"I left the prison December 22, 1971," he says, "when I signed the commutation order that placed me on restriction until March 10, 1973, and I did not learn until the following day of the 1980 restriction. I refused to sign it. I don't think it's enforceable nor can they, 11 days later, issue something that wasn't part of what I signed.."

"We have reason to believe that Colson was the motivating factor in the 1980 provision that was recommended to the president. We also believe he obtained employment as counsel to the Teamsters because he co-operated with [Frank] Fitzsimmons [the current Teamsters president] on this issue."

Hoffa's release and the large contributions that the Temaster's union made to Nixon's re-election campaign are being investigated by the Watergate Special Prosecutors office, recent news reports have said.

But Hoffa still believes in Nixon. "I guess he [Colson] hoodwinked Nixon," he says. Hoffa also defends Nixon on Watergate, saying that the "expose has almost wrecked the entire country."

Similarly, Hoffa sweepingly condemns government transgressions of civil liberties, but seems reluctant to assign blame. He opposes wiretapping, but is unwilling to condemn the Nixon administration directly for asserting its unlimited authority to wiretap without court order: "I'm opposed to all wiretapping, I'm opposed to room bugging, I'm opposed to any kind of spy system against people in this country.

"There's no question that the U.S. is a police state. They've got more investigatory bodies and inquisitory bodies here in this country in the guise of law than anywhere else in the world," Hoffa says, but he is unwilling to make the connection between his case and the ones of leftist political prisoners, one of whom, Philip Berrigan, was in Lewisburg with him.

"I don't compare myself to people who destroy draft records. I don't identify with people who are seeking self-aggrandizement through their acts. I don't compare myself with them."

Berrigan is "a complete stone nut. He got me in trouble for trying to help him and got himself in trouble because he wouldn't recognize the fact that he was a prisoner."

Though Hoffa terms himself a political prisoner, and it is evident that he shares many of the left's criticisms of Gestapo-like tactics, he is unwilling to acknowledge that their use in this country can be politically motivated. He seems to believe all problems are solvable by traditional liberal means, that "social changes come about only by the better education of people and by the way which they learn to live within the education they secure."

While from his perspective such a view is understandable, in the context of the prison reform movement, it is questionable. Most prisoners are not successful people and prison just reinforces a person's lack of self-worth. What Hoffa proposes is attractive, and if adopted would certainly be helpful--jobs and parole and improved facilities are fine.

But to maintain, and probably rightly, that prison had so little effect on himself personally, that his five years did not call into question more fundamental beliefs, simply promotes mechanistic solutions to what is at heart a very complex social problem. For Hoffa the case for prison reform is so intimately tied up with his own ego, that calling for changes in the prison system acts out revenge and does not reflect real political beliefs. Hoffa is playing ego politics; the prison kick comprises one part of his own rehabilitation as a leader and as a tough guy.