“Would I kill the informant? Yes,” Gary Watland wrote me, though he did not admit responsibility for anything connected to Cible.
Computer system breached
One day last year at the Maine State Prison, Watland told Cible to watch a gate on a prison fence when he went outdoors for recreation, Cible said in an interview at the New Jersey prison.
“He wanted me to see if it would open and close,” said Cible. “It did. About two feet.”
In addition to the gates and doors, the alarms and cameras of the five-year-old, high-tech, $92-million penitentiary were under Watland’s control, Cible said. And he said Watland uploaded vast amounts of confidential prison data to an Internet site.
The security breach was highly disconcerting to the authorities when they became aware of it in the fall, though they never revealed it to the public. Outside computer experts were called in to assess the damage. Officials will confirm that inmates got onto the Internet; they say they are unsure how much more was done with the computers, although prison documents tend to back up Cible’s story.
But Watland “never opened” the gate, unless he somehow concealed the computer record that he did, says a man who agreed to be called — and is — “a knowledgeable prison source.” He did not want to be identified because he was not authorized to give out this information. He also doubts that Watland transferred chunks of prison data to an Internet site. Corrections officials refused several invitations to comment publicly on the computer breach.
According to Cible, Watland also deleted disciplinary records and credited dollars to prisoner accounts. Cible himself skimmed through many prison files, he says, including one entitled “Lance Tapley.” In it, he says, were copies of prisoners’ letters to me. These included, if Cible is correct, letters I never received, including several from him. Cible’s claim fits with other evidence that prison officials have sometimes confiscated my correspondence. I am the only reporter regularly covering Maine prison issues.
In a letter, Cible said the computer file with my name on it had subfiles entitled “Personal Info,” “Legal Research,” and “Diane Sleek Overview.” Sleek is the assistant attorney general who represents the Corrections Department. Cible’s detailed description of the files on me fit with the interactions I have had with the Department of Corrections.
The department, however, denies such files exist, and it did not produce any described by Cible after I made Freedom of Access (freedom of information) requests to see all department documents mentioning me.
When asked about the computer breaches, Watland responded guardedly in a letter:
“You should be aware that I am the only person cognizant of the facts. Others’ knowledge of the situation is as it is because of the information, however dubious, I chose to impart to them. This has not turned out how I planned, and as a result I find myself scrambling for a foothold. It’s fortunate I was prudent enough to anticipate the desirability of sequestering some invaluable data for just such an eventuality.”
Conjuring up Alice in Wonderland, in a later letter he added: “You have no idea, dear Alice, how deep the hole is.”
