Silberman, Pace among 6 to get Presidential Medal of Freedom

Also receiving the award are educator Donna E. Shalala, president of the University of Miami; doctors Anthony S. Fauci, a leader in the understanding and treatment of HIV/AIDS, and Benjamin S. Carson, a renowned neurosurgeon; and, posthumously, Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Burlingame), the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress and a longtime leader on human rights issues, the White House announced Wednesday.

The medal, which is awarded by presidential directive and does not require congressional approval, honors "especially meritorious" contributions to U.S. security, world peace or "cultural or other significant public or private endeavors." The presentation ceremony will be held June 19 at the White House.

In choosing Silberman and Pace, Bush is focusing attention on two figures closely identified with the central elements of his national security policy, the campaign against terrorism and the war in Iraq.

Silberman was on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, considered the second-most powerful court in the country, from 1985 to 2000 and was among the first judges to serve, in 2002, on the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. In 2004, he and former Sen. Charles S. Robb of Virginia headed a White House commission that investigated pre-Iraq war intelligence failures.

At the time, Herman Schwartz, an outspoken liberal law professor at American University in Washington, described Silberman as "fiercely partisan, pugnacious and very political."

The panel produced a report that sharply criticized intelligence failures before the war and found that more than three years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies remained poorly coordinated and resisted reform.

At least two of Silberman's former law clerks have gone on to establish themselves as key Bush administration allies in the national security arena: Viet D. Dinh, chief author of the USA Patriot Act, passed after the Sept. 11 attacks, and John C. Yoo, who as deputy assistant attorney general wrote a memorandum in 2002 widely viewed as permitting torture in the fight against terrorism.