He offered advice or legal defense to such prominent figures as Charles Taylor, Slobodan Milošević, Saddam Hussein, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, and Lyndon LaRouche.

Clark's father served as United States Attorney General from 1945 to 1949 under President Harry S. Truman and then became a Supreme Court Justice in August 1949.

[7] Clark attended Woodrow Wilson High School in Washington, D.C., but dropped out at the age of 17 in order to join the United States Marine Corps, seeing action in Western Europe in the final months of World War II;[7] he served until 1946.

Clark was one of Johnson's popular and successful cabinet appointments, being described as "able, independent, liberal and soft-spoken" and a symbol of the New Frontier liberals;[1] he had also built a successful record, especially in his management of the Justice Department's Lands Division; he had increased the efficiency of his division and had saved enough money from his budget so that he had asked Congress to reduce the budget by $200,000 annually.

The elder Clark assumed senior status on June 12, 1967, effectively resigning from the Supreme Court and creating the vacancy Johnson apparently desired.

He: As attorney general during part of the Vietnam War, Clark oversaw the prosecution of the Boston Five for "conspiracy to aid and abet draft resistance."

Four of the five were convicted, including pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock and Yale chaplain William Sloane Coffin Jr.,[15] but in later years, Clark expressed his regret at the prosecution's victory: "We won the case, that was the worst part.

[15] In addition to his government work, during this period Clark was also director of the American Judicature Society (in 1963) and national president of the Federal Bar Association in 1964–65.

Senator from New York; he defeated the party's designee Lee Alexander in the primary, but lost in the general election to the incumbent Jacob Javits.

In the 1976 election, Clark again sought the Democratic nomination to represent New York in the Senate, but finished a distant third in the primary behind Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Congresswoman Bella Abzug.

[23][24] Defying a travel ban, Clark went to Tehran again in June 1980 to attend a conference on alleged U.S. interference in Iranian affairs, on which occasion he was granted admission.

[29] In September 1998, Clark led a delegation to Sudan to collect evidence in the aftermath of President Bill Clinton's bombing of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum the previous month as part of Operation Infinite Reach.

Upon returning to the U.S., the delegation held a press conference on September 22, 1998, to refute the U.S. State Department's claims that the facility had been producing VX nerve agent.

[32] In 2004, Clark joined a panel of about 20 Arab and one other non-Arab lawyers to defend Saddam Hussein in his trial before the Iraqi Special Tribunal.

[36] Hitchens continued to describe Clark in the following terms: "From bullying prosecutor he mutated into vagrant and floating defense counsel, offering himself to the génocideurs of Rwanda and to Slobodan Milošević, and using up the spare time in apologetics for North Korea.

"[42] In June 2006, Clark wrote an article criticizing U.S. foreign policy in general, containing a list of 17 U.S. "major aggressions" introduced by "Both branches of our One Party system, Democrat and Republican, favor the use of force to have their way.

"[a] He followed this by saying, "The United States government may have been able to outspend the Soviet Union into economic collapse in the Cold War arms race, injuring the entire planet in the process.

"[43] On September 1, 2007, in New York City, Clark called for detained Filipino Jose Maria Sison's release and pledged assistance by joining the latter's legal defense team headed by Jan Fermon.

Clark doubted Dutch authorities' "validity and competency", since the murder charges originated in the Philippines and had already been dismissed by the country's Supreme Court.

[59] On March 19, 2003, the New Jersey newspaper and website The Independent reported Clark's efforts to impeach Bush and others, prior to the start of the Iraq War.

"[68] Clark stated that by the time he decided to join Hussein's defense team, it was clear that "proceedings before the Iraqi Special Tribunal would corrupt justice both in fact and in appearance and create more hatred and rage in Iraq against the American occupation...affirmative measures must be taken to prevent prejudice from affecting the conduct of the case and the final judgment of the court...For there to be peace, the days of victor's justice must end.