4.2.12 WC: 191694 lawyers, the other two to be selected by the Arab League. I doubted that the Arab League would agree to have me participate in such a team, but he assured me that he would try to obtain their consent. That was the last I heard. I don’t know whether, in the end, I would have been willing to go to Cairo as part of such a defense team, but I certainly was tempted. I was less tempted by the offer made by Gaddafi’s Lybian lawyer. The Gaddafi offer was firm, accompanied by a signed formal retainer letter and contract. I have the contract in front of me as I write these words. It begins “In the Name of G-d, the most gracious, the most merciful. In G-d we trust.” In the end, I couldn’t agree to what they wanted me to do, and the issue became moot with the fall of the Gaddafi government and the assassination of Gaddafi. I was later asked whether I would consider representing his son in the International Criminal Court, but that issue too became moot when the rebels decided to try him in Libya. My final offer came from a deposed African head of state, accused of mass murder, who offered to pay me with gold bricks he had stolen from his country. Needless to say, I declined his offer, since the gold was not his to give. One American case I turned down grew out of a request from the author Norman Mailer that I represent Jack Henry Abbot. Mailer told me that he had urged the authorities to release Abbot, who was serving time for murder, because he had become a great writer while in prison. Abbot had written a memoir called “In The Belly of the Beast” that had become a best seller and had elicited excellent reviews. Mailer told me that he had succeeded in his efforts to have Abbot released, but that shortly after being set free, Abbot stabbed a waiter to death. Now he was facing a murder charge, and if convicted he would never again experience freedom, regardless of his writing skills. I agreed to visit Abbot on Rikers Island, where he was being held pending tria