The Hatch on the screen was confident and cocky.

This man is jittery and talks in hyperspeed, jumping from subject to subject. He's painfully aware that the length of time he has to speak - like most everything in his life these days - is entirely outside of his command.

Here at FCI Morgantown, the federal prison where Hatch, 45, has lived since late July, there's no respite from the rules. One hour, precisely, to talk face-to-face with a reporter (though he begged prison officials for more). Phone calls limited to 300 minutes a month.

But Hatch cannot leave. And on a very basic level, he cannot comprehend that he is here.

"I'm used to being able to understand how you get from point A to point B," he is saying, as we sit in a tiny glass-walled room off the cavernous visitor center. "This has been tough."

It's not unusual, of course, to find a prisoner who claims innocence, or a celebrity, fallen from grace, who seeks absolution. But tell people the bare outlines of Hatch's story - that he didn't pay taxes on his "Survivor" winnings - and you provoke a certain level of disbelief.

His million-dollar prize wasn't exactly a national secret. Taxes, we all know, are as inflexible as death. And for six years, Hatch has been cemented in the national consciousness as a master manipulator, a sharp and cunning snake. It says quite a bit about your public persona when you inspire less sympathy than the IRS.

Hatch counters, in essence, with two arguments.

The first is that he had legitimate questions about whether those taxes were owed, but always intended to find the answers and pay. The second is that his case never would have gone to court were it not for his "Survivor" fame. He believes he was targeted largely because of the character on TV, the naked, fat, gay mastermind. And he says he never imagined that the world created on that distant island would bleed so mercilessly into the real one. In fact, he declares in the prison conference room, "I am more naive than people realize."

To believe Hatch's version, in the wake of "Survivor," requires a leap of faith - an acceptance that a man who proved himself smart, in the most public forum possible, could approach the legal system with spectacular credulity. It requires a public recalibration of the entity we know as Richard Hatch.

Which is what Hatch says he now intends to do. "I'm doing my best," he wrote in one letter, "to expose you to the real me."

Ask Hatch who that real person is and he'll rattle off a list of character traits.

"I'm a good guy. I'm a really good guy," he says in the prison visiting room, then laughs at how piteous he sounds.

"I've lived a really good life, an ethical life. ... I enjoy conversation and intimate relationship, I don't drink. I don't smoke. I'm not into 'stuff.' Post 'Survivor' - whack! - who is this insane caricature?"