Lawfareblog.com Can't Stop Talking About Jonathan Fredman

In late March, a ferociously detailed discussion of national security legal matters involving an episode in the career of CIA lawyer Jonathan Fredman surfaced at the excellent lawfareblog.com. The storm of security/law argumentation broke out on March 31 when blog co-founder and editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes published a post titled, "Memo to the Press: Just Shut Up About Jonathan Fredman," about a quote attributed to Fredman.

Wittes is a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, where he co-directs the Harvard Law School-Brookings Project on Law and Security. Wittes tracks the circuitous trail of the quote through books and publications. Journalists quote without checking whether it's accurate. Wittes' post even contains a Princeton angle, probably of interest mostly to obsessive trackers of the boldfaced names in the Class Notes of the Princeton Alumni Weekly. Wittes refers to Pulitzer Prize-winner Barton Gellman '82's book, "Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency." Wittes writes,

A number of writers have, when confronted with the reality of the quotation, recanted. Barton Gellman, for example, included the quotation in the hardcover edition of his justly famed book about Vice President Cheney. He later wrote:

I have come to believe I did an injustice to Jonathan Fredman, a senior lawyer for the CIA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence. On p. 187 I quoted an infamous line he is said to have delivered at Guantanamo Bay (“if the detainee dies, you’re doing it wrong”), the source of which was an unsigned memo released by the Senate Armed Service Committee. Upon closer inspection and further reporting, I have lost confidence in this document, which purports to be minutes of a meeting Fredman attended but plainly departs from verbatim quotation. I have removed the reference to this alleged quotation in the paperback, with an explanation in the chapter notes. 

Yet, no matter how many writers fix their error, the quotation keeps showing up.

The post sparked responses from a journalist and a lawyer involved national security matters, with commentary from Wittes. Readers can find the entire discussion at lawfareblog.com, all of which is impossible for a layman to summarize in any coherent or accurate way. The blog is worth checking to see if the volleys of perspectives continue.