This is an extraordinary documentary that unfolds like a mystery novel, a mystery about how a brilliant lawyer who speaks impeccable French and fought for France under DeGaulle became the attorney for many of the top terrorists and reprehensible figures of our time. It is also a mystery about the attraction to terrorism, and a mystery about what this lawyer, Jacques Verges -- infamous in France -- did when he went missing for eight years in the 1970s.

Was he, during that time, working for the French secret service, the Stasi, the most extreme Palestinian terrorists, Pol Pot, Carlos the Jackal?

In the end, we are still left pondering the question.

The dapper Verges, speaking in precise upper-class French, usually with an unlit cigar in his hand, weaves together the riveting story of his life (without disclosing the nature of his missing years) with a combination of graciousness, smugness, arrogance, charm, and lucid explanation. But, of course, it is his perspective that he is offering as the lawyer for himself before the cameras of famed French filmmaker Barbet Schroeder.

Schroeder intersperses Verges's first person account of his life (born of a Vietnamese mother and French father and raised on the French island of Reunion as a Communist) with captivating recollections from former terrorists about their interaction and knowledge of Verges, so as to offer a counterbalance to a riveting but self-serving memoir.

Verges's roots as an "advocate for terrorists" started with the Algerian independence movement and his defense of their most noted symbol and heroine, Djamila Bouhired, who blew up a French cafe in Algiers (as depicted in the film "Battle of Algiers"). She was caught, tortured and sentenced to death, but Verges launched what became known as a "rupture defense" (basically that the French courts had no jurisdiction over his defendants) and an international campaign that saved her life. Eventually, he married Bouhired and fathered two children with her before abandoning his family to join one or another terrorist networks -- as a presumed strategist, only to resurface as a lawyer for the most infamous terrorists eight years later. Carlos, Klaus Barbie, and the Baader-Meinhof gang were among his clients.