LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gutted a program that's designed to limit the number of civilians killed by American forces. He did that over unanimous objections from top commanders after polling them, according to reporting from ProPublica. I spoke with Megan Rose, one of the reporters on that ProPublica story. She got an exclusive look at that poll.
MEGAN ROSE: It gave them three options for the civilian protection program going forward. Cut it by 65% of staff, continue with just a small, centralized office near the Pentagon, or eliminate it completely. And all commanders rebuff the idea of cuts and endorse keeping a really robust presence. What they told Secretary Hegseth was that this program enhanced their ability to do their jobs. They all cite a real moral interest in protecting civilians.
FADEL: Hegseth ignored the commanders.
ROSE: It was really gutted down to bare, bare bones. And so places like CENTCOM, which is in charge of military operations in the Mideast, including the war in Iran, they lost all of their people.
FADEL: Pressure is now building to at least partially reboot the program. NPR's Tom Bowman has been doing his own reporting on this program and joins me now. Good morning, Tom.
TOM BOWMAN, BYLINE: Hey, Leila.
FADEL: How does the civilian protection program work?
BOWMAN: Well, these experts carefully review a target, so - to make sure it's a legitimate military target. Like, for example, they watch people going in and out of a building, called patterns of life, to determine whether this is, let's say, a military headquarters and not a school. How many civilians are in the area? Should a smaller bomb be used to strike a target to prevent civilian casualties? Now, this office was created by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin under the Biden administration after years of high-profile civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now, there were more than 150 of these casualty experts at the Pentagon and in commands around the world. But as we're hearing, Secretary Hegseth wanted to eliminate the office. He's long complained that lawyers, bureaucrats and others have tied the hands of war fighters with their restrictive rules of engagement. But the office survived with only a skeleton staff of about two dozen, again, down from more than 150.
FADEL: Back to that ProPublica reporting. It's saying that the office might now be enhanced with dozens more experts.
BOWMAN: Yeah, that's right, because admirals and generals out in the field have been pushing for this, don't want to see the civilian casualty program go away. ProPublica is reporting the number of civilian casualty experts will rise to about 70, so less than half of what they once were. I'm hearing roughly the same number. But Secretary Hegseth has yet to sign off on this proposal.
But sources I talk with say they're really necessary, especially with all the airstrikes that hit Iranian targets, some 17,000 from both the U.S. and Israel. I'm told there are scores of incidents worthy of at least an initial review, meaning there are independent reports of civilian casualties. And I'm told many of these are from Israeli strikes, which tend to employ larger bombs and missiles. Israel, of course, would review their own strikes.
FADEL: So in the course of the war with Iran, it sounds like these civilian casualty experts could have helped prevent civilian casualties, like the more than 160 killed at a girls school during a strike on Iran in February. Where does that investigation stand?
BOWMAN: Yeah, that's right. There could be a connection between the gutting of the civilian protection program and things like the school strike. The U.S. Central Command, which oversees the Middle East, says the investigation is ongoing. Back in May, the top commander, Admiral Brad Cooper, told the House Armed Services Committee there were a few dozen allegations of civilian casualties and only one merited a full investigation. Here's the admiral.
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BRAD COOPER: My assessment, and our staff confirmed, only one of them correlated with a U.S. strike. That was the strike in Minab.
BOWMAN: So the admiral told lawmakers the investigation was coming to an end soon. That, of course, was three months ago. But he cautioned, the investigation is complex.
FADEL: And then there's a sports complex that some reports say was also hit by a U.S. missile, right?
BOWMAN: That's right. Some analysts told The New York Times and the BBC that a video of the attack appears to show a U.S. missile called a PrSM. But Central Command says no PrSMs were fired in the area, and the missile shown is much larger. Still, Human Rights Watch and other groups say this should be investigated.
FADEL: NPR's Tom Bowman. Thank you, Tom.
BOWMAN: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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