Hill & Knowlton, and the Kuwait incubator babies

[JCM]

Nayirah al-Ṣabaḥ (Arabic: نيره الصباح‎), called "Nurse Nayirah" testimony
LmfVs3WaE9Y
Was this woman lying?
GHWB then repeats
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Did he know whom she actually was?

[Bob Blaylock]

I read that this woman was lying. Is that true?


Why are you asking us? If you don't know what you did or did not read, then how would any of us know? We don't know if it's true or not that you read such a thing.

[JCM]

Why are you asking us? If you don't know what you did or did not read, then how would any of us know? We don't know if it's true or not that you read such a thing.
My apologies I was obviously not clear. I rephrase then.
Is it true she was lying?

[Bob Blaylock]

My apologies I was obviously not clear. I rephrase then.
Is it true she was lying?


It looks to me like she was sitting. She might have been standing; it's hard to tell.

[JCM]

It looks to me like she was sitting. She might have been standing; it's hard to tell.
Sorry I must be rather confusing to you. Click on this (http://tinyurl.com/ycur88q) and refer to the first listing first definition. :D

[Kevin_Lowe]

I thought this was really old news... still, maybe it doesn't hurt to remind people.

[JCM]

And just so we are all clear (and my post count goes up, not that I care) when I state

Is it true she was lying?
lying is referring to the act of telling a lie

[JCM]

I thought this was really old news...
The events in the video clips took place in the early 90s so I guess, yes, they are "old news".
still, maybe it doesn't hurt to remind people.
It doesn't hurt to remind people what exactly? That she said these things and GHWB repeated them? Or do you believe she was lying?

[JCM]

really old news...
Also one more question, do you know of a thread about this? I couldn't find one that was only about this.

Some questions for the forum
Did Hill & Knowlton write "Nurse Nayirah"'s testimony?
Was Lauri Fitz-Pegado in charge of Hill & Knowlton's involvement in this?

Lauri Fitz-Pegado is a former US Information Agency official that worked at Hill & Knowlton when Nayirah testified. Fitz-Pegado also promoted Mohammed Odeh al-Rehaief's book. Al-Rehaief reportedly provided US forces with information necessary for the rescue of Jessica Lynch. Both Fitz-Pegado and Al-Rehaief are employed by the Livingston Group

[Kevin_Lowe]

The events in the video clips took place in the early 90s so I guess, yes, they are "old news".

Yup.


It doesn't hurt to remind people what exactly? That she said these things and GHWB repeated them? Or do you believe she was lying?

That the US government was lied to in order to jack up support for the first Gulf War. What else?

[JCM]

What else?
I don't know, what evidence do you have for the claim below?
the US government was lied to
Can you prove Nayirah lied?

[Kevin_Lowe]

I don't know, what evidence do you have for the claim below?

Can you prove Nayirah lied?

Well, she said she witnessed it and it never happened. Barring the possibility that she is from another dimension or delusional, I don't see any other possibilities. Am I missing something?

[JCM]

it never happened
What proof do you have that what she said she witnessed never happened?

[JCM]

I found this (http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/medsearch/FocusAreas/riegle_report/hearing/hearing_s04.htm)

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LAUCH FAIRCLOTH

The Commerce Department has a lot of questions to answer about its role leading up to the Gulf War. It is also time that we in the Banking Committee revisit a current Commerce Department nominee—Lauri Fitz-Pegado, who played a crucial role in shaping public opinion toward U.S. involvement, and she did it by personally orchestrating perjured testimony before Congress.

Mr. Chairman, in 1990, after the Iraqi invasion of their country, the Kuwaiti government in exile formed Citizens for a Free Kuwait. They hired the lobbying firm of Hill and Knowlton to influence public opinion in this country toward entering the conflict. Lauri Fitz-Pegado was in charge of the effort.

Her strategy was to use alleged witnesses to atrocities, to tell stories of human rights violations in occupied Kuwait. Using their testimony, she orchestrated what has come to be known as the Baby Incubator Fraud.

She first coached a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, identified only at the time as Naira, to testify before Congress that she had seen Iraqi soldiers remove Kuwaiti babies from hospital respirators. Naira claimed to be a refugee who had been working as a volunteer in a Kuwaiti hospital throughout the first few weeks of the Iraqi occupation. She said that she bad seen them take babies out of the incubators, take the incubators, and leave the babies "on the cold floor to die."

Naira's emotional testimony riveted human rights organizations, the news mediums, and the Nation. That incident was cited by six Members of the U.S. Senate as reasons to go to war with Iraq.

However, it was later discovered that the girl was in fact the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. It turns out that Lauri Fitz-Pegado had concealed Naira's real identity. Since then, reputable human rights organizations and journalists have concluded that the baby incubator story was an outright fabrication. Every study commissioned by the Kuwaiti government could not produce a shred of evidence that the ambassador's daughter had been back in occupied Kuwait to do volunteer work in a hospital. It was a total fabrication.

Lauri Fitz-Pegado then put on a repeat performance in front of the U.S. Security Council on November 27, 1990. In the testimony before Congress, they claimed they couldn't fully identify who the witness was because they wanted to protect her family that supposedly was still trapped in Kuwait. But, in fact, they were here on Embassy Row.

In front of the United Nations, Lauri Fitz-Pegado abandoned that pretense and instead employed witnesses who testified using false names and occupations. The most important of these phony witnesses was a man who called himself Dr. Ebrahim. With Lauri Fitz-Pegado there in New York, he claimed to have personally buried 40 babies pulled from incubators by the Iraqis. Dr. Ebrahim told the Security Council that he was a surgeon. But after the war, when the scam was exposed as a total fraud, he admitted to being a dentist and had never buried any babies or seen any. More lies.

The Fitz-Pegado scam continues. Mr. Chairman, as a supporter of our country’s involvement in the Gulf War, I am offended that Lauri Fitz-Pegado believes that those kinds of illegal and unethical activities were necessary to get this country to face the threat of Saddam Hussein. None of & these facts and allegations were disclosed to either you Mr. Chairman, or other Members of the Banking Committee when her nomination was voted on here.

If confirmed, Lauri Fitz-Pegado would have control over a global network of 200 trade offices in 70 countries. My opposition is based not on party or ideology. It is based on the fact that there are few people in America who have less business being in charge of our Nation’s trade secrets than Lauri Fitz-Pegado.

Lauri Fitz-Pagado's nomination should be returned to the Banking Committee for further review. If it is not, then facts that are far more embarrassing to Ms. Fitz-Pegado and to others in Government will be revealed in other speeches and in long, protracted debate on the Senate floor.

Mr. Chairman, the Banking Committee was hoodwinked by a professional scam artist. Lauri Fitz-Pegado should be asked to disclose her entire past and then be prepared to defend what I believe is a totally indefensible past.

but I wanted concrete factual evidence laid(lying) before me. This is just a Senator's Opening Statement

Corporate Watch had this (http://archive.corporatewatch.org/profiles/hk/hk3.htm) on H&K

3.2 Governmental Links

Involvement with the CIA
From the mid 1950s onward H&K began to open offices all around the world. According to Susan Trento, author of “The Power House”, a biography of Hill and Knowlton exec Robert Keith Gray, they opened many overseas offices “on the advice of friends, including then CIA director Allen W Dulles.” Gray also used to brag about checking major decisions personally with CIA director William Casey, whom he considered a close personal friend. “Hill and Knowlton’s overseas offices were perfect cover for the ever-expanding CIA. Unlike other cover jobs, being a public relations specialist did not require technical training for CIA officers,” revealed Robert T Crowley, a CIA official. George Worden, another H&K executive commented that he “used to kid at Hill and Knowlton about our office in Kuala Lumpur, because nobody would tell me what it did, and I swore it had to be a CIA front.”

Lauri Fitz-Pegado from 1977 to 1982, worked at the United States Information Agency, first in the personnel department, then as a foreign service officer. In 1982 she joined Gray & Co which was purchased by H&K in 1986[26]. She headed H&K’s Kuwait account in 1991 [see 4.6 ‘The Gulf War’ below] and in 1994 she moved back to the White House as Assistant Secretary and Director General of the United States Foreign and Commercial Service under President Clinton.

4.3 Unsavoury Friends & Clients

BCCI
In October 1988, three days after the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was indicted by a federal grand jury for conspiring with the Medellin Cartel to launder $32,000,000 in illicit drug trafficking profits[38], the bank hired H&K to manage the scandal. Robert Gray also served on the board of directors of First American Bank, the Washington D.C. bank run by Clark Clifford (now facing federal charges) and owned by BCCI. Furthermore BCCI was implicated in fraudulent accounting, tax evasion and arms smuggling. BCCI is also alleged to have handled many CIA accounts since the early 80s[39].

A Report by Senator John Kerry and Senator Hank Brown to the US Senate’s Committee on Foreign Relations[40], concluded that: Hill and Knowlton partners knew of BCCI's reputation as a "sleazy" bank when it accepted the account in October, 1988; Hill and Knowlton “made contacts with Capitol Hill on behalf of First American, and BCCI's lawyers, Clark Clifford and Robert Altman, on issues pertaining to BCCI”, despite publicly claiming that they undertook no lobbying operations on behalf of BCCI; and in the process of assisting BCCI with an aggressive public relations campaign designed to demonstrate that BCCI was not a criminal enterprise, and to put the best face possible on the Tampa drug money laundering indictments, “Hill and Knowlton ended up providing information to the Congress and to the press and public that was not merely misleading or distorted, but actually false. Hill and Knowlton assisted in discrediting people who were providing accurate information about the underlying situation, including a former BCCI officer, an investigative journalist and his publisher. Given Hill and Knowlton's close ties to both political parties, and its influence in Washington, this was especially unfortunate.”

Enron
Whilst Hill and Knowlton claims that it no longer works for Enron, a former Hill and Knowlton staffer has been working for the family of Enron CEO Kenneth Lay in the wake of the 2002 accounting scandal. When the scandal erupted, Sharon Lay, Ken’s sister, contacted M.A. Shute, who once ran H&K's Houston office and handled Enron, to spearhead the family PR offensive.
Chute organised Linda Lay’s tearful appearance on NBC's "Today" program, in which she falsely claimed that the family was financially ruined by Enron’s collapse and that her husband was the victim of devious Enron executives whose financial shenanigans led to Enron's ruin[41].

Brian Gill
H&K staffer Brian Gill was arrested on March 20, 2002 after allegedly fraudulently collecting money which he claimed was to go toward a fund for New York City fire fighters in the aftermath of the World Trade Centre disaster

Citizens for a Free Kuwait
H&K’s biggest ever contract was to conduct PR on behalf of the government of Kuwait (the Kuwaiti Royal family) after the invasion of Kuwait in August 1990.

The ambitious aim of the campaign was to persuade the American people to support all out war on Iraq. This was to be no easy task, Iraq maintained very large armed forces, the American public had since Vietnam been very reluctant to risk the lives of large numbers of its servicemen, and the Kuwaiti regime was not a sympathetic one, being itself a brutally repressive regime that had mercilessly crushed the country’s democracy movement. However they did have the tacit support of the first Bush administration.

The Kuwaiti govt rapidly hired twenty or so public relations, law and lobbying companies in a campaign to be masterminded by H&K. Under the terms of the US’ Foreign Agents Registration Act foreign sponsored propaganda campaigns should be exposed to the American public, but in this case the Department of Justice chose not to enforce the Act.
Initially H&K set up a front group under the name “Citizens for a Free Kuwait”, to spearhead the campaign and to channel funds from the government of Kuwait. Over the following 6 months the Kuwaiti government funded CFK to the tune of $11.9m, $10.8m of which went on fees to H&K.

The campaign was headed by Craig L. Fuller, head of H&K’s Washington office and previously chief of staff to George Bush snr., when he had been vice president. Under him were 119 H&K execs in 12 offices through out the USA. According to journalist John MacArthur, "The H&K team, headed by former U.S. Information Agency officer Lauri J. Fitz-Pegado, organized a Kuwait Information Day on 20 college campuses on September 12. On Sunday, September 23, churches nationwide observed a national day of prayer for Kuwait. The next day, 13 state governors declared a national Free Kuwait Day. H&K distributed tens of thousands of Free Kuwait bumper stickers and T-shirts, as well as thousands of media kits extolling the alleged virtues of Kuwaiti society and history. Fitz-Pegado's crack press agents put together media events featuring Kuwaiti "resistance fighters" and businessmen and arranged meetings with newspaper editorial boards. H&K's Lew Allison, a former CBS and NBC News producer, created 24 video news releases from the Middle East, some of which purported to depict life in Kuwait under the Iraqi boot."[62] CFK’s 154 page book ‘Rape of Kuwait’ was mailed to hundreds of media outlets.

H&K commissioned daily opinion polls from the Wirthlin Group, in order to gauge the public mood and identify the themes and slogans to concentrate on. It was soon learnt that the message most likely to motivate public support for war on Iraq was the perception of Saddam Hussein as an evil madman who even committed atrocities against his own people and had to be stopped.

The story that may have started the Gulf war came out at a hearing by the Congressional Human Rights Caucus. The Caucus outwardly resembled a congressional committee, in reality however it was just an association of politicians. Its chairmen, Californian democrat, Tom Lantos, and Illinois republican, John Porter also co chairs of another group known as the Congressional Human Rights Foundation which happened to occupy free office e space in H&K’s Washington DC offices.
The story was given as testimony to the Caucus by a Kuwaiti girl known only as Nayirah (her family name was kept secret supposedly in order to protect her relatives from reprisals by the Iraqis). She told how, as a volunteer at the Al-Addam hospital in Kuait, she had seen Iraqi soldiers taking babies from incubators and leaving them to die on the floor.

The story captured the media’s interest and was repeated countless times over the next three months having a huge impact on public opinion, even Amnesty International took up the case. Only much later, in investigations by journalist John MacArthur, did it emerge that Nayirah was in fact the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the USA, that she had been coached in giving the testimony by Lauri Fitz-Pegado, H&K’s vice-president, and that the story was entirely untrue. Given the narrowness of the Senate’s five vote majority to declare war, this, the most resonant of all the stories of the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait may well have tipped the balance ion favour of the Gulf War[63].

which leads me to believe investigations by journalist John MacArthur are where I can find factual evidence of al-Saba's lying. But maybe the forum knows of resources for facts about this elsewhere?

[Kevin_Lowe]

What proof do you have that what she said she witnessed never happened?

I don't have proof to hand, as I said this is very old news. My recollection was that her story was never corroborated and was contradicted by actual nurses who were actually there.

She certainly lied about her identity, occupation and interest in the case.

[JCM]

I don't have proof to hand, as I said this is very old news. My recollection was that her story was never corroborated and was contradicted by actual nurses who were actually there.

She certainly lied about her identity, occupation and interest in the case.

I understand. I am searching for concrete facts that can be backed up with documented references. I believe the testimony was a lie from what I have read but I want items to back up this belief other than just old journalistic reports saying so. Interviews of actual nurses who were actually there would be worth tracking down as would internal H&K documentation and even related FOIA-able official memorandums if they exist, I just don't know where to look.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Interesting project, but offhand I can't think of anywhere to direct you other than Google. The primary sources will be out there somewhere. You might try contacting the journalists who wrote those old journalistic reports.

[JCM]

Interesting project, but offhand I can't think of anywhere to direct you other than Google. The primary sources will be out there somewhere. You might try contacting the journalists who wrote those old journalistic reports.

Yes it's absolutely going to be an uphill effort. I dislike the supposition that all CT=woo. Sure tons of CT is complete woo, but there are a tiny amount of conspiratorial machinations that are not woo at all. Like say, what is being discussed in this thread :D

That's not to say this might be the only exception to the equation CT=woo, though I think a few more might be out there but they are assuredly a minuscule minority

[Saggy]

She was lying, and you can visit (videographically) and see the incubators, etc., and see an interview with the hospital personnel. The hoax was exposed long ago by Wayne Madsen ... see 'The Lies of Tom Lantos' ... at

http://www.counterpunch.org/madsen02152003.html

The hoax was orchestrated by Tom Lantos, survivor of the original holohoax, and the case was reviewed in Eric Hunt's movie 'The Last Days of the Big Lie' which you can see here ...

http://holocaustdenier.com/2011/01/the-last-days-of-the-big-lie-first-draft/

This movie contains the tour of the hospital and the interviews with the personnel. It also includes an interview with Lantos' co-chair on the committee that conducted the hoax interview Nayirah.

[JCM]

She was lying, and you can visit (videographically) and see the incubators, etc., and see an interview with the hospital personnel. The hoax was exposed long ago by Wayne Madsen ... see 'The Lies of Tom Lantos' ... at

http://www.counterpunch.org/madsen02152003.html

The hoax was orchestrated by Tom Lantos, survivor of the original holohoax, and the case was reviewed in Eric Hunt's movie 'The Last Days of the Big Lie' which you can see here ...

http://holocaustdenier.com/2011/01/the-last-days-of-the-big-lie-first-draft/

This movie contains the tour of the hospital and the interviews with the personnel. It also includes an interview with Lantos' co-chair on the committee that conducted the hoax interview Nayirah.

Well thanks. And thanks for sticking to the thread topic. I hope others won't seize on your description of Lantos (which I'd rather have had been omitted by you, thanks) or go off on tangents unrelated. His life before this incident isn't really relevant. And of course I cannot use the second link's server as a reference because it frankly lacks credulity. I will take a look at the information presented in the movie but citing it would just invite criticism and I am sure it's facts (if it contains any) can be found outside of the milieu that you present the movie to me from

[Saggy]

Duplicate deleted.

[Saggy]

Well thanks. And thanks for sticking to the thread topic. I hope others won't seize on your description of Lantos (which I'd rather have had been omitted by you, thanks) or go off on tangents unrelated. His life before this incident isn't really relevant. And of course I cannot use the second link's server as a reference because it frankly lacks credulity. I will take a look at the information presented in the movie but citing it would just invite criticism and I am sure it's facts (if it contains any) can be found outside of the milieu that you present the movie to me from

LOL. Whatever works for you !

....

And, just googling, the kuwait incubator hoax was not a lie told to the US govt, it was a lie the US govt told to the people of the US. An good overview is given here, including Bush's participation ...

http://www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy10.html

[Wroclaw]

...and the case was reviewed in Eric Hunt's movie 'The Last Days of the Big Lie' which you can see here ...

Hey, isn't he the convicted criminal who accosted Elie Wiesel some years back?

[Walter Ego]

Hey, isn't he the convicted criminal who accosted Elie Wiesel some years back?

Bingo!

http://articles.sfgate.com/2008-07-22/bay-area/17173186_1_holocaust-denier-elie-wiesel-eric-hunt

[JCM]

Hey, isn't he the convicted criminal who accosted Elie Wiesel some years back?
Bingo!
http://articles.sfgate.com/2008-07-22/bay-area/17173186_1_holocaust-denier-elie-wiesel-eric-hunt
thanks for sticking to the thread topic. I hope others won't... go off on tangents unrelated... I will take a look at the information presented in the movie but citing it would just invite criticism and I am sure it's facts (if it contains any) can be found elsewhere
I said I couldn't find a thread that was only about the Incubator Babies Hoax so can we keep this one focused on that

[Saggy]

I said I couldn't find a thread that was only about the Incubator Babies Hoax so can we keep this one focused on that

How ya doin with the movie? Everything you want, right there, interviews with the hospital staff, an interview with the co-chair of Lantos' committee, Nayirah sobbing for the cameras. Hunt did a great job of documenting the hoax, or, assembling and presenting the documentation of the hoax.

Of course, you have to be careful ...... the woo might bite you !

[16.5]

Hey, isn't he the convicted criminal who accosted Elie Wiesel some years back?

Yep, and now he graduated from college and now is a full time Neo Nazi and Holocaust Denier!

Someone's got to keep waving the Swastika!

[Caustic Logic]

I'm about where Kevin Lowe is. I'm not inclined to dig up the sources at the moment and get rigorous on this particular issue, though I applaud anyone who does. That's the right way to do it.

So, I'd be open to being shown wrong, but as I see it, from the bit I read years ago, it looks like a conspiracy. Otherwise, the ambassador's daughter decided all on her own, without H+K's or Bush's or anyone's involvement, to make up a false story about being in Kuwait and observing Iraqi troops ruthlessly and illogically murder multiple babies. And this coincidentally is said to some Congress panel (IIRC) and repeated by the president, repeatedly, to amazingly credulous effect, assuring our support for a war against a "new Hitler." A war that ultimately set the stage for our eventual invasion and all that's come since...

But then, I'm not the person most disinclined to suspect cynical shenanigans. It's only the irrationality of so many CTs, not their troubling implications when plausible, that sets oof my B.S. alarms.

Anyone want to argue that this episode was not conspiratorial?

[Saggy]

And this coincidentally is said to some Congress panel (IIRC) and repeated by the president, repeatedly, to amazingly credulous effect, assuring our support for a war against a "new Hitler." A war that ultimately set the stage for our eventual invasion and all that's come since...

But then, I'm not the person most disinclined to suspect cynical shenanigans. It's only the irrationality of so many CTs, not their troubling implications when plausible, that sets oof my B.S. alarms.


This was one of two major hoaxes used to sell the first gulf war. The second was the report that Iraqi troops were massed on the Saudi border. The St. Petersburg Times, an independent newspaper, somehow acquired satellite photos of the Saudi border that showed there were in fact no Iraqi troops on the border. This report was published only in the St. Petersburg Times. This was probably the more effective hoax.

What you have described in the italicized section is not the implications of the hoax, it is the consequences of the hoax. What are the implications of the hoax?

The immediate implication of the hoax is that the government will lie to you without a moment's compunction and as a matter of course. And the lie was not an individual effort but a coordinated effort that involved many government officials, and had full corporate cooperation. Even more, this hoax could have been easily investigated at the time and exposed the next day. But, it wasn't. The implications of that fact are that the government did not feel in important to develop a plausible hoax, or to stage the hoax for the news media. They assumed that the the populace would believe anything the government told them, on the basis of the testimony of one person alone. And, they knew that the news media would not investigate the hoax. The implication here is that the news media was fully complicit in the hoax, and acted as an agent of the government.

Those are the immediate and 'local' implications of the hoax. The global implication is that you cannot believe, on face value, anything the government or media tells you. And, that there is a vast conspiracy including parts of the government, large corporations, and the media, that acts in concert to control your mind to their desires.

[JCM]

Anyone want to argue that this episode was not conspiratorial?
You make salient points I wanted to but alas I am not as eloquent. I await the argument you ask for, it is pretty clear this was a conspiracy. But I am open minded and those here are great at showing BS as BS if it is BS.