Kohring had a rude transition from freedom to prison

So when it came time to report to the minimum security prison camp in California to begin his 3½ year sentence on bribery, extortion and conspiracy convictions, Kohring was unable to follow the advice of the federal probation officials in Anchorage and buy his own plane ticket there.

Instead, he had to fly in a nondescript "Con Air" twin-engine propeller plane, chained together with robbers, drug dealers and the trigger-man in a murder. They were all moving through the federal prison system from Anchorage that summer day in 2008.

Thus began the rude transition from freedom to prison, a saga cut to one year by the admission of the Justice Department that his trial was tainted by the failure of prosecutors to turn over favorable evidence.

He and fellow former House member Pete Kott returned to Alaska on Thursday. Whether their release will be just a temporary furlough or complete freedom will depend on the nature of the evidence, how the government decides to argue its case and what a judge decides.

In the case of U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, found guilty by a jury of lying on disclosure reports, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder dropped charges after the government also admitted withholding evidence from the defense.

Other than recommending the release of Kott and Kohring for now, the Justice Department has not said whether it will argue that the withheld evidence was insignificant and that the two should be returned to prison; whether the evidence was serious enough to warrant a new trial; or whether charges should be dropped altogether.

ODYSSEY THROUGH THE SYSTEM

In the meantime, Kohring, a Wasilla Republican, was in an upbeat mood Friday, still dressed in the sweats and windbreaker he wore on his freedom trip, his graying blond hair long and shaggy and his face covered with a significant growth of gray whiskers.

After reporting to the U.S. Probation and Pre-Trial Services office, he sat for more than an hour with a reporter outside the Federal Building, describing his odyssey through the federal prison system and his hopes for the future.

Kott, an Eagle River Republican, didn't respond to requests for an interview relayed through his daughter and his attorney.

Kohring, at the suggestion of his lawyer, declined to talk about his case, other than to continue to assert his innocence.

"I have never once felt one degree, one ounce of guilt," Kohring said. "I'm not just saying that because everybody says the same thing. I feel it in my heart. I wouldn't lie to my family."

Even though he has mostly done easy time in a prison camp without walls or fences, the year has been hard, he said. Kohring, 50, said he wasn't allowed a mirror in prison and had no idea how his appearance had changed.

"I got deepening wrinkles and my graying hair -- it was shocking to look at myself yesterday in the bathroom for the first time. Whoa. I need a haircut and a shave. I'm getting old, old-looking. Prison will do that to you. It'll wear you down."

Kohring had to hitchhike from the Valley to court when he was sentenced May 8, 2008. When he reported to the probation office afterwards, an officer advised him to buy his own ticket to his assigned corrections facility: the prison camp in the desert of Taft, Calif., run by a private company under contract to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. As a low-risk prisoner, he'd be allowed to self-report. If he relied on prison transport, he could find himself being shuttled through the murky system of transit waypoints for up to two months before getting to Taft, he was warned.

"But I didn't have enough money. So they said the alternative was to go on the milk run."

Kohring turned himself in to the U.S. Marshals Service June 30, 2008. They brought him to the Anchorage Correctional Complex near Ship Creek while he awaited his flight. For security reasons, prisoners are never told in advance when they will move, so Kohring had no idea how long he would be there.

"I spent the whole time in the hole there, meaning maximum segregation, because they told me it was for my own safety. I found out why -- guys knew who I was that were in there. They were slinging obscenities at me, they're gonna kill me."

"That was a horrid experience. It was cold and lonely, and I got claustrophobia there, I was just missing family and thinking, my God, what have I got myself into -- I can't believe I'm here, this is a nightmare. The food was terrible."

After 15 days, a guard barked through the intercom to his cell: "Kohring! You're out of here!" He wasn't told where he was going. He was processed out and chained to "scary guys with tattoos and bald heads." They were driven to a secure area at the edge of Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport and led to a 12-seat twin-engine propeller plane, Kohring said. A noisy flight brought them to a federal holding facility near Sea-Tac airport outside Seattle.

After a strip and body cavity search he spent about a month in Seattle. Then came a 4 a.m. call that Con Air was waiting again.

This time, it was a 737 jet. Buses from prisons around the Northwest arrived at the tarmac and about 150 or 200 prisoners in all boarded the plane. He had no idea where it was going, but made a guess it was the Midwest as he watched the ground below. Sure enough, the plane landed in Oklahoma City.

His time there was uneventful until the seventh day.

"Two guys got into a big argument over playing cards. They were hitting and kicking and blood was all over there." Guards yelled at them to stop but otherwise did nothing except to lock down the other prisoners.

The fight didn't stop until the men reached exhaustion and halted on their own. "They were all bloody; it was a mess."

Welcome to prison.

WHITE-COLLAR PRISONERS

Kohring, a big man at 6-foot-6, found himself occasionally challenged, but he said he was able to stay out of fights and was never assaulted.

The day after the bloody fight, it was back to the Con Air jet. The plane landed in Victorville, Calif. Six buses pulled up to the plane. A ring of marshals, armed with short-barreled shotguns, encircled the plane and buses. He got on the bus to Taft, 7½ weeks after turning himself in at Anchorage.

The camp at Taft housed about 500 low-risk inmates, roughly half white-collar criminals, the other half involved in drugs. He befriended doctors, dentists and pastors, one of whom was there for some kind of crime related to his mobile home business. Albert Robles, a bribe-taking former city councilman from South Gate, Calif., would talk politics, as would another official from the notorious city of Carson, Calif., where at least 12 people were convicted on federal corruption charges.

Taft had no fences, only signs marking the limits of the facility. They lived three to a room; the rooms had no doors and the walls were really just short partitions, about 5½ feet tall. His prison job was to check out exercise equipment to other prisoners.

Outside, the temperature was often in three digits. Inside, the air conditioning was fierce, even for an Alaskan, he said.

Kohring, tired of the desert, put in for a transfer to another federal camp in Sheridan, Ore. Kott was already there, as was another Alaska legislator, Tom Anderson. The transfer was approved, but it took awhile to get authority to leave.

Then, a week ago, he learned that the Justice Department was recommending he and Kott be freed. The story was in a copy of the Wall Street Journal making the rounds at Taft, and Kohring was an instant celebrity.

"Everybody was congratulating me and patting me on the back, shaking my hand, and they're seeking advice from me about their cases, and they wanted legal advice," Kohring said. "I couldn't escape it."

Then, on Wednesday, before his release was ordered, he got his transfer order to Sheridan. It came with a 24-hour furlough and a bus ticket there. He arrived at 7:15 a.m. Thursday. As he was being processed in, a fax arrived from Anchorage: It was the orders freeing him and Kott. The two were driven to the airport by a trustee. One more indignity remained: The only government-issued identification they had were their prisoner ID cards, which they had to show to get to the gate for the Alaska Airlines flight home.