Closure of The Federal Medical Center Prison In Lexington--How Many Jobs Will Be Lost

On July 1, 2026, WKYT-27 announced that the Federal Bureau of Prisons had announced in a press release that they were planning to close the Federal Medical Center or at least a portion of it called the Satelitte Camp on Leestown Road in Lexington. The press release from the Bureau of Prisons refers to the facility as a satellite camp which is a minimization of the history and the ongoing importance of this prison. It was one of six facilities on a list of six proposed closures. This facility has been in Lexington and Fayette County since 1935 and is one of the most well known prisons in the nation. It began as a federal drug treatment facility and was also a leading research facility in the effort to successfullly treat alcohol and drug addictions for most of its long and productive life. During the 1940's to 1980's, the facility was frequently the point of incarceration and treatment for many famous people. During the period when heroine was widely connected to the jazz music scene, numerous famous musicians who had become addicted,eventually arrested on federal drug charges, and convicted.

In the 1970's, I used to be a regular visitor to the facility along with other members of the substance abuse treatment community in Lexington and as part of my commitment to the treatment of addictive behaviors. I met several interesting people during those visits although I have to admit that I never met any of the more famous people who were incarcerated there over the years. But I did meet a man who claimed to have been the prisoner at Walpole, Massachusetts, who picked up and carried the firearms to their eventual user which were key to the Walpole prison riot,one of the worst prison riots in the history of the country. I also met one of the early American airline hijackers who told a fascinating story about his crime and incarceration. He was a traveling salesman at the time he committed the hijacking and also a chronic alcoholic. He said that he took a flight for business reasons at a time when he was drunk and in a blackout. Shortly after the plane gained cruising altitude, he said the stewardess came down the aisle taking drink orders, and he told her "This is a hijacking. I want to go to Cuba." He said shortly afterward, one of the crew told him the pilots said they were not carrying enough fuel to make the trip to Cuba and would need to stop somewhere and refuel. He said "OK!" since he was a well mannered alcoholic. The plane landed in Atlanta and a crew member told him "These other passengers don't want to go to Cuba. Would you be willing to let them get off here?" Being a well mannered alcoholic, he said, "Sure, they can get off." When the steps were lowered and the passengers left the plane, a team of FBI agents boarded, arrested him, and took him to the local federal prison to be held for the police and court processes. He said that he came to full consciousness at about 6pm that evening, realized he was in jail, and that the place didn't seem like any ordinary jail he had ever seen before. He always swore that the first thing he could consciously remember about the events was that when he came out of his blackout there was a televison on the wall at the end of the cell block and the 6pm news was on. He said he saw himself being led off the plane between two FBI agents. His family had some money and got him a good defense attorney and a psychiatrist who hypnotized him to probe his memory of knowledge of the events. He and the psychiatrist both testified that he had no organic memory of the hijacking. He eventuall was able to either get a plea deal or was simply convicted and given a fairly light sentence.

These two men were not typical of all the prisoners at FMC and they stood out in a place where it was hard to stand out. The Lexington Herald Leader published a story on February 16, 2024, which contained a lenghty list of former famous musicians who had been incarcerated and treated at the facility when it was called The Narco Farm. That list included the names of Jazz musicians including Chet Baker, Howard McGhee, Benny Green, Red Rodney, Sonny Rollins, Tadd Dameron and Jackie McLean. It also mentioned William S. Burroughs, Sr., a member of the Beat Writers whose book "Junkie" mentioned what might have been a slightly sanitized version of his time there. His son, William S. Burroughs, Jr. also spent time at the facility and wrote his own book primarily about his incarceration and treatment. But for my money, which was simply $1.59 spent at a Goodwill store, the best book about FMC is "The Narcotic Farm" by Nancy D. Campbell, JP Olsen, and Luke Walden which was published by Harry N. Abrams, Inc. in 2008. It was a fantastic reasearch job and contains hundreds of historical photographs from the facility along with an excellent historical account of the life of the prison since 1935. In addition to the William S. Burroughs, Sr. book which was originally published in an Ace Double, it also mentions William S. Burroughs, Jr's book "Kentucky Ham" which contains a more lengthy story of his time at FMC. Two other books about life at FMC when it was known as The Narco Farm, are also discussed in "The Narcotic Farm". Those two books are "The Fantastic Lodge: The Autobiography Of A Girl Drug Addict" edited by Helen McGill Hughes and "The Farm" by Clarence L. Cooper, Jr. who was also incarcerated and treated in Lexington before being released and dying as a homeless addict.

Research done at FMC Lexington on consenting prisoners has been instrumental for many years in affecting how substance abuse treatment has been done and the production and approval of several drug therapies both moderately successful and unsuccessful. The long, productive, and incredibly interesting life of FMC Lexington deserves to be told and the facility deserves to be preserved. At a time when the current treaonous administration is destroying much of what is productive in America, and simultaneously creating and wasting billions of dollars on asinine failures such as Alligator Alcatraz, and two totally unjustified wars of aggression, FMC Lexington needs to be preserved and maintained as an active institution in the Bureau of Prisons. Why in the face of potentially several hundred good jobs being lost aren't the Right Wing Radical Repugnican majority in the Kentucky state legislature fighting this proposed closure?

"Alligator Acatraz" Is TRAITOR Trump's First Concentration Camp!

The Holocaust Encyclopedia tells us that:

"The first concentration camps in Germany were established soon after Hitler's appointment as chancellor in January 1933. In the weeks after the Nazis came to power, the SA (Sturmabteilung; commonly known as the Storm Troopers), the SS (Schutzstaffel; Protection Squadrons—the elite guard of the Nazi party), the police, and local civilian authorities organized numerous detention camps to incarcerate real and perceived political opponents of Nazi policy."

TRAITOR Trump's first concentation camp, known as "Alligator Alcatraz" was opened in South Florida on July 1, 2025, in South Florida with TRAITOR Trump and Rod DeSantis present and happily touting its existence as if they had just funded an actual day care center, community college, or hospital. The only term I find adequate to describe TRAITOR Trump's emotional response to this concentration camp is "masturbatory glee". This isa term I have used once or twice before in reference to some of his most egregious and criminal acts. When TRAITOR Trump is able to do anything which creates havoc,makes the world a more dangerous place, or worsening the living conditions for a major segment of America's population, his responses are always a public exhibition of strutting like a rooster in a chicken lot in which he is the only male of the species. His face becomes exactly like of the high school bully who has just slapped a non-consenting freshman girl on the hindquartes and gotten away with it. When he stood in front of the press at the opening of this hell hole,his experssion was exactly like that of an insecure 13 year old boy who has suddenly discovered that he has one black hair on his chest or crotch. TRAITOR Trump delights in the suffering of others, especially if he is the perpetrator of that suffering. There is no word or expression in the English language that better describes his reactions in these instances than masturbatory glee.

We are teetering on the edge of the greatest disaster any civilized country can perpetrate or ignore as it is being perpetrated. We are facing the onset of what will become an American Holocaust if TRAITOR Trump is not stopped by the US House, Senate, and Supreme Court. It is unlikelyh at this time that any of the three are willing or morally able to do that. The razor slim margins which votes on his "Big Vicious, Ugly Bill" is being defeated by are not based on strength or moral courage. They are based on the dissent of a small handful of the worst elected officials in America whose oppostion is due to their desire to make that "Big, Vicious, Ugly Bill" even bigger, more visious, and uglier. The United States is sitting at the cusp of being host to a Second Holocaust. More concentration camps are going to be built. More people will be incarcerated unjustly, denied due process, deported, suffer from inhumane treatment, and many of them will die in the process or because of hte long term effects of that process. The question has now become "what will you as an idividual citizen do in response to this sought after Second Holocaust? Will you sit silent or even assist as thousands of German citizens did in World War II? Will you simply stick your head deep within your shell of compliance while blaming other under your breath as many other German citizens did in World War II? Will you ignore this Second Holocaust as much of the so-called civilized world did in World War II? Or will you be a real participant in the resistance to this Tyrann, this Racism, this Second Holocaust? Will you even join TRAITOR Trump in his masturbatory glee?