Of course, being a news outlet, we protect the identities of our sources. We even protect the identities of the numerous employees of the Department of Corrections ("DOC") and of the various prisons who give us information.

Recently we received detailed information about a scheme that the DOC has cooked up to make over $2,000,000.00 a year selling over-priced television service to prisoner paupers. It's an alarming scheme and we've prepared an article about it. It's socialism in communication and a shackle on the First Amendment.

One of these papers relating to DOC's TV scam came from an anonymous DOC source. It was so interesting that I sent a copy to one of our prisoner editors. Of course, I kept the original. A scan of the document is included with the TV scam article.

I sent a copy of the document to a writer inside the State Correctional Institution at Smithfield in the most red-neck part of Central Pennsylvania. As it happens, with others, I have a civil rights suit against SCI-Smithfield and many of its employees. The staff retaliates every chance it gets.

When the copy of the TV scam document arrived at SCI-Smithfield it was read and seized by the mailroom. The supervisor of the mailroom, Scott Sieberling, is one of the defendants in our suit. After he was served with our original legal complaint he started a childishly petty practice of defacing the envelopes that I sent into the prison. One of the correspondents is a stamp collector. Apparently out of spite and in retaliation for the suit, Sieberling started destroying the stamps on the envelopes. I had to file a complaint with the postal inspectors.

After seizing the document about DOC's outrageous TV scam, Sieberling turned my mail over to a so-called "security captain" named Robert Glenny. Glenny too is a defendant in my suit. To get an idea of his character you need only read our legal complaint against him and his bizarre obsessions.

Glenny decided that he would simply keep my property. Now, I'm not a prisoner and not subject to this guy's wild whims. More to the point, Department of Corrections doesn't authorize a member of the prison staff to simply take a private person's property. Little things like laws and rules don't seem to much faze Glenny.

His rationale for seizing my property, a copy of a DOC document about how they were going to gouge prisoners for TV services, was that it was "not being used for its intended purpose!"

In order to legitimize his reading of my mail (and remember, I'm a free citizen, just like you), Glenny needed authorization from the prison superintendent, a guy named James Morgan. You guessed it, Morgan is also a defendant in our suit against SCI-Smithfield. Well, of course, Morgan was delighted to obey what Glenny wanted. In this is case, the tail wags the dog and Superintendent Morgan is as submissive as a puppy to any fanatic excess that Robert Glenny happens to dream up.

As we argue in our suit, the staff of the DOC and especially the bunch at SCI Smithfield are openly hostile to information. They detest and fear information. They have more than a hostility to knowledge. They actually fear it.

The position of the SCI-Smithfield staff is that prisoners and the public should be kept ignorant because information is power. Ignorant prisoners who are without information are much easier to exploit. A public without information is docile and impotent, unable to object to the excesses and abuses of the prison system.

The crew at SCI-Smithfield, and, to a lesser extent, the staff of the whole DOC relies heavily on censorhip and lies. They lie to you and don't let you hear what anyone else has to say. We've tried to get information from the DOC press office. They ignore our requests because we don't buy their lies.

When I sent the document about DOC's TV scam into SCI-Smithfield, I also sent a copy of another document. The prisoner to whom I was writing has a legal action pending against certain fire hazards at another prison, SCI-Huntingdon. The document I sent related to the seizure of certain fire retarding curtains at SCI-Huntingdon. It was intended as an exhibit in the pending legal action. Defendant Robert Glenny stole that document, too. Apparently he figured I was just like one of the prisoners under his heel. He could do what he pleased with my personal proerpty as he does with prisoners' property.

This is the same Robert Glenny who concocted a scheme of WEEKLY searches of prisoners' cells and personal property as revenge for escapes at another prison. Of course, his lap dog, Superintendent James Morgan trails right along behind.