transparency: as the European Court of Human Rights explained, “[t]here must be a sufficient element of public scrutiny of the investigation or its results to secure accountability in practice as well as in theory, maintain public confidence in the authorities’ adherence to the rule of law and prevent any appearance of collusion in or tolerance of unlawful acts.”684 By failing to account adequately for their activities in any public forum and even refusing to acknowledge publicly the existence of targeted killing operations for years or to explain sufficiently their legal basis, the US has failed to meet its international legal obligations to ensure transparency and accountability. In addition, while Article 51 of Partial and selective leaks to the U.N. Charter, which the journalists and vague invocations of US has implicitly invoked to legal doctrine in talks in public fora justify strikes, requires that “measures taken by Members are poor substitutes for proper in the exercise of [their] right transparency and oversight. to self-defense . . . be immediately reported to the Security Council,”685 the US has yet to make such a report. Recent public disclosures and the occasional willingness by public officials to discuss the program publicly is welcome progress, but more is still required. Partial and selective leaks to journalists and vague invocations of legal doctrine in talks in public fora are poor substitutes for proper transparency and oversight. Officials boast of the rigor of internal oversight mechanisms and decision-making processes,686 but, as former U.N. Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Professor Philip Alston concluded: Assertions by Obama administration officials, as well as by scholars, that these operations comply with international standards are undermined by the total absence of any forms of credible transparency or verifiable accountability. The CIA’s internal control mechanisms, including the Inspector-General, have had no discernible impact; executive control mechanisms have either not been activated at all or have ignored the issue; congressional oversight has given a ‘free pass’ to
Anguelova v. Bulgaria, 38 Euro. Ct. H.R. 31, ¶ 140 (2002) (cited in Alston, supra note 677, at 23). UN Charter art. 51. 686 See, e.g., Brennan, supra note 600 (“[T]he United States government has never been so open regarding its counterterrorism policies and legal justification.”); Preston, supra note 600. 684 685
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