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, and Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence.
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.
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 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.
Mr. Fredman is a recipient of the George H.W. Bush Award for Excellence in Counterterrorism, the John A. McCone Award, 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; 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).
----
From the National Journal:
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. Read more
