President Donald Trump revoked an Obama-era executive order last week that required intelligence officials to report on the number of civilians killed by drone strikes outside of war zones.
Before Trump's order, then President Barack Obama's directive and the National Defense Authorization Act required both the Department of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence to give an annual report detailing the number of military and civilian casualties caused by drone strikes. Trump’s executive order makes it so the CIA, the only intelligence agency to conduct overseas drone strikes, no longer needs to report on the casualties of drone strikes outside of conventional war zones like Pakistan.
The National Security Council said in a statement that Obama’s directive resulted in “superfluous reporting requirements, requirements that do not improve government transparency.”
“It’s really concerning. I think this idea that we should be accounting for civilians that are killed by our military operations is really important,” said WGBH News Analyst and CEO of the GroundTruth Project Charlie Sennott in an interview with Boston Public Radio on Monday.
Sennott pointed out that while Obama was heavily criticized for his use of drones during his administration, Obama left office with a system of accountability in place. “I’m really concerned about stripping that away,” Sennott said.
Sennott said he did not understand the motivation behind Trump’s executive order, calling it “bad policy.”
“It’s not going to help us be effective in the regions where we want to exert power in a productive way and I am hoping there will be real pressure and pushback from Congress on this,” he said.