4.2.12 WC: 191694 imprisoned.” Several years later I was being interviewed on a television show and the host asked me what my biggest fee had been. He thought I would mention the Michael Milken or Leona Helmsley cases, but instead I said it was in the Sharansky case. He expressed surprise saying that he didn’t know Sharansky had any money. I said he did not but that when he put his arms around me and gave me that hug and whispered those words, that was the biggest fee I ever earned. Another “fee” for my work was the opportunity to speak in Carnegie Hall on behalf of Vaclav Havel and other dissident artists in 1991. Several Americans who had fought for the human rights of censored artists were invited to read from and discuss works banned by repressive regimes. I had been part of a team of lawyers assembled to help Havel and other Czeck dissidents get out of prison in the 1970s. The American readers included Garrison Keillor, Marvin Hamlisch, Peter Ustinov, William Warfield, Martin Garbus, and Maurice Sendak. I was honored to be included among them. My mother loved showing her friends the Carnegie Hall program, with my name listed as a “performer.” She would tell them a variation of the old joke: A man asks a musician carrying a violin case, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall? My mother’s answer: “Practice, practice, practice law, like my son.” My next encounter with Havel took place in Jerusalem during the celebration of Israel’s 60" birthday. Havel, Sharansky and I were on a panel together discussing human rights. When it was over we got onto the same elevator. Remarkably, Mickael Gorbachev was also on the elevator. (I knew it sounds like the beginning of a bad joke: “Havel, Sharansky, Gorbachev and Dershowitz get into an elevator.”) Gorbachev turned to me and said, “You're the big shot lawyer who tried to get these people out of prison. You did a good job, but I did a better job. I’m the one who got them out.” We all laughed and Havel turned to Gorbachev and asked,