lawyers, the other two to be selected by the Arab League. I doubted that the Arab League would

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 trial. I was allowed to meet with him in a private lawyer’s conference room, with guards standing outside. We began to talk and I became increasingly skeptical of the media story that Mailer had secured his release. I had his prison record in front of me and as I perused it, the thought occurred to me that perhaps Abbot had earned his freedom by informing on other prisoners. I made the mistake of asking Abbot whether he was a “snitch.” Upon hearing that word, he leaped over the table and grabbed me around the neck. The guards quickly rescued me from his clutches. The last words he heard me say as I left the room were “No way I’m becoming your lawyer.” 226 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017313