President Donald Trump signed a new executive order Wednesday revoking an Obama-era one which required that U.S. intelligence officials publicly disclosed the number of civilians killed in U.S. airstrikes against terrorist targets “outside areas of active hostilities.”
The move raises questions about the level of transparency regarding how the U.S. conducts counterterrorism operations and the matter remains unclear as the spokesperson for the National Security Council declined to clarify when asked for information.
Under the Obama mandate, intelligence officials had to provide an “unclassified summary of the number of strikes” and “assessments of combatant and non-combatant deaths resulting from those strikes”; President Trump’s order lifts that mandate.
CNN informs that the latest report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released in January 2017 said 54 airstrikes were conducted outside of Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan during 2016, which resulted in one civilian death.
However, regardless of Wednesday’s order, the secretary of defense will continue issuing their report on civilian deaths as it falls under congressional oversight.
“The 2018 National Defense Authorization Act requires the Department of Defense to submit a report on civilian casualties caused as a result of U.S. military operations,” Pentagon spokesperson Commander Candice Tresch noted.
The White House stressed Wednesday that the executive order was not an attempt to decrease transparency about casualties resulting from U.S. strikes.
“The United States Government is fully committed to complying with its obligations under the law of armed conflict, minimizing, to the greatest extent possible, civilian causalities, and acknowledging responsibility when they, unfortunately, occur during military operations,” a National Security Council spokesperson said in a statement.
The move is aimed at eliminating “superfluous reporting requirements,” the spokesperson added. “This action eliminates superfluous reporting requirements, requirements that do not improve government transparency, but rather distract our intelligence professionals from their primary mission.”
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