Court of Appeals Judge Silberman Receives Presidential Medal of Freedom

He may not know why he was given the highest honor a civilian can receive, but Judge Laurence Silberman, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, says he’s thrilled to have it.

During the presentation of six Presidential Medals of Freedom, held at the White House on Thursday evening, President Bush applauded Silberman as a “guardian of the Constitution.” Silberman co-chaired a commission that investigated the intelligence community's claims about Iraq's weapons programs before the war began in 2003.

“I really don’t know why I received it, other than what the president said,” Silberman told Legal Times from his car as he was leaving a speaking engagement. “I didn’t fight in Iraq or anything. I’m only a judge.”

Silberman says he got a call from the White House telling him that he was chosen to receive the Medal of Freedom while he was attending a judicial conference in Farmington, Pa. earlier this month.

“I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it,” he says. “I guess I’ll have it framed, but I really haven’t thought about it. All I can say is that I am thrilled to have been selected.”

Silberman received the award alongside retired Marine Gen. Peter Pace, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff until June 2007; former Clinton administration official Donna Shalala; Benjamin Carson, director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Children's Center in Baltimore; Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), the only Holocaust survivor ever to be elected to Congress, received the award posthumously.

Some past Medal of Freedom recipients, such as former CIA director George Tenet, have been criticized for their role in the lead up to the War in Iraq.

Silberman declined to comment on past recipients, saying only “I’m honored to receive it with the group of people I did.”

Comments

[DCLawyer]

The above comments are nonsensical.

Judge Silberman has served his country in numerous capacities, not least of which was his co-chairing the Robb-Silberman Commission on intelligence and WMD report (see: http://www.wmd.gov/report/report.html).

If the above comments are true, how did Secretary Shalala (Clinton administration HHS Secretary) serve Republican administrations? Was she a mole?

We could really use less of this conspiracy theorizing here and elsewhere.

[Publius]

Silberman received the award because he is the godfather of the Administration's unprecedented, sweeping assertions of Executive Power. He stays in the shadows, but the likes of John Yoo (Silberman's former clerk), David Addington, et al all got their strategic direction from Silberman. Whether it's the president's supposed power to ignore the law on torture, to engage in warrantless surveillance in contravention of FISA, or to issue signing statements negating key parts of laws he signs, Silberman is the intellectual author of these dangerous and unAmerican pretentions to monarchical powers. Heck, he even testified that FISA was an unconstitutional constraint on presidential perogatives back in the 1970s, so his antipathy to any law that serves as a check on the executive has been longstanding. Legal Times and the rest of the media have simply not looked.

[C. W.]

We all know why he got it, he's been subservient to Republican presidents since meeting with representatives of Iran on behalf of Reagan (behind Jimmy Carter's back.)