In 2021, investigative reporter Azmat Khan published The Civilian Casualty Files in The New York Times, a multi-part investigation into the civilian casualties from America’s air wars across the Middle East. With legal support from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Khan obtained more than 1,300 of the military’s own internal reviews into allegations of civilian casualties in Iraq and Syria. The investigation, which was also based on ground reporting at the sites of 100 civilian casualty incidents in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan and scores of interviews, revealed how American wars of ‘precision strikes’ were systematically marred by flawed intelligence, faulty targeting and scant accountability. Hear from Azmat and RCFP senior staff attorney Adam Marshall about the investigation and how to obtain public records from the Pentagon.
Azmat Khan is an award-winning investigative reporter writing for the New York Times Magazine, a Carnegie Fellow, and the Patti Cadby Birch Assistant Professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, where she is also the inaugural Director of the newly established Simon and June Li Center for Global Journalism. Her investigations have exposed major myths of war, prompting widespread policy impact from Washington to Kabul. She's also a co-founder of the Gumshoe Group.
Adam A. Marshall is a senior staff attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. His work includes litigation in federal and state courts and training journalists on government transparency. Adam is the co-author of chapters in Troubling Transparency, and COVID-19: The Legal Challenges. Adam is a recipient of the President’s Volunteer Service Award and the GW Law Pro Bono Service Recognition Award. In 2017, he was named to the Forbes “30 Under 30: Media” list for his work promoting government transparency, including the development of the FOIA Wiki. You can find Adam on Twitter (@a_marshall_plan).
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