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says, “Congressman, I really have a lot of complaints. We really are not being treated fairly. There are six people in the cell and the cell is only built for one, and they don't let us shower more than once a week, and they don't let us exercise at all.” So I said, “What are you in here for?” He says, “Bombing.” This is in 1969. So I said, “What's your name?” So he says, “Melville.” I said, “I know you. Those are the posters: ‘Free the Village One.’ You're him.” The radical groups had taken on his cause. He had been arrested for bombing.

So I said, “I'll see what I can do.” And I go to the warden and I said, “Why can't they shower every day? Why can't they exercise?” He says, “Well, we have to protect them from the other prisoners. They don't like bombers.”

Ridiculous. So I write to Norman Carlson, whom I did not know at that time, who is the prison director, and we've become good friends, and he's got a lot of correspondence from me. I've become the biggest recipient of prison mail in the country, I think, because word quickly spreads: “Koch answers prison mail and takes on causes.”

Okay. So I write to him and I explain I've been there and I think it's an outrage that these prisoners can't shower, that they cannot exercise. And I get back a letter shortly, not from Carlson, but maybe two weeks later, and it's from Sam Melville. The letter reads as follows. “Dear Congressman. There is a new adage in the prison: ‘It takes a visit from the