The Wizard of Lies

fashioned, and easy to miss. The prison is not on the local map in the telephone book, so visitors have to ask the motel clerks for directions. The twisting route from the interstate involves urban-sounding byways like 33rd Street and E Street, but is lined mostly with vine-blanketed trees and weed-strewn fields. The prison complex looms suddenly out of the pine woods on the right. It consists primarily of four large buildings set in a floodlit clearing among the lowland forests and fields. To the right, set slightly apart on the eastern edge of the property, is a minimum-security prison, the color of manila folders and distinctively free of walls or fences. Almost hidden from view behind a thick stretch of trees to the left is a large modern prison hospital whose separate entrance is farther along the two-lane road that meanders past the complex. And just visible up on a small wooded hill at the center of the complex is a multi-story medium-security prison clad in corrugated gray stone. Madoff is housed in a fourth facility on the Butner Grounds, another medium-security prison to the left of the main entrance, down a short drive lined with flowering white crape-myrtle trees. The low gray stone building is laid out like a giant game of dominoes. Except for its entryway, it is completely surrounded by a double row of towering chain-link fences taller than the building itself. The encircling fences are lined with shimmering swirls of shiny razor wire. A watchtower stands at one corner of the large, nearly treeless exercise yard. And guards cruise the narrow roads winding through the complex, constantly alert for wandering prisoners or too curious visitors. The unit's cinderblock entryway is a low-ceilinged maze of security screening equipment, lockers for visitors' belongings, payphones, and offices. A set of locked doors leads into a sort of double airlock. The rear doors of each section are sealed before the doors ahead swing open. The last pair of doors opens into a wide white hallway leading to the visiting room. The corridor is immaculately clean and decorated incongruously, with black and white Ansel Adams posters of big skies and wide open spaces. The sense of impenetrable isolation descends as soon as the last set of doors thud shut. Cell phones are out of reach, left in the lockers by the entryway. No written messages can be handed to the prisoner, who is constantly watched during visits. Without permission, not even a notebook can be carried into the visiting room. No tape recorders are allowed. Like laboratory rats or ants in a glass-walled colony, these prisoners are under constant scrutiny in a way few Americans can fathom. Phone calls—collect calls only—are rationed and monitored. Letters are opened and read. Every human interaction is policed, regulated, constrained, limited, fettered—including this one. All media visits require the prisoner's invitation and the warden's approval. After nearly a month of paperwork, the green light from the warden came with barely a week's notice. The time allowed is limited, and that limit is politely enforced. A follow-up visit will be authorized in February 2011. In the interval, Madoff will send along a note promising to mail his responses to any additional questions. He keeps his promise, sending several lengthy handwritten letters over the next few months and arranging to send short messages via the restricted and closely monitored prisoner email system. Until today, Madoff's only visitor—apart from lawyers—has been his wife. Until now, he has not answered any independent questions about his crime, except when standing in a courtroom, responding to a judge. Amid that continued silence and mystery, Madoff's time in prison has been the subject of several speculative magazine and television specials. The latest one will air this week, in fact. In it, a former prisoner will claim that the guards here act starstruck around their infamous prisoner from Wall Street, although there is no sign of that today. That television program will also portray Butner as Camp Fluffy, a gentle, white-collar jail compared with harsher state prisons that house murderers and other violent criminals. Madoff's victims may feel that he deserves nothing more comfortable than a Viet Cong tiger cage. If so, they will be disappointed at the room-like two-man cells, the exercise equipment, and the food.