"60 Minutes has been told that there have been frequent hunger strikes among the Islamic terrorist inmates inside Supermax and to keep the inmates alive there are often force feedings. That's when an inmate is restrained and liquid nourishment is poured down a tube in his nose. We're told there have been about a dozen hunger strikers and one of them used to be Osama bin Laden's secretary. Former Warden Robert Hood told us that he supervised many of these feedings. "I probably conducted, authorized, conducted 350, maybe 400 of involuntary feedings. Again, not…individuals, because you could have one person, three meals a day for, you know, two months. That adds up," he tells Pelley. Bureau of Prisons' records that 60 Minutes has seen show there have been as many as 900 of what the bureau called "involuntary feedings" of terrorists in H-unit since 2001. Why did the prisoners stop eating? What was the complaint? Says Hood, "It was conditions of confinement." Some of the conditions they object to are outlined in a document: inmates get letters only from people approved by the prison and they get one, monitored, phone call a month, for 15 minutes."
Force-feeding

January 1, 1970