The two men have been very intimate and reliable friends throughout their lives.

For most of their lives, the two men had shared confidences, swapped advice and supported each other’s ambitions. The dozens of letters that Justice Blackmun saved document a relationship of sometimes startling intimacy.

Gaddafi, born in 1942, made headlines six years ago when he agreed to surrender the two Libyan suspects in the 1988 bombing of an American jumbo jet over Lockerbie in southern Scotland in which 270 people died.