In Pakistan alone we had recorded a minimum of 256 and up to 633 civilian casualties across those years, with 2009 being the highest year for civilian deaths from CIA drone strikes.

“Trump revoked a transparency order that provided an imperfect but still important official record of deaths caused by the military and, critically, the CIA,” Hina Shamsi, the director of the National Security Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, said.

“This decision will hide from the public the government’s own tally of the total number of deaths it causes every year in its lethal force program,” Shamsi added.

President Trump’s Executive Order yesterday cited a law enacted by Congress that required civilian deaths to be reported annually by the Pentagon, saying that the Obama-era rule amounted to “superfluous reporting requirements, requirements that do not improve government transparency, but rather distract our intelligence professionals from their primary mission". The law however does not apply to CIA strikes.

Columbia's Moorehead told the Bureau: “The Trump administration has already put civilians at greater risk by loosening limited policy constraints. Congressional action to scrutinise meaningfully the Trump administration’s use of military force and legislate for greater transparency is now more important than ever.”



Gibson from Reprieve called for the UK to apply pressure for more transparency: “As President Trump scraps more and more Obama-era safeguards, questions urgently need to be answered around just what role the UK plays in its intelligence sharing for the programme.... US drones have already killed thousands of civilians, and unless complicit governments like the UK stand up to President Trump and urge him to be more transparent, who knows how many more innocent people will die.”