Jonathan Fredman

January 6, 2014

Jonathan Fredman has held a number of legal and policy positions for the U.S. Government, including Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Special Programs, chief counsel to the Director of Central Intelligence Counterterrorist Center, counsel to the Directorate of Science and Technology, and Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence.  He has been the chief legal adviser and group manager for several additional components of the Agency.

Mr. Fredman provides guidance on intelligence operations, cybersecurity, technology, legal compliance, oversight, legislation, and investigations. His areas of responsibility include privacy and civil liberties, U.S.-E.U. data sharing agreements, foreign and transnational requirements relating to personal information and intellectual property, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and related U.S. and foreign legislation, U.S. and international economic sanctions and export controls, cyber law, science and technology policy, and public-private investment for next generation research and development. He has extensive expertise in the application of political risk assessment to the development and implementation of international initiatives, and in designing programs and policies to account for those political risks.

While at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, he was the senior U.S. Government official devoted solely to the development and oversight of U.S. covert action and special programs. He conducted policy development, program evaluation, and resource allocation activities as well as strategic operational planning, and resolved legal and legislative matters.

He has taught national security law, the law of foreign intelligence, and the law of counterterrorism, and has been published in the ABA National Security Law Report, Yale Law and Policy Review, and Studies in Intelligence.

Prior to entering government, Mr. Fredman was an attorney in private practice with the firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison in New York and Washington, and a law clerk for U.S. District Judge Charles M. Metzner of the Southern District of New York.

He graduated from Princeton University in 1979 magna cum laude with an A.B. in Public and International Affairs, and received his J.D. from Columbia Law School in 1983, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar.

Mr. Fredman is a recipient of the John A. McCone Award for Science and Technology, the George H.W. Bush Award for Excellence in Counterterrorism, the National Intelligence Exceptional Achievement Medal, and the Middle East Mission Manager Medallion.

He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

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Mr. Fredman has addressed audiences at Harvard Law School and the John F. Kennedy School of Government; Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs; Columbia Law School; Georgetown Law School and the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service; George Washington University, Elliott School of International Affairs; American University, School of International Service; Stanford University; University of Virginia Law School; University of Pennsylvania Law School; National Defense University; National War College; Army War College; Council on Foreign Relations; World Affairs Council; National Advocacy Center; and others.

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Mr. Fredman is the author of “Covert Action, Loss of Life, and the Prohibition on Assassination,” published in Studies in Intelligence, semi-annual unclassified edition, no. 1 (1997); “Intelligence Agencies, Law Enforcement, and the Prosecution Team,” published in the Yale Law and Policy Review, vol. 16, no. 2 (1998); and “Covert Action Policy and Procedure,” published in the American Bar Association National Security Law Report, vol. 31, nos. 3-4 (2009). He is the co-author, with Richard Morgan, of the chapter “The Law of Foreign and National Intelligence” in National Security Law and Policy (Carolina Academic Press, 2015).

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Memo to the Press: Just Shut Up About Jonathan Fredman

April 1, 2013

Memo to the Press: Just Shut Up About Jonathan Fredman. The quotation is apparently too sexy to resist—too sexy even to Google its speaker’s name before running with it. A single Google search would, after all, yield this article by Stuart Taylor Jr. inNational Journal—an article that should put any journalist on notice that the quotation by a career CIA lawyer named Jonathan Fredman is sketchy:

“It is basically subject to perception. If the detainee dies you’re doing it wrong.” This was perhaps the most chillingly outrageous, widely quoted statement by a government official to be aired by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., at hearings last summer and in the committee’s December 11 report on abuse of detainees by U.S. forces. But the quoted official, CIA lawyer Jonathan Fredman, told the committee on November 18 that he had made no such statement. In fact, Fredman added in a heretofore confidential, five-page memo, he had stressed at the 2002 meeting with interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility described in the Levin committee’s report, “Interrogation practices and legal guidance must not be based upon anyone’s subjective perception” (emphasis added) but rather upon “definitive and binding legal analysis.” Remarkably, the 18-page report issued by the committee (headed “Executive Summary”) does not mention Fredman’s vehement—and, in my view, quite plausible—denial of the horrifying words attributed to him in a document of debatable reliability that the report, and Levin, have treated as established fact.

Yet one by one, reputable journalists and scholars keep sticking Fredman’s quotation in their books and articles. Read more:  Memo to the Press: Just Shut Up About Jonathan Fredman

Covert Action Policy and Procedure

October 7, 2009

In Covert Action Policy and Procedure, Jonathan M. Fredman outlines the key features of covert action, its limitations, and successes.  Jonathan M. Fredman, “Covert Action Policy and Procedure,” ABA National Security Law Report, July-October 2009, Vol. 31, Nos. 3-4, pp. 6-9.

Princeton University Program in Law and Public Affairs

March 9, 2009

LAW IN THE PUBLIC SERVICE

PROTECTING THE NATIONAL SECURITY WHILE PRESERVING THE CONSTITUTION

March 9, 2009, by invitation only

The Program in Law and Public Affairs invites MPP/MPA (and Woodrow Wilson graduate) students to the next dinner in this year’s series, Law in the Public Interest: Not Just for Lawyers. This event is by invitation only.

Jonathan Fredman is responsible for policy development, program evaluation, and related activities on special programs for the Director of National Intelligence.  These include the development and oversight of U.S. special programs as well as strategic operational planning, resource requirements, and legal and legislative issues.

Mr. Fredman graduated from Princeton University in 1979 magna cum laude with an A.B. in Public and International Affairs, and received his J.D. from Columbia Law School in 1983, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar.  Prior to joining CIA, he was an attorney in private practice with the firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison in New York and Washington, and a law clerk for U.S. District Judge Charles M. Metzner of the Southern District of New York.  He is admitted to the bar in the District of Columbia and New York.


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