PARDONED BY BUSH, IOWAN RETURNS TO FREEDOM

Reed Prior kneels along the sidewalk with a gallon can, dabs his brush
in yellow paint, and slides the bristles over the curb.

Customers breeze out of the Des Moines hardware store, past the "Wet
Paint" sign and the 59-year-old who was supposed to die in prison.

Nearly eight months have passed since Prior rejoined the world,
drug-free, and hugged his dying father. Eight months since he began
the quiet, sober, 9-to-5 life that eluded him for decades.

He remembers his past: A popular over-achiever. An addict who slept in
flea-bag motels. A four-time drug felon sentenced to prison for life.
And sometimes - alone, in silence - Prior thinks about the
presidential order that set him free.

Riding high and crashing Everyone liked Reed Prior. His friends
remember the National Merit Semifinalist, the A-student and sports car
mechanic voted "Most Likely to Succeed" at Des Moines' Roosevelt High
School.

His senior yearbook shows a skinny, brown-eyed 17-year-old, a
bespectacled athlete who golfed and played point guard for an
undefeated basketball team. By 1967, the year he graduated, Prior had
skipped a grade and logged near-perfect scores on his college entrance
exams.

"He's the most knowledgeable person I've ever met," said Richard
Margulies, a high school friend and a retired real estate lawyer.
"He's so educated and well versed in so many different topics. People
use the word 'brilliant' a lot, but that doesn't do justice to the
scope and breadth of what he knows."

A radical, rebellious, anything-goes culture greeted Prior in college
- - first in Grinnell, then Colorado, then Iowa City. The Vietnam War
raged; protesters marched.

He lit his first joint in 1968. Then it was a pill here; a joint
there. Mescaline, mushrooms, LSD. Two years later, he discovered white
heroin and powder cocaine.

The cocaine lifted him to a pulse-throbbing euphoria. The heroin
melted his stress. Together they created a powerful third high - a
pleasure beyond description - that lasted for hours, days, sometimes
weeks.

He left the University of Iowa with a master's degree, and returned to
Des Moines to teach. A school budget crisis kept him from full-time
work, so he joined three friends in a daring jump: ENCOM Corp., a
company they created to sell computer communications equipment.

Business exploded. Prior, the traveling pitchman, jetted the country
with enough cash to support his $5,000-a-month habit. By day, he
pitched the device to Fortune 500 companies. By himself, he smoked,
snorted and swallowed whatever drugs he could.

In 1984, as his work collapsed and heroin use peaked, Prior left
EMCOM. His finances crumbled. He bounced from Dallas to California,
back to Iowa.

Some nights, he slept in a Ryder truck or a cheap motel. He wandered
the streets for a fix. Once he awoke in an ambulance, oblivious to
where or who he was. One man shoved a gun into his chest hard enough
to leave a bruise.

He began to sell methamphetamine - a drug he hated, but increasingly
used - from a Des Moines apartment shared with his girlfriend.

The money kept him high. It also left a trail.

A mandatory sentence The police descended quickly. On May 2, 1995, two
Des Moines drug enforcement officers spotted Prior's gray Chevy at a
south-side motel. They followed Prior from Room 212 to a storage
garage rented in his name, and pounced. Inside, they found drug
scales, $17,690 in cash and nearly two pounds of methamphetamine.

Federal prosecutors charged him with a drug trafficking felony,
punishable by life in prison and an $8 million fine. Three days after
his arrest and at his lawyer's urging, Prior pleaded guilty so he
could talk early and secure the best plea deal possible.

In the Polk County jail, he slipped into withdrawal. His body ached.
His head spun. He felt nauseous, disoriented, lost in a fog as he lay
curled on the jail cell floor.

Prior had pleaded guilty to drug felonies in Arizona, California and
Des Moines. Each time he was fined, given probation, and turned loose
after less than a day in jail.

This charge was different. Congress in 1986 had approved federal
"mandatory minimum" sentences designed to snare big-dollar dealers.
The law stripped judges of the power to weigh special circumstances,
and allowed sentence reductions only if prosecutors asked.

The prosecutor wanted names. If Prior helped their investigation, the
prosecutor said he would agree to shorten the life sentence.

No, Prior said. Police had arrested his supplier. All that remained
were his customers, mostly recreational users, some with families and
jobs. Too many lives lay in ruins.

"I think it's reprehensible that the only way given for me to get out
of this life sentence is to become, in the vernacular, a snitch," he
told a federal judge. "That is repugnant to me."

The prosecutor at his sentence hearing pointed to advantages the then
45-year-old Prior enjoyed in his youth, his admitted guilt, and his
long drug history.

"There's no dispute here that Mr. Prior is an intelligent, analytical,
smart person with a lot of good qualities," said Assistant U.S.
Attorney Lester Paff, according to court records. "The fact of the
matter is that he's been convicted three times of three serious drug
offenses."

Paul Zoss, his court-appointed lawyer, painted the case as a tragedy
driven by drugs. Even with three convictions, he argued, his client
had never spent a full day in jail. He had never received treatment.
How, he asked, could the court justify a life sentence?

Judge Ronald Longstaff agreed. The sentence, he said, was unjust. But
the law was clear.

"You're making me do something I hate doing today, and I'm mad at you
for it," Longstaff said. ". . . I'm mad at you because you're making
me send you to jail for life, and I don't want to do that."

"Unfortunately, Reed, under the law - right or wrong - you're the only
person right now who holds the key to unlock the handcuffs that bind
me."

The plea for help Bob Holliday was sitting in his West Des Moines law
office one morning in 2001, when the phone rang. Don Prior, Holliday's
football coach at Roosevelt, spoke with a trembling voice.

"Can you come get me?"

Something was wrong. Five decades after he graduated, Holliday still
knew his coach well. Don Prior was an icon to his players, a man who
inspired a young Holliday and remained a friend through college and
law school.

Holliday pulled into the Prior family driveway. Don Prior walked out
of the house, climbed into the car, and fell apart. For six years, he
sobbed, his only son - a drug addict - had languished in prison.

Holliday stared at his old coach, his hero, his father figure. He was
a civil lawyer, with a client list of telephone companies and electric
co-ops. He prided himself as a law-and-order conservative, a simple
guy who knew little about federal clemency law and nothing about drugs.

"I don't really know what to do here," Holliday said. "But I'll take a
look."

Holliday filed a written request to commute Prior's sentence with the
U.S. pardon attorney in Washington. And he waited.

Five years passed. No answer. Holliday shared the story with anyone
who would listen. He collected support letters from Longstaff, Zoss,
and Attorney General Tom Miller. Letters arrived from Prior's high
school friends, and ex-governor Robert Ray.

Former Hawkeye coach Hayden Fry, a Bush family friend, added his
support. So did Don Nickerson, the former U.S. attorney who
green-lighted Prior's sentence.

The odds seemed impossible. President George W. Bush had commuted
eight federal prisoners in office.

One morning, Holliday called Iowa First Lady Mari Culver, a friend and
fellow lawyer. Did the governor know about Prior's case? Could he help?

Yes, she told him, and he supported Holliday's effort.

And yes, she said. Gov. Chet Culver could arrange a meeting at the
White House.

Prison life Little remained for Prior but the shouts and echoes in
Cell Block 4A, his students, and job at the prison store.

By day, he taught algebra and advanced grammar. He avoided trouble and
made no friends. Prisoners at the Greenville FCI, his medium-security
home in Illinois, respected him for his life sentence and his refusal
to help prosecutors.

One day, after lunch in August 2007, Prior returned to his cell and
laid a sheet of paper on a metal desk bolted to the wall. He began to
write.

He wrote about his past:

"I wasn't the smartest kid in school, but I was one of them. Often,
smart kids are outcasts, but I wasn't. I liked most everyone, and most
everyone seemed to like me."

And the drugs:

"This was something I chose, something I did to myself, something that
is no one's fault but mine," he wrote. "I didn't really know what was
happening until it was too late and I became addicted. I tried again
and again to overcome the addiction by myself but I just couldn't."

And his fear for young people:

"Some may get away with it for awhile, for years even. Certainly I
did. But the drugs will win in the end - that's just how it is."

'The system has failed this man' Holliday walked into the White House
in December 2008, less than a month before Bush's presidency ended.
Zoss, Margulies and Nickerson were with him.

A secretary shuttled the men upstairs, to a second-floor West Wing
office. Fred Fielding, the White House counsel, greeted them at the
door.

"Mr. Holliday," he said. "I've read every piece of paper you've sent
me. And I want you to know that, right now, I think the system has
failed this man."

They talked for 45 minutes, huddled around a coffee table in
Fielding's cluttered office. Nickerson, the former prosecutor, argued
that Prior posed no threat to society. Margulies talked about the
family's struggle with Alzheimer's. Zoss, now a federal judge,
acknowledged that the case haunted him.

Fielding listened silently, his eyes locked with each man who spoke.
Then he asked:

How did they know that, if released, Prior wouldn't tumble back into
drugs? How would he support himself? What message would clemency send
to law enforcement?

No, they said, Prior had beaten his addiction and stayed clean since
1995. A maintenance job awaited him. No, his release would not
undermine the law.

As they left the meeting, Fielding gripped Holiday's
arm.

"I want you to know, there's only one person on the face of this earth
who can do this: the president of the United States," he said.

Five days later, Holliday's phone rang again.

'Why are you calling me?' Prior was manning the prison store when his
name was called over the loudspeaker.

It can wait, he thought.

Minutes later, he heard his name again. Then the store phone rang. A
jail staff member answered, paused, and said, "Prior, get back to your
unit."

Fear crept into Prior's stomach as he crossed the grassy, sun-splashed
prison yard. At Greenville, urgent calls meant trouble: a family death
or an accident. His father, sick from Alzheimer's had worsened in
recent months.

The prison secretary, usually friendly, seemed tense as she ushered
Prior into a small prison office with a telephone. She dialed, but
could not connect. Frustrated, she tried again - still nothing. On the
third try, Holliday answered. The secretary turned and left.

Alone in the office, Prior heard Holliday's voice.

"Bob?" he said. "Why are you calling me?"

"Reed," Holliday said. "We got 'er done."

'You have to find a way through' Prior lives with his mother, Barb, a
retired school district administrator. He golfs at Waveland Golf
Course with friends. Margulies hired Prior full time to paint and
maintain the business properties he owns in Des Moines.

For the next 10 years, Prior will be on supervised release. He's
subject to drug testing at any moment. Every morning, he calls to his
parole officer. He cannot leave Iowa's southern judicial district
without written permission.

"You're confronted with something, and you have to find a way through
it," he said. "I did. I don't know if I can explain it to you any
other way."