This preparation-execution structure also explains why the escape was so hard to detect before the fact. A short preparation period is a short window of detection opportunity. A six-month preparation period seems like it would provide more detection opportunities, but the concealment was specifically designed to close each of those opportunities as they arose. The cardboard panels, the music hour masking, the workshop on the unguarded top tier — each was a concealment system that addressed a specific detection opportunity and closed it.
The result was a preparation period that, paradoxically, was harder to detect because it was longer and more carefully managed than a short, opportunistic attempt. Each element of the preparation had been thought through for its detection risk and had been given a countermeasure.
—
## The Cellblock Microecology: What the Other Inmates Knew
The question of how much the other inmates of Alcatraz knew about the escape — and how they managed that knowledge — is not fully documented but is worth raising as part of a complete picture.
A six-month construction project in a small cellblock cannot be entirely invisible to the people who live in that cellblock. Some inmates would have heard sounds. Some would have noticed the reduced number of raincoats available. Some would have seen Morris or the Anglins moving in ways that were not entirely consistent with the stated institutional schedule.
The testimony of Darwin Coon — a former inmate who attributed the mastermind role to John Anglin rather than Morris — demonstrates that at least some inmates had knowledge of the planning. Coon’s specific claim about the mastermind may or may not be accurate, but his ability to make a detailed claim about who originated the plan suggests access to information that only someone with proximity to the planning could have had.