Jonathan Fredman

Former Chief Counsel to the Director of Central Intelligence’s Counterterrorist Center, Central Intelligence Agency

Former Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Special Programs 

Jonathan Fredman held numerous leadership positions at the Central Intelligence Agency during his 36-year career, including Chief Counsel, Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Counterterrorist Center; Chief Counsel, DCI Counterintelligence Center; Counsel for Operations, CIA Directorate of Science and Technology; and Chief Counsel for several additional CIA divisions and mission centers.  He also served as Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Special Programs at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and as Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence. 

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

From 2005-2010 he was Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence. In that position, 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.

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

He is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Princeton University School of Public and International Affairs, and previously served as adjunct faculty at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he taught national security law, foreign intelligence, and the law of counterterrorism.  He has been published in the Yale Law and Policy Review, the ABA National Security Law Report, and Studies in Intelligence, and co-authored the chapter on foreign and national intelligence in a legal casebook for the Carolina Academic Press.

Mr. Fredman graduated from Princeton University magna cum laude in Public and International Affairs, and from Columbia Law School, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar.  He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.