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.
—-
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.
—-
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).
Jonathan Fredman 