Terror Case Has Lawyer With Several Distinctions

By BENJAMIN WEISER
FEB. 21, 2014

When the terrorism trial of Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, a son-in-law of Osama bin Laden, begins next month in Manhattan, his defense team will include one lawyer with a particularly interesting background.

Zoë J. Dolan is proficient in Arabic, has lived in the Middle East and is the only member of the defense team with a government security clearance, entitling her to review classified discovery materials in the case and attend classified hearings.

But Ms. Dolan, 36, has another distinguishing attribute: She is transgender, an aspect of her personal life that she says she has not raised with Mr. Abu Ghaith or any other client.

“I think my clients in criminal cases just want the best lawyer for their case,” Ms. Dolan said in an interview. “It doesn’t matter whether that person is a man, woman or an alien.”

She declined to discuss any aspect of Mr. Abu Ghaith’s case.

Ms. Dolan, who has a criminal and civil practice in New York and Los Angeles, has not hidden her gender transition from friends, relatives and colleagues.

She raised it in an interview last year with a women’s empowerment website, which she links to on her own site, and she has mentioned it in applications to join panels from which lawyers are drawn to represent indigent defendants. She also noted it a few years ago while representing a terrorism defendant in Brooklyn, during interviews for her security clearance.

“It occurred to me in the process,” she said, “that they might be concerned that if I had a secret it would render me susceptible to improper foreign influence — in other words, that I could be blackmailed.”

Ms. Dolan said she was relieved to find that her “relationships with other lawyers, referrals and career development all seemed unaffected” by her decision to disclose her background.

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