The L.B.J., as its inmates call the Long Binh Jail, is like army stockades everywhere: not much worse than Stateside prisons, or more uncomfortable than the ordinary barracks of South Viet Nam. Located in the middle of the Army's main supply and administration center twelve miles northeast of Saigon, it houses 700 prisoners in a barbed-wire compound built for 400. Their crimes range from smoking pot or going AWOL to theft and murder, and as an M.P. staff officer puts it, the prisoners create "every kind of problem that you find in a civilian prison."
Last week the L.B.J. completed the list with its first serious riot. The trouble was set off by a fistfight between two prisoners. When guards went in to break it up, the prisoners crashed out into the central compound containing the mess hall, administration buildings and the solitary-confinement cells (which are converted shipping containers). As the wooden buildings broke into flames, 100 M.P.s marched into the stockade with night sticks and tear gas. By the time the gas cleared, one prisoner was dead, his skull crushed, 23 were hospitalized, and 35 more needed treatment for lesser wounds. In addition, five guards, including the garrison commander, were in the hospital.
For all the riot's viciousness, the inmates offered no grievances to explain their outbreak beyond the normal gripes of prison life. In that, they were less articulate than the prisoners of the Marine brig at Danang, who rioted briefly three weeks ago. They had complained of cold food, excessive discipline, and long delays before trial. When the brig commander, Lieut. Colonel Joseph Gambardella, promised to look into their complaints, they calmed down and cleared up their cell block; and except for a brief flare-up when 40 parolees and trusties were moved out, that was the end of it. The prisoners at L.B.J. must face a harsher punishment. Since the administration building and its files were burned, the men will have to sweat it out in the stockade regardless of their original sentences until the Army again catches up with their records.