In 1997 I took Nizar Hamdoun, the Iraqi ambassador to the U.N., and his family to a New York Giants football game with an ulterior motive. I had come up with a perfect scheme to defuse the threat of war between the U.S. and the regimes of Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il. The North Koreans would come clean about whether they had live American POWs left over from the Korean War, and if they had live Americans they'd hand them over to the Iraqis in exchange for oil, which Pyongyang desperately needed because they were under embargo. The Iraqis would do a favor for America by helping Americans held captive for decades in North Korea to finally return home to their families. Nobody in the Clinton Administration liked my plan, and Hamdoun backed away from it. But not before the ambassador and I discussed every detail while watching our daughters practice karate together every week in Hackensack. We also got a football signed by the Giants sent to Saddam.