Letter #7: Notes From The Inside

Welcome back to Ungovernable. This is a long episode, so I don't wanna take too much time on the intro. It was just a chance to say thank you very much to q for taking the time to read through this and to everyone else who's read through the first six episodes.

This notes from the inside is cut into two pieces. It is long. It is hard to get through, but it is good still to hear from Keone. If you're new here, we have a lot of new listeners. If you haven't been following this case, I suggest go back and have a listen to the Freedom Tech Friday we did with Keone just before he went into prison.

It's a reminder that our justice system is far from just. It's a reminder that good people can be in very bad situations. Samurai Wallet was built to allow Bitcoin users to operate in a free and privacy preserving way.

And now for building this freedom tech, both Bill and Kione are in prison. It's a reminder to look after the people who have looked after you. Go and donate. You can do that by boosting the show where 99% of all of the boost will go to support them minus the 1% transaction fee that comes through Fountain.

You can also donate on the many links that we'll have in the show notes. One of those is also this new excellent initiative by Rick, which why don't I have this at the hands now. Free samurai.now, which is a prize draw currently with 3,057,000 sets.

And that's the jackpot to the winner, and that will also be sent to support the cause. So whether you enter the prize draw, whether you send stats on here, or any of the other ways that we have in the show notes, please do consider supporting this cause.

They were there for you. It's time to step up and be there for them. I've just finished recording with q for the Bitcoin brief. We went into a lot more details on the free Samurai prize draw.

So big thank you to Rick for organizing that. It really is awesome. I've just mentioned in the brief, I'm gonna be donating a hat, a hoodie, and a t shirt from the ungovernable store. So, Rick, if you wanna get in contact with me, and I'll make sure that happens.

Thank you to everyone who's been participating. Send your love, prayers, and sats, and let's help free samurai.

Dear reader, it has been many months since I last wrote you. Part of the reason for that is because I spent most of June and part of July in transit from FPC Morgantown to FCI McKean, a four hour drive away.

For most of that time, I had no access to pen, paper, stamps, or the rudimentary email system that I used to send these letters out. The other part of the reason why I haven't written in so long is that once I did finally arrive,

I was so shell shocked from the entire ordeal that I needed time to decompress and process that month long trauma that is BOP transit. Six days after arriving at FCI McKean,

I finally put pen to paper to document the journey, but the result was less of a letter and more of a trauma dump to help me process the absolute worst thirty days of my life. I decided to take a step back and give it some time before I sent out this letter.

I have been slowly adapting to life here at McKean, and in good time, I will tell you all about this place. But for this letter, I want to go back to early June. I want to tackle the entire transit process and explain how what should have been a quick four hour drive turned into thirty days, two transcontinental flights,

three multi hour bus rides, a cellmate doing time for murder, and a cellmate who couldn't stop shitting. I preferred the murder. This letter will be published in two parts due to length. Thank you for your continued reading and support.

On June 5, I was told I would be transferred from FPC Morgantown for a drug and alcohol treatment program. Successfully completing the program, which takes around nine to ten months, rewards you with a year off your sentence.

So it's seemingly well worth the hassle of moving to take it. For security reasons, they do not tell you when you'll be leaving or where you'll be going. While being transferred in BOP custody, you almost always are put on an airplane being piloted and operated by the US Marshals to be taken to BOP transit hub in Oklahoma City.

After a few days in Oklahoma, you're put back on a plane and taken to your destination. From speaking with others, I was told to expect one to two weeks of transit. I also heard that it costs around $10,000 per prisoner to be transited through Oklahoma.

I figured that since I am classified as minimum security, spent close to two years on pretrial release, self surrendered, and had no incident report since being incarcerated, I would be a good candidate for what is called a transfer furlough, where I will be responsible for transporting myself to my new institution at my own expense.

I put in my official request for a transfer, furlough, on June 5. And on June 8, my request was denied without explanation. I would be going through transit. No way around it. On June 10, I was called to receiving a discharge at 6AM.

Though I did not know it at the time. I was about to embark on a month long fever dream through two different holding facilities, share cells with murderers, be locked down behind iron barred cells for twenty three hours a day, and much more.

Leaving through R And D is much the same as when I arrived. I was stripped, searched, issued a pair of ill fitting clothes, khaki elastic band trousers and a brown cotton shirt, threadbet boxes, socks that didn't match, and a pair of slip on blue canvas shoes.

I was put into a holding cell while other inmates being transferred went through the same process. There were six of us transiting from Morgantown on that day. We were each lined up and called forward so that the officer could fasten shackles to our ankles and cuffs to our wrists.

Once cuffed and shackled, the officer wrapped the chain around our waist and attached the handcuffs to them. The end result being that you could not lift your arms or hands much higher than your waist, and you could walk only in painful short shuffling steps.

We were handed a brown paper bag with breakfast in it, bread, peanut butter, bologna, and escorted to the waiting bus. The bus was a cross between yellow school bus and a coach, think Greyhound or National Express, and already filled with inmates from other prisons in the area.

There were guys from all security levels on the bus, some guys serving twenty years coming from the Penn, US penitentiary, some guys like me serving short sentences and going to a camp.

The atmosphere was generally friendly on the bus. Most of the USP guys were interested in what camp was like and how much contraband like vapes and phones cost. At the front of the bus, behind a metal gate, were the driver and three heavily armed officers.

They all wore stab vests and carried handguns and long guns. As we departed Morgantown, I was excited to watch the scenery go by. This was the first taste of the outside world I'd had in six months.

I took in all the sites, the trailer park, the rundown gas station, the triple x store. It was all captivating. After about an hour of driving, the bus suddenly exited the highway, stopped on the side of a small road.

After twenty minutes of idling, I noticed one of the officers walking back to the bus with a bag of biscuits from Tudor's Biscuit World, a West Virginia institution.

We remained on the side of the road as each officer one by one went and bought breakfast, an endeavor that took over an hour. I decided breakfast sounded good, but my bread fell out of my bag onto the floor.

Breakfast would have to wait. As quickly as we got back on the road, we suddenly pulled off again. This time each officer went one by one into a gas station to buy cigarettes and energy drinks.

The metal of the shackles were starting to dig into my ankles. My wrists were cramping. My eardrums were shot beyond comprehension. Many others have said it before. The one thing you really remember about the prison bus is how unbelievably loud it is.

Every bump in the road is followed by a symphony of crashing metal. Inmates at the front of the bus maintain full conversations at full volume with their friends all the way in the back. The volume is at maximum for the entire journey.

After about five hours, we arrived in the Grembria Valley Regional Airport. There were several other prison buses parked off to the side of the runway. For the next hour or so, a parade of officers from other buses would climb up and yell out a series of names.

We were playing a grand game of musical chairs, and for a brief moment, I prayed that I will be called to another bus and spirited off to my camp by bypassing the free plane ride to Oklahoma.

Eventually, musical chairs was over, and we were instructed to get off the bus and directed to a line of waiting US marshals standing in front of a plain white airplane adorned with a small American flag on the tail fin.

The marshal patted me down, checked my mouth and feet, and directed me to line up and wait by the front of the plane under the cockpit. They packed us in tight on the runway, 10 rows of inmates, at least 10 men deep. We watched inmates disembark the plane and enter the buses we just left.

The whole thing must be logistical nightmare for the folks at BOP, I was surprised at how smoothly it was all moving. It was by no means quick, but it could have been far worse. Finally, I was ordered to wobble up the stairs to board the plane. I felt like Joe Biden before falling up the stairs.

How embarrassing it would be to eat it in front of all these convicts. I made it up without embarrassing myself. Onboard, air operations marshals replaced flight attendants,

though one really couldn't tell any difference in demeanor between a Delta Air steward herding a bunch of fat slobs in sweatsuits and a US Marshal herding a bunch of prisoners. We filed each row from back to front at the direction of the marshals.

I was sat in the window seat. The guy next to me sported a nifty full face tattoo and informed me he had been down fifteen years and kicked out of the USP for fighting.

I informed him I was on my way to a camp and had been down for six months. He had nothing else to say to me after that. The plane itself had certainly seen better days. It looked to have been dated from the Cold War.

The stickers commonly found plastered across the surfaces of airplanes telling you not to smoke or where to find the life vest in case of emergency. How exactly to apply said life vest while shackled and bound was not explained, were all in German and Russian. Where the hell did they get this thing from?

The plane was filled two thirds of the way with inmates. The final third at the front of the plane were all US marshals, at least 30 of them. With that, the plane took off, and we were on our way to Oklahoma City.

After about an hour, an air marshal doing their best surly Delta stewardess impression threw a bag of lunch hours. It was the second, but not last, sack lunch containing four slices of bread, a pouch of peanut butter, two slices of turkey, and a small packet of cookies.

Cream for fun, a BOP staple that even in my dire circumstances, solicited a juvenile chuckle out of me. Sick to death at this point of the oily b o p peanut butter, I happily pawned it off on the face tattoo next to me. I got started trying to fix myself a turkey sandwich, a task made difficult due to the cuffs and limited mobility.

The bread was ice cold and the turkey was frozen solid. After brushing off the top layer of ice from the sliced meat and placing it between the now soggy and still freezing bread, I took a bite and decided I wasn't a great fan of turkey popsicle sandwich.

The cream for fun would have to suffice for lunch. I was thankful for the small bottle of water that was handed out, but was not thrilled when I spilled most of it down my front, contorting myself to try and twist the cap off. Shortly after my lunch, the marshal went row by row and asked if we needed to use the toilet.

Most people did, so the rest of the flight consisted of much jostling and shuffling to the bathroom and back. I refused, preferring to hold it, but the gentleman across the aisle let the entire plane know that he needed to take a ship, a declaration that caused much consternation and debate.

As we approached Oklahoma City, the pilot got on the intercom to let us all know it was a beautiful sunny day in Oklahoma City, a balmy 88 degrees. He failed to mention that none of us would see the sun for our entire stay in FTC Oklahoma City.

We landed at OKC Airport, went past the main terminal building towards a squat brown concrete building about six stories high. After what felt like an eternity, we disembarked row by row through the jet bridge directly into the airport prison.

We shuffled single file through an assembly line of marshals who thankfully removed the cuffs and shackles, searched our mouth and feet again, and directed us into a dark concrete holding cell where we were packed in tight like a tin of sardines.

In the corner of the room was a single stainless steel combination toilet, sink, water fountain. Almost immediately, several inmates somehow fashioned a lighter and proceeded to get extremely high on k two, known also as juice.

In prisons, juice is commonly just roach spray or rat poison drenched on a small piece of paper. When you light the paper and inhale the fumes, you often freeze where you are standing, lean over, and are lost to the world around you for several minutes.

I was most curious as to where the hell they were hiding these things to make it past no fewer than three probing searches. All I could think of was getting out of this claustrophobic concrete box into a housing unit with other minimum security campers.

Everyone had warned me that security classifications will be mixed until you were assigned a housing unit. I just had to tough out the intake process. For being the official transit hub of the BOP handling thousands of inmates every week, the staff at FTC Oklahoma City were breathtaking in their incompetence.

Every last officer was less than useless, all of them wearing an expression of bewilderment as to how they happened to stumble into this predicament of dealing with a plane load of convicts as if normally they were payroll accountants or copy clerks.

It was as if it was their first day on the job. After jam packing us, asked to elbow in small concrete room for four hours. Presumably, they were having some sort of crisis meeting trying to determine what exactly they were supposed to do with us.

A morbidly overweight officer whose stab vest appeared to be groaning in protest at the enormity of the task of protecting such an enormous man unlocked the door and shouted that he needed five of us at a time.

Instantly, well over 100 men, all desperate to be out of this hellish room, push and shove their way towards the door. The only ones in no hurry are the juice heads, who have no idea where they are. And if they are indeed aware, the limbs are in no mood to take any direction regarding movement,

and myself who has no interest in playing grab ass with murderers and rapists. I wait patiently towards the back of the room and entertain myself by taking covert glances at the inmates around me to try and guess which ones are the Chomos, child molesters.

You may, at this point, wish to chide me and extol the virtues of not judging a book by its cover, but these books had covers that all but said, hey, look. I'm a chomo. They have that look about them. After forty five minutes of five men trickling out at a time, the room emptied, and the juice head stumbled back to reality.

What a horrible reality to return from what must be a thrilling escape, and we shuffle out into the convict assembly line. We are commanded to undress, lift, squeeze, cough under the careful supervision of an officer, no doubt cursing the recruiter of the Butplug County job fair who never said anything about staring at genitals all day.

Once the second strip search of the day concludes, you are thrown a bundle of damp clothes with odd stains on them and hurry further along the conveyor belt towards a long queue to go through a body scanner machine, the kind of thing you'd find at an airport designed to find bombs and weapons.

The officer manning the machine sits behind a lead curtain to shield themselves from radiation that leaks out of this whirring machine. The warning sticker helpfully informs you to keep back behind the blue line for your safety,

but it turns out this warning is not for you. You are instructed to jam yourself as close as possible to the machine so they can make sure to dose you with the radiation of the six guys ahead of you. Once you've been sufficiently irradiated, you get pushed along,

where the medical officer menacingly asks if you have anything medically wrong with you, almost daring you to say anything but no. There is a whirlwind of papers being stamped, collated, duplicated, and filed, and before you know it, the assembly line ends.

You breathe a sigh of relief. Surely some friendly officer is gonna check your papers and notice you're a minimum security camper and whisk you away. Instead, yet another morbidly obese officer points at a room, makes some sort of grunting noise. You do not speak primate,

but gather he wants you to wait in that room. You quickly realize this room is a carbon copy of the first hoarding room. You quietly wonder if Dante got it all wrong and all the circles of hell happened to be within the BOP's Oklahoma City Airport transfer facility.

Another couple of hours pass or years, who can tell at this point, in the second holding room, and juice heads are the only ones having a great time. The juice dealers have defeated yet another strip search, now a body scanner.

Eventually, an officer of indeterminate gender unlocks the door and yells out five to 10 names, and you are escorted to your range. Prison speak for the floor you live on.

The officer leads us towards the elevator. 10 of us cram in, and I get a good look at the men with me. Seven of them have full face tattoos that extend across their shaved heads, ram's horns, Celtic knots, Thor's hammer, that sort of thing.

At this point, I am fully aware that a camper only range is fantasy. I'm going into general population with murderers, rapists, kidnappers, gang members, and career criminals, many of whom who have spent more time behind bars than they have in society.

I take a deep breath. This is no time to be anxious or afraid. If the sharks smell fear, they will strike. The guard walks us to the heavy metal door that separates our range from the hallway.

He turns the key, but the door won't open. He tries another key with the same result. One of the face tattoos mocks him. What is it? Your first day or something? He heckles.

The officer is now very aware that this is taking way too long, fumbles his keys, drops them on the floor. The scene is objectively funny, and now several more inmates are heckling the clumsy officer.

Finally, the door opens from the inside. The range officer must have taken pity and opened it for him. The guys watching on the security cameras must have been pissing themselves. You'll probably never hear the end of that in the break room. I am on Range 4 D.

The room is vaguely triangular in shape as if the architect started drawing a triangle but gave up halfway through. The room is large and painted in a palette of institutional gray and the same sort of pink they paint high schools.

Cells with big metal doors line three of the walls, two large staircases flank both sides of the room and take you up to an internal balcony where cells line the walls as well. If I remember correctly, there are 32 men cells on each floor, so each range holds a total of a 120 men.

As soon as you cross the threshold between hallway and range, you are immediately struck by the sheer number of strung out junkies hunched over seemingly frozen in place. Before you even have a chance to breathe, several face tattoos are in your face asking if you want to buy drugs from them.

These enterprising fellows apparently are running a fully stocked pharmacy. They offer me juice, ice, meth, Snezzle Fizz, and Jungler Rush. Okay. I made the last two up, but they offered me stuff I've never heard of before.

I decline the offer, and they move on quickly to a more lucrative mark. The range officer leaves his office and steps over a frozen drug addict and informs us that he is new here and to give him a minute to get us situated.

I politely wait while the officer, looking more and more flustered by the minute, assigns guys ahead of me to their cells, hands them a roll of toilet paper and thin mattress before sending them on their way into the jungle.

When it is my turn, the officer lets me know that he has run out of toilet paper, but if I give him a minute, he will find me some. He gives me my cell number and scurries away back to his office.

I follow him and remind him that I need a mattress, to which he explains he has run out of those as well. But if I just give him a minute, he will try and locate one. From that point forward, he was officer just a minute. I climb over three junkies strung out on the staircase and make my way to the cell I have been assigned.

The cell is small, only a bunk bed, a toilet, a sink, a desk, and a fluorescent light. Inside is a large American Indian. If you ask someone to draw the most racist caricature of an American Indian, he would have drawn this guy.

He looks at me and says in a deep voice with a flat effect, I am a shadow. The strange face tattoos gave him an air of sort of tribal witch doctor. I said, you sure are, and quickly introduced myself, lest he take offense to my glib remark and place a hex on me.

I liked Shadow immediately. I learned that he was on his way to USP doing twenty years for murder. I had a chance to explain that I was on my way to a camp for the fake crime of not having a license I didn't even need in the first place.

Officer, just a minute, was in the doorway of the cell holding half of a foam mattress. Decidedly, at the end of my tether, I looked to him, to the mattress in his hands, back to him, and asked incredulously, what the fuck am I supposed to do with that?

It's all we have, he responded, slightly annoyed. It's half gone. How the hell am I supposed to sleep on that? My ass and legs will be on bare metal, I protested. Welcome to prison, he responded curtly.

I was seriously fed up at this point. Plus, I had Shadow, the murdering witch doctor, to back me up, so I pressed further. I understand this is prison. I am well aware of that fact. You still have an obligation to provide us basic amenities like bedding. This isn't fucking Guantanamo.

I pushed. He simply shrugged and dropped the mat on the floor and walked off. Fuck that guy, said Shadow, to which I agreed. A few minutes later, officer Just A Minute walked by and locked the cell door.

We were locked in for the night. It would be the first time I'd been truly locked in a cell. I was mildly surprised there wasn't some sort of central locking mechanism. The officer needed to walk by 60 cells and manually lock them all. A while after locking us in, another officer showed up to perform the 10PM count.

Count concluded. I climbed onto my half mattress and waited for the bright fluorescent light to be turned off. By 11PM, I asked Shadow what time they usually turn the lights off. They don't, he responded.

I sighed and covered my head with the sheet they gave me. It smelled vaguely like motor oil and sawdust and silently sobbed. Everyone told me that transit was bad, that Oklahoma was terrible.

They weren't overstating it. I laid their ass on bare metal, harsh light shining through the threadbare sheet, and asked myself if this is all worth the year off. I regretted ever leaving Morgantown, and I desperately wanted to call my wife Lauren.

The transit story will continue in part two. Thank you for reading.