[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 67 (Wednesday, May 25, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: May 25, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                    NOMINATION OF LAURI FITZ-PEGADO

  Mr. FAIRCLOTH. Mr. President, today the Senate debates the nomination 
of Sam Brown to be U.N. Ambassador to the Conference on Security and 
Cooperation in Europe. His history of supporting regimes which are 
hostile to the United States is shameful. But at least as unfortunate 
is the fact that he is not alone. In their own way, other nominees have 
equally shameful pasts. That is worth exploring in the context of the 
Sam Brown nomination.
  A good example is the nomination of Lauri Fitz-Pegado to be Assistant 
Secretary and Director General of the U.S. Foreign and Commercial 
Service in the Department of Commerce.
  Mr. President, Lauri Fitz-Pegado has orchestrated lies to Congress. 
She has served as a lobbyist for the Communist government in Angola. 
She worked for the murderous Duvalier regime in Haiti, a regime which 
has left us with the tragic legacy we are dealing with today.
  Mr. President, this is just the tip of the iceberg. She has done much 
more. She has been a hired gun for disreputable foreign interests. She 
has deliberately attempted to mislead Senators about her past. She has 
taken an active role in orchestrating perjured testimony before a 
congressional committee.
  In short, Lauri Fitz-Pegado has disqualified herself from service in 
the position to which she has been nominated.
  None of these facts and allegations were disclosed either to Chairman 
Don Riegle, or ranking Republican Alfonse D'Amato, or to the other 
members of the Banking Committee when her nomination was voted on 
there.
  Mr. President, today I will talk about only one of the reasons why 
her nomination should be returned to the Banking Committee for further 
review. When the Senate is aware of this and other facts, it will know 
what many already know; America can do better than Lauri Fitz-Pegado. 
In fact, it could hardly do worse.
  A reason--which by itself should be sufficient to reject the 
nomination of Lauri Fitz-Pegado--is her role in orchestrating perjury 
before Congress and the U.N. Security Council as the representative of 
``Citizens for a Free Kuwait.''
  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 attempt to influence public 
opinion in the United States 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 live and on video news releases, 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 Nayira, to testify before Congress that she had seen Iraqi 
soldiers remove Kuwaiti babies from hospital respirators.
  Nayira claimed to be a Kuwaiti 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 had seen them take babies out of 
incubators, take the incubators, and then leave the babies on the cold 
floor to die.
  Nayira's emotional testimony riveted human rights organizations, the 
news media, and the Nation. That incident was cited by six Members of 
the Senate as reason to go to war with Iraq. However, it was later 
discovered that the girl--who had only been identified as an escapee 
from occupied Kuwait--was in fact the daughter of the Kuwaiti 
Ambassador to the United States. It also turned out that Lauri Fitz-
Pegado had concealed Nayira's real identity.
  Since then, every reputable human rights organization and journalist 
have concluded that the baby incubator story was an outright 
fabrication.
  Even a study commissioned later by the Kuwaiti Government could not 
produce a shred of evidence that the Ambassador's daughter had managed 
to sneak back into occupied Kuwait in order to do a few weeks of 
volunteer work in a hospital overrun by bloodthirsty Iraqis.
  When the perjured testimony was discovered by John MacArthur of 
Harpers magazine, and later reported by the television news program 
``60 Minutes'', Fitz-Pegado first maintained that she had believed the 
girl's story, and that she hadn't meant to deceive anyone.
  But, Hill and Knowlton later said that they did know about Nayira's 
family ties, but that Congress wanted the fact withheld.
  They blamed Congress for their lies. What is more, they put on a 
repeat performance in front of the U.N. Security Council on November 
27, 1990.
  In the testimony before Congress, they claimed they could not fully 
identify who the witness was because they wanted to protect her family 
that was supposedly still trapped in Kuwait which was totally false. 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. Issah Ibrahim. With Lauri Fitz-Pegado there in New York, he 
claimed to have personally buried 40 babies pulled from incubators by 
the Iraqis.
  Dr. Ibrahim told the Security Council that he was a surgeon. But 
after the war when the incubator scam was exposed as a total fraud, he 
admitted to being a dentist who never buried any babies.
  Fitz-Pegado did not inform the Banking Committee of this baby 
incubator scam. However, in an on-the-record interview with John 
MacArthur of ``Harpers'' magazine, she was taped admitting that she was 
involved in the lying to Congress.
  She said she took ``total responsibility and much pride in everything 
that Hill and Knowlton did.'' She went on to say that she thought any 
negative comments about her were sexist and racist, and said she wanted 
to make it clear that ``I don't work in the kitchen, I am not a clean-
up woman.''
  But when she was pressed to account for the lies, she said--and I 
quote--``Oh come on John. Who gives a * * *''--and then she used a word 
that is so foul that I will not repeat it on the Senate floor.
  I will make an unedited copy of that interview available to any 
Member of Congress or the press who would like it.
  Mr. President, 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.
  I am more offended, however, that she thinks that her orchestrating 
lies to Congress is no big deal and that anyone who says it is racist 
and sexist.
  I believe that if the other members of the Banking Committee, 
Democrat and Republican alike, had been aware of even this limited set 
of facts during the confirmation process, her nomination would have 
been rejected by that committee.
  Now they will hear even more about Lauri Fitz-Pegado's involvement 
with the Marxist Government of Angola. They will hear about her ties to 
the bloody Duvalier regime in Haiti. They will hear other facts and 
allegations about her past that she has deliberately attempted to hide 
from Congress.
  If confirmed, Lauri Fitz-Pegado would have control over a global 
network of 200 trade offices in 70 countries. Mr. President, my 
opposition is not based on party or on 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-Pegado's nomination should be returned to the Banking 
Committee for further and full 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 and 
protracted debate on the Senate floor.
  Mr. President, the Senate 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 an indefensible past.
  Mr. President, in the near future I will inform the Senate of other 
aspects of Lauri Fitz-Pegado's past.
  When the puzzle is completed, Senators will know about Lauri Fitz-
Pegado what others already know about Sam Brown; America can do better 
than Lauri Fitz-Pegado, and it would be hard to do worse.
  I thank the chair and yield the floor.

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