelry, furniture and sex in exchange for clemency recommendations. His direct access to not only Edwards but to the governor’s signature pen through top aides ensured that Marsellus’ special cases were signed off by the governor.

            Wilbert Rideau and Howard Marsellus were close buddies. They established a mutual admiration relationship shortly after Marsellus’ appointment. Rideau needed the pardon board chairman to get a clemency recommendation and Marsellus needed the convict editor to provide him access with information about certain inmates and the workings of the prison system. The largest “pardons-selling” enterprise in Louisiana history was actually formulated in the office of the prison magazine between Rideau and several other “inmate leaders” and the pardon-board chairman.

            In 1986 I discovered evidence of just how widespread and massive this pardons-selling enterprise was—and it was worse than I suspected based on rumors circulating throughout the prison. I reported the information I gathered, not as co-editor of The Angolite but as an inmate, to the federal authorities. Subsequent federal and state investigations led to the indictment and imprisonment of Marsellus.

            When news of my “informant” role in the scandal broke in the fall of 1986, I was taken into federal protective custody by federal marshals. A couple weeks later I was taken to C. Paul Phelps’ office to pick up some of my personal belongings. The corrections chief asked me, “why didn’t you just tell me.”

            I replied, “had I told you, Mr. Phelps, I would have been buried in a lockdown cell on some trumped up charge.”

            That was the real nature of the “free penal press” with The Angolite. Phelps was aware of the pardons-selling. He was also aware that Rideau brokered a “clemency deal” for Leonard Pourciau, the magazine’s graphic artist, which secured a commutation of Pourciau’s sentence in exchange for a five thousand dollar portrait the artist did for Marsellus.

            You never read about this in The Angolite because Rideau and Phelps were knee-deep in the clemency corruption. After I was taken into protective custody and removed from the prison publication, the duo orchestrated a plan for Rideau to use his liberal media connections to paint me as a Judas goat who betrayed the journalistic integrity of the magazine. Rideau was so successful that he convinced a naïve New York Times editor named David Anderson to sell to the editorial board of the nation’s largest newspaper the need to publish a piece criticizing my role in exposing the scandal while praising Rideau’s journalistic integrity.

            That’s how much power and influence Rideau had, and continues to maintain, over the liberal press. Just last month former New York Times editor and current George Polk Award curator re-bestowed upon Rideau the 1979 Polk Award. This outrageous media ploy was done to promote Rideau’s memoir, In the Place of Justice (Random House 2010). John Darnton had not even read the memoir when he thought it was a “great idea” to have the Polk Award committee celebrate the former famed prison journalist in the Big Apple.

            Mark Twain once said something to the effect that a “lie will travel around the world before the truth can put on its socks.” That’s what happened with the “Rideau story”—the liberal press has told its lie so many times that it now has the appearance of truth.

            Still, I encourage visitors to this website to read Rideau’s memoir, then return to this website for the “real story.” A lot of Rideau’s supporters question my motives. Why? They prefer to believe the lie over the truth. Myths are hard to shake, much less discredit—even among professional journalists like John Darnton and David Anderson.