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The Civilian Casualties of America’s Air Wars

Why is the death toll of U.S. strikes so staggeringly high?

michael barbaro

From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily.

[music]

basim razzo

I woke up. I looked, and I can see the sky above me. The ceiling has fell off my room.

michael barbaro

Four years ago —

basim razzo

When I started calling my wife and my daughter, no answer.

michael barbaro

— my colleague, Azmat Khan, told us the story of Basim Razzo, an Iraqi civilian whose home was targeted by a U.S. airstrike that killed his entire family.

basim razzo

The precision of the bombing is unmistakable. I mean, two missile strikes — one on my brother’s house and one on my house.

michael barbaro

In the process, Azmat revealed that the American air war against ISIS, which the U.S. describes as the most precise in history, was resulting in a staggering number of civilian deaths.

basim razzo

So how could this be a mistake?

michael barbaro

And she discovered that the U.S. left behind a paper trail that documented those civilian deaths. Today, Azmat returns to describe exactly what that paper trail revealed.

It’s Tuesday, January 18.

So there aren’t that many colleagues of ours whose appearance on the show happened once every four years, and you’re one of them. And the first phase of your reporting occurred back in 2017. So tell us what you have been up to since and about this second phase of your reporting.

azmat khan

Right so the last time we spoke, I had just finished this ground investigation into 100 airstrikes in Iraq, where I discovered that the actual rate of civilian casualties were much, much higher than what the U.S. was claiming.

michael barbaro

And remind us, what was the actual civilian casualty toll?

azmat khan

So one in five strikes was resulting in a civilian death, a rate that was 31 times higher than what the military claimed.

michael barbaro

Hmm.

azmat khan

And as part of that reporting, I found a way to get the military’s own accounting of this air war, these documents called civilian casualty assessments.

michael barbaro

And what are those assessments? Describe those.

azmat khan

So basically, the military creates these reports in response to every claim of a civilian casualty. It’s their explanation of what happened and of the military’s own effort to hold itself to account. So thousands of these reports have been written, but only a handful have ever been released. So when I got the report from the incident involving Basim Razzo, who survived an airstrike that killed his family, it was really devastating and also so revealing of the kind of intelligence failures that occur.

michael barbaro

Mm-hmm.

azmat khan

And so from this document, I had this small window into how the military sees its own air campaign, how it holds itself to account. And I thought, maybe if I could get more of these reports, and if I could study all of them together, maybe I could start to see patterns. Maybe I could start to understand why the air war was so often killing civilians, why this number was 31 times higher.

michael barbaro

Mm-hmm.

azmat khan

So I started filing requests for every single one of those reports.

[music]

michael barbaro

And when you say, “every single one of them,” how many are there?

azmat khan

To date, the U.S military has conducted more than 2,800 of these assessments.

michael barbaro

Wow.

azmat khan

And to get them is actually pretty difficult, because these assessments that I wanted, they won’t be declassified, most of them, say, until 20 years after the date they were produced. But I had an idea.

So when I had filed that Freedom of Information Act request to get Basim’s assessment, I’d included something that Basim had told me. He said the fact that the American military had targeted his home so precisely would make others — for example, law enforcement, rogue security forces, militias — make them think that he was ISIS. And now, because that strike had targeted him and killed his family, he had become a target.

michael barbaro

Right, because people assume that the U.S. doesn’t make mistakes. If it’s targeting someone who it says is an ISIS, the assumption is that they are ISIS.

azmat khan

Exactly. And so when I made that Freedom of Information Act request, I argued that the U.S. should process this quickly, far more quickly than they ordinarily would, because Basim was in immediate danger. And these documents would help prove that he wasn’t actually ISIS. Then in Basim’s case, it — it worked. It only took a few months, like four months, for me to receive those records.

michael barbaro

Huh.

azmat khan

So I decided to apply that same argument to all of these other cases, all of these other reports that had been conducted, because I knew that if Basim was in danger because of these attacks, so, potentially, were these other survivors and victims and family members of those killed.

michael barbaro

And did that work?

azmat khan

Not initially. At first, U.S. Central Command denied expedited processing. But I wound up filing a lawsuit against CENTCOM and the Pentagon. And as a result of that lawsuit, almost every month or every other month, I’ve been getting batches of documents that really detail what the coalition has examined. Some are shorter than Basim. Some are longer than Basim’s. So to date, I’ve received more than 5,400 pages of these kinds of records for around 1,300 incidents.

michael barbaro

Hmm, OK. And what do you do once you obtain these 1,300 assessments?

azmat khan

Yeah, I started to go through them to really understand patterns, not just what these show, but what the military was aware of. And then to compare them, in particular, for instances where I’d been to a site on the ground. What did I learn on the ground that might be different from the military’s own understanding? And that allowed me to see its shortcomings.

michael barbaro

Mm-hmm.

azmat khan

So sometimes they proceeded with a strike, even though they knew civilians would be killed. And that’s because they had determined it proportional to the military advantage they might gain from that strike.

michael barbaro

Right, that this is the horrible reality of war.

azmat khan

Exactly. But often, I was seeing that these weren’t just instances where they knew civilians would be harmed and considered it proportional. Oftentimes, they were completely unaware of it. Many times, they had anticipated no civilian deaths or had not detected the presence of civilians in the area before they struck. And once I started to get these assessments and really look at them, I had a much better understanding of why civilian casualties were happening and why the military was unaware of them beforehand.

michael barbaro

Mm-hmm. And what is that reason or reasons that you could find once you had these documents?

azmat khan

I found several reasons. One really important one was misidentification, this idea that their intelligence led them to target something that they believed to be ISIS. But, in fact, it was a civilian or a civilian home. Often, they were perceiving hostile intent from just ordinary actions and behaviors. So an ISIS headquarters was actually the home of civilians, or males on five motorcycles driving quickly and in formation displaying the signature of an imminent attack were actually just guys on motorbikes.

I’ve actually talked to military sources who describe this as confirmation bias, which is the tendency to search for and interpret information in a way that confirms your pre-existing beliefs. So if you’re looking for an enemy, you’ll likely see an enemy, even when you’re presented with evidence otherwise.

[music]

You know, in one case, they had a tip about an ISIS explosives factory near Raqqa. And they watched this compound, where they saw what they assessed to be white bags of ammonium nitrate. And they followed these cars that left the facility. And when they hit one of them, they watched a secondary explosion from that car, which suggested to them there had been explosives in the car, which then allowed them to strike the building that they thought was an explosives factory.

And not long afterwards, these claims surface online that a cotton gin was targeted. And so they reevaluate their intelligence. They look at this facility, and the review calls into question almost all of the assessments they made.

Those white bags of ammonium nitrate were most likely bags of cotton.

michael barbaro

Hmm.

azmat khan

The secondary explosion, upon further review, there actually wasn’t one. They said it, quote, “reflected effects in a manner that gave the appearance of secondary effects.” So again and again, you saw these instances in which they had utter confidence, according to their earlier intelligence, but upon further review, realized that a lot of those were completely misidentifying what they wound up targeting.

michael barbaro

So it sounds like in a case like that, once the U.S. military comes to believe that it’s dealing with an ISIS fighter or an ISIS location, they start to see everything through that prism, and the suspicion grows. And the original error is never corrected. In fact, it’s just compounded.

azmat khan

Exactly. It’s really hard to unsee someone or something as a target, even when you’re presented with evidence otherwise.

michael barbaro

OK, and so what’s the next category of reasons why these civilian deaths are occurring at such high rates?

azmat khan

The second category is failing to even know that civilians existed in that area that they wanted to bomb.

[music]

Often, I found it was because the footage they relied on — these collateral scans taken by drones, was sometimes just seconds or minutes long, not nearly enough to truly know whether civilians were there. Or the quality of that footage was low.

michael barbaro

Mm-hmm.

azmat khan

One case that just really stood out to me was this November 2015 airstrike in Ramadi, where they were watching what they had assessed to be a defensive fighting position. And they saw a man drag a, quote, “unknown heavy object into that building.”

And they carried out an airstrike against that building, and only later did someone looking at the footage on a bigger screen TV identified that that unknown object wasn’t an object. It was a person, and the way they characterized it was a person of small stature, consistent with how a child would appear standing next to an adult.

michael barbaro

Hmm, so that object was a child?

azmat khan

Yes.

michael barbaro

So part of what you’re finding is that the most advanced military in the world is basing decisions to launch airstrikes on what seems like some pretty crappy quality video.

azmat khan

Right. It’s not always the case that they have that high quality video. Sometimes it was pretty poor.

michael barbaro

OK, so what was another pattern that you saw in these assessments?

azmat khan

So another category was just rushing to carry out these strikes. So as an example, sometimes they would prep targets in advance, and they would look for targets, and then put them aside, like basically wait to carry them out until a more strategically opportune moment. But when they finally do carry out those strikes later, their intel is out of date and inaccurate.

Before an offensive to retake a part of Syria known as Tabqa, they pulled up these previously vetted targets. And they greenlit them in rapid succession without really reevaluating whether these targets, which were based on months-old intelligence, were now functioning in some other manner — for example, were now being used by civilians.

So in the case of those Tabqa strikes, they concluded that there were all of these different problems with the intelligence and that, as a result, they believed 10 civilians had been killed.

michael barbaro

You had mentioned that these assessments serve two purposes — to review an incident, but also to provide some framework for the military holding itself accountable. Did you find any evidence that there were repercussions for the incidents that you just described and for the people who carried them out?

azmat khan

So in not one of these 1,300 assessments was there a finding of wrongdoing or of disciplinary action for the particular people involved in carrying it out. But not only that — they weren’t really doing what I was doing, which was to look at all of these assessments in aggregate, to study them, to try to find patterns, lessons, recommendations in totality — basically, an effort to prevent these recurring problems from happening again and again.

michael barbaro

And also, what did the U.S. military say when, after all this review of these documents, you brought them your reporting and basically told them what was in their own assessments about civilian deaths?

azmat khan

The military told me that they regret each loss of civilian life and that they work diligently to avoid this kind of harm.

[music]

But I didn’t see that level of commitment in the documents, and I definitely didn’t see it when I investigated these cases on the ground.

michael barbaro

We’ll be right back.

So describe this reporting that you do on the ground that is raising so many questions about whether the U.S. really is committed to preventing civilian deaths.

azmat khan

So it’s always been important for me to investigate these types of incidents on the ground, but in this case especially, because I have all of these documents with details about how the military determined that this was a valid target and what they believe went wrong. I have the opportunity to actually assess the assessments, to get a truer accounting of what went wrong and why.

So over the course of years, I visited more than 100 civilian casualty strike sites in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. And for those credible cases, where I have these documents, I had to have a very rigorous methodology to match that incident to the document to make sure the place I’m in actually corresponds to the incident being described in the military’s assessment.

[music]

So I would arrive at the coordinate where the strike allegedly took place.

And sometimes I would walk into a corner store or a local market —

azmat khan

So this airstrike on a flower mill —

azmat khan

— and ask if there were any airstrikes in that area.

azmat khan

What happened in that event?

azmat khan

Sometimes I would knock on a door.

azmat khan

You can just tell him we’re journalists, and we heard about what happened to your daughter, and we’re trying to understand that and document what happened in the incident.

azmat khan

And go precisely, if it was a house, where it took place.

azmat khan

What was the airstrike targeting? What was it — what did it hit?

azmat khan

You know, I would ask someone in that house, was there an airstrike here?

azmat khan

So that house fell on this house?

speaker

[SPEAKING ARABIC]

azmat khan

And I had to be really careful not to lead with information that other people might just agree to or say they remembered, to really vet and verify that, because sometimes people might feel incentivized to just confirm what you’re asking about, to say that they saw something, because you’re a foreign journalist. And there’s sometimes a perception that aid can come their way or that talking to you or saying that they’re a survivor of an airstrike may result in a payment.

azmat khan

I’m so sorry for your loss. [INAUDIBLE], so I can only report out what happened.

azmat khan

Sometimes people are just confused, so you want to be able to seek out the most reliable information, and you want to interview the people, the sources with the best eyewitness testimony, with the best direct experience.

michael barbaro

And did these people you spoke with have any theories about why they had been targeted?

azmat khan

I mean, sometimes people were completely confused as to why an airstrike hit that location. They didn’t see an ISIS target nearby. And they were really struggling to comprehend that. Sometimes they understood that there had been an ISIS member nearby. Most of the time, people really just wanted someone to listen to their stories, to hear what they’d suffered, what they’d experienced, what it meant to lose someone they loved or to be permanently disabled. And I think the one incident I remember most is an interview in West Mosul.

[music]

So I had this document that described an ISIS bed down location, this place where ISIS fighters were apparently sleeping in this village known as Al Tanak. And in the document, they describe having determined that this was exclusively used by ISIS. And before carrying out the strike, they were observing this house exclusively used by ISIS, and then they see something they don’t expect — three children on the roof.

Now, this directly challenges their assessment that this was exclusively used by ISIS. So they return this targeting package back to the team to reassess it, and they look at it. And they now up the numbers — their estimate of how many civilian casualties there will be.

And they say, three people might die. And they go back, and they look at this target, and now they don’t just see it as a place for ISIS fighters sleep. They see it as a weapons manufacturing facility, and it’s because of something that is redacted, coming from the target.

Now, I don’t know what that is, but I really wanted to understand, what made them so confident to wind up targeting that facility after having seen three children?

michael barbaro

Right.

azmat khan

So I go to the site, and I ask around, and people very quickly identify this as the location of where the strike happened. And people tell me that there was a family, all of whom were killed, except for one little girl, who survived. And that next door, a few people were injured, including another little girl, who was permanently disabled. And after talking to that family with those injuries, I ask about the one little girl who survived from the family in the home that was targeted. And they told me that she’s now living with her grandmother.

azmat khan

[SPEAKING ARABIC]

azmat khan

And eventually, I get to that grandmother’s house, a woman named Katbeeah Ahmed.

katbeeah ahmed

[SPEAKING ARABIC]

azmat khan

That’s OK. I’m OK.

momen

[SPEAKING ARABIC].

azmat khan

Thank you very much.

azmat khan

And she just invites me and my translator Momen in. She’s really warm and inviting.

azmat khan

First of all, I’m a journalist, and I’m trying to understand what happened —

azmat khan

And I started the interview in the way that I normally do, just telling her that I was a journalist trying to understand what happened in incidents that harmed civilians.

azmat khan

I want to ask you some questions about it, but if anything I’m asking is hurting you or it’s difficult for children to hear, I don’t have to ask, and you’re welcome to say, no, I don’t want to answer that at any time.

momen

[SPEAKING ARABIC]

azmat khan

And she smiled, and she said, ask whatever you want. So we had a conversation, where she told me about her brother, whose house this was, and how her brother’s son was married to her daughter. And so she lost more than just her brother. She lost her daughter, who was her best friend.

momen

She was my life. She was my oldest daughter. She was not only my daughter. She was my friend, my everything.

azmat khan

She lost grandchildren and nephews and nieces, and that after the bombing, neighbors heard what they thought was the sound of a cat screaming. And when they lifted the blocks, they found Rahaf, the one little girl who survived. She told me that she’d taken in her granddaughter.

momen

So I told her — [SPEAKING ARABIC]

katbeeah ahmed

[SPEAKING ARABIC]

momen

I told her how I am your mom.

katbeeah ahmed

[SPEAKING ARABIC]

momen

I just wanted to let her know that, because I have other daughters, so she was just like my other girls. So I was as a mom for her. I still am. She calls me mom, and she calls [INAUDIBLE] Dad.

azmat khan

She told me that the family was poor, that they had been planning to come to her house for a meal that night, because they often could barely afford to eat. And she said — I’ll never forget this.

momen

At that day, they didn’t even have dinner. They died without eating.

azmat khan

She said they died without eating dinner.

azmat khan

I’m just trying to understand. Like, it’s clear that that family — Muhammad, your brother — all of them were civilians. Why do you think this happened to them?

azmat khan

You know, I asked her why she thought this airstrike landed on their home. And she was certain it was some kind of a mistake.

momen

During times of wars, everything happens. Mistakes happen.

katbeeah ahmed

[SPEAKING ARABIC]

momen

They were random airstrikes. And it happened that they got one of those random airstrikes.

azmat khan

And when I pressed her on that further, you know, she shared some theories about why she thought it was hit, why others in her family, who are now also sitting in a room, thought it had been hit. And they gave similar answers.

An ISIS truck was maybe passing by. Or, on the roof, there was a tandoor, an oven that was used to make bread that burned on a much cheaper oil that burned really deeply. Maybe they saw the heat from the sky. And in my own head, as she’s saying this, I’m just thinking, is that the thing that was redacted coming from the target? But I didn’t say anything about that.

michael barbaro

Is that perhaps why they thought it was a weapons manufacturing site?

azmat khan

Possibly. So it was about an hour and a half into our conversation before I finally told her.

azmat khan

So I want to tell you a little bit about what the document says and get any explanation you might have or any comment you might have on what they claim.

azmat khan

That I have this American document, that I had sued my own government to get it. And she’s changed, she’s perked up. She’s very interested. She wants to know what’s in it.

azmat khan

So the document says that there was a compound they wanted to target, and —

azmat khan

So I tell her the initial description.

azmat khan

And they believed that it was being used by ISIS for military purposes.

azmat khan

And then I tell her the thing that I’ve been most reluctant to tell her, I think, because she seemed so at peace with what happened.

azmat khan

But the day before the strike happened, they were watching footage of the house, and they saw three children on the roof.

azmat khan

And I told her that before striking, they saw three children on the roof. And her whole face changed.

She said the kids would go on the roof when they got cold.

momen

They didn’t have gas, so they would just go upstairs to get exposed to sunlight.

azmat khan

She said that quietly. And I told her how after seeing the children, they reevaluated the target. And now when they reevaluated it, they saw something that made them believe the house was a weapons manufacturing facility.

interposing voices

[SPEAKING ARABIC]

momen

You don’t have to ask us. Go to people in the neighborhood. Ask them. Everybody will tell you the exact same thing. Ask them if there was a weapons facility. They will tell you. That’s impossible.

azmat khan

I believe you. I believe you.

azmat khan

I asked her what she wanted to tell the people who wrote the document and who did this bombing, and it was like she changed.

momen

[SPEAKING ARABIC]

katbeeah ahmed

[SPEAKING ARABIC]

azmat khan

And she said, why did you kill them?

They were turned into just flesh.

Their house wasn’t suspicious at all. I ask now. I want to know the reason. There wasn’t any manufacturing facility.

katbeeah ahmed

[SPEAKING ARABIC]

momen

When people in the neighborhood pulled them out, they were innocent people. They weren’t ISIS.

azmat khan

I believe you. Will you tell her I believe her?

[music]

michael barbaro

I’m curious, as you ended that interview and you walked away, did you think to yourself, this was the right decision to tell her what really happened — what the U.S. knew, that they had seen those three children, that they had known those children would die? Or did you wonder to yourself if you shouldn’t have ever told her?

azmat khan

She said something to me that made me feel comfortable with it.

azmat khan

Thank you so much. I really appreciate that you took the time.

azmat khan

So I told her before I left —

azmat khan

I genuinely — I’ll remember this always. Thank you.

azmat khan

— that I would never forget this interview.

And she said it was the same for her.

momen

I thank you actually. I will also never forget this interview.

azmat khan

And that she was so grateful that we spoke.

momen

I’ve always wished to know the reason. I always wanted to know the reason, because I know they were innocent.

azmat khan

That she learned what she did.

momen

I never forget, by the way. I can still see them. I can still see their shadows in front of me. I’ll never forget them. I’ll never forget their shadows.

azmat khan

I hated asking her those questions. I felt awful for asking, but I think I also felt really angry that my own government wasn’t doing this, that — that I had to do it.

michael barbaro

That you had to give her this life-changing information?

azmat khan

It’s not my job, or at least it shouldn’t be.

Like, I’ve done this so many times now. At some point, you have to stop, right? Like, haven’t I learned enough? I think I know what I need to know about this air campaign.

And at some point, it should be the military’s job to do this.

And certainly, the military, in recent years especially, has made little to no effort to try to talk to people on the ground to see how these rules of war actually play out. You know, that you can make a decision about something being proportional, but what if your intelligence is wrong?

What if you’ve misinterpreted a bread oven as an ISIS weapons manufacturing facility? And instead of seeing three children and realizing you have the wrong target, now you’re willing to see it as an even more threatening target, so as to feel comfortable with what you want to bomb. I hated asking her those questions. I didn’t want to do it, but I just — I wanted to know what happened. And if I didn’t, who would?

michael barbaro

Right. It almost seems like despite the military’s claims that it wants to hold itself accountable when it kills civilians, these reports you’ve obtained, which are, in theory, so central to doing that, are really only giving the appearance of accountability. Because real accountability would mean doing the kind of work that you’re doing, and the U.S. is not.

azmat khan

Your perception is actually what people on the inside have told me. Someone who used to investigate civilian harm for the military told me that this whole system, all of these elaborate processes, procedures, these records, that they’re essentially an effort to provide legitimacy for the military’s actions — an effort to project to the whole world that the United States is accountable.

A former high level official, who used to be involved in the air campaign, told me that it was also meant for those on the inside — basically, to give them psychological comfort, to think that, hey, mistakes happen, but we’ve gone through this process. We’re holding ourselves accountable, something that might also make them feel better.

So I can’t tell you what each individual officer thought as they did each assessment. But I can say that, overall, what these documents show is that the military hasn’t prioritized accountability in a meaningful way.

[music]

At this point, I think I’ve revealed everything that I can reveal about what goes wrong and why.

And if this doesn’t force them to go on the ground, to talk to people, to try to understand the impacts of the bombs they’re dropping, what’s going wrong and why — and to change how they target and how they evaluate airstrikes and how they understand the impacts of what they’re doing so that they can prevent it from happening again and again and again — then I don’t know what will.

michael barbaro

Azmat, thank you very much. We really appreciate it.

azmat khan

Thank you, Michael.

michael barbaro

Here’s what else you need to know today. On Sunday, the rabbi of the Texas synagogue that was held hostage by a gunman for 11 hours on Saturday described a harrowing escape that involved throwing a chair at the gunman and dashing for exit doors.

The rabbi told The Times that the gunman, a British citizen who was later killed by police, spoke of a Pakistani scientist, who was convicted in 2010 of trying to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan. Since that conviction, the scientist has become a hero to some Muslim extremists. In an interview, the gunman’s brother said he suffered from mental illness and questioned why he was able to travel from the U.K. to the U.S. in the first place.

And over the weekend, the number of daily Covid infections in the U.S. surpassed 800,000, a new record, and daily deaths approached 2,000 people.

archived recording

Joining me now, the U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy. Dr. Murthy, thanks so much for joining us.

michael barbaro

In an interview on Sunday, the U.S. Surgeon General said that infections from a highly contagious Omicron variant had not yet peaked.

archived recording (dr. vivek murthy)

We shouldn’t expect a national peak in the next coming days. Next few weeks will be tough.

michael barbaro

Today’s episode was produced by Luke Vander Ploeg, Kaitlin Roberts, and Michael Simon Johnson. It was edited by Michael Benoist and engineered by Elisheba Ittoop. Original music by Marion Lozano. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

That’s it for The Daily. I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.

Luke Vander PloegKaitlin Roberts and


Four years ago, Azmat Khan, an investigative reporter for The Times Magazine, told us the story of Basim Razzo, an Iraqi civilian whose home was targeted by a U.S.-led airstrike that killed his entire family.

His story helped reveal how American air wars — described by Washington as the most precise in history — were resulting in a staggering number of civilian deaths.

By obtaining and assessing thousands of pages of U.S. military reports, and with the help of on-the-ground reporting in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, Azmat was able to gain a better understanding of why this was happening.


  • Azmat Khan, an investigative reporter for The Times Magazine.

Image
The ruins of a home in Mosul, Iraq, after airstrikes in January 2017. Waging war from the air ensured minimal risk to U.S. troops, but for civilians, the attacks often brought terror and tragedy.Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.

Transcripts of each episode are available by the next workday. You can find them at the top of the page.


Azmat Khan contributed reporting.

The Daily is made by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Austin Mitchell, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Daniel Guillemette, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Kaitlin Roberts, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Anita Badejo, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Chelsea Daniel, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens and Rowan Niemisto.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Cliff Levy, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Sofia Milan, Desiree Ibekwe, Erica Futterman, Wendy Dorr, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli and Maddy Masiello.

Luke Vander Ploeg is a senior producer on “The Daily” and a reporter for the National Desk covering the Midwest. More about Luke Vander Ploeg

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