[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 76 (Thursday, June 16, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  THE NOMINATION OF LAURI FITZ-PEGADO

  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, many arguments have been made, both in 
favor and opposed, to the nomination of Lauri Fitz-Pegado today. During 
the debate, none have outlined the concerns raised about the nominee 
more succinctly than Lars-Erik Nelson's superb piece in Newsday, 
``Reward for Spreading a Lie.'' I regret the Senate did not give closer 
consideration to her conduct during the Gulf war before approving her 
nomination today. I ask unanimous consent that Mr. Nelson's article be 
placed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the New York Newsday, May 17, 1994]

                       Reward for Spreading a Lie

                         (By Lars-Erik Nelson)

       Washington.--You can buy a war from America. It's one of 
     our better exports. Lauri Fitz-Pegado can tell you how to do 
     it.
       Fitz-Pegado is a former executive of Hill & Knowlton Inc., 
     the public relations firm, and has been nominated by 
     President Bill Clinton to head the Commerce Department's U.S. 
     and Foreign Commercial Service.
       Among her qualifications as an export promoter: In 1990, 
     she helped export 500,000 U.S. troops to the Persian Gulf.
       Kuwait paid Hill & Knowlton $11 million to stir up American 
     outrage against Saddam Hussein's invasion. At the time, 
     Kuwait was not exactly a sympathetic victim. It was a feudal 
     sheikdom notorious for knee-jerk anti-Americanism--until it 
     was threatened. Now its ruler, His Highness, the Homeless 
     Emir, wanted American troops to give him his country back.
       What America needed was a good atrocity story--and Fitz-
     Pegado, as head of Hill & Knowlton's Kuwait project, produced 
     it. At a congressional hearing in October, 1990, she stage-
     managed the appearance of a 16-year-old, supposedly a 
     hospital volunteer, who claimed to have seen invading Iraqi 
     troops pull 15 babies out of incubators in Kuwaiti hospitals, 
     leaving them to die on the floor.
       The story was and is false. The girl proved to be the 
     daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. She 
     was not a volunteer at the hospital. She has seen no dead 
     bodies being removed from the hospital.
       Fitz-Pegado could not have cared less. When she was 
     challenged about the veracity of the 15 dead babies by John 
     R. MacArthur, an author and publisher of Harper's Magazine, 
     she replied, according to a transcript:
       ``Who gives a ------ whether there are fifteen or two . . . 
     Whether it was one baby, two babies, five babies or fifteen 
     babies, the event happened.''
       Nope. The State Department and subsequent investigations by 
     human-rights groups have been unable to produce evidence that 
     babies were taken from incubators and left to die on hospital 
     floors.
       A Hill & Knowlton executive says dryly, ``I don't know 
     whether the event happened or didn't happen. I do know that 
     at the time we said it was true, we had no way of knowing 
     whether it was true or not.''
       Anyway, Hill & Knowlton earned its $11 million. President 
     George Bush repeatedly cited the incubator story as an 
     example of ``shocking new horrors that reveal the true nature 
     of the reign of terror in Kuwait.'' In the Senate debate on 
     whether or not to authorize a war, six senators cited the 
     incubators story as an important reason to punish Saddam 
     Hussein--and the war resolution passed by five votes.
       Middle East Watch, a nonpartisan human-rights monitoring 
     organization, concluded ``the incubators story served the 
     interest of those attempting to tip the balance toward war.''
       Except for two things, this would all be ancient history:
       First, Fitz-Pegado needs Senate confirmation for her new 
     job, and this will be a test as to how the U.S. Congress 
     feels about being lied to. Chances are it doesn't care--
     though Sens. Fritz Hollings (D-S.C.) and Byron Dorgan (D-
     N.D.) have fretted publicly about whether Fitz-Pegado sold 
     America a ``hoax.''
       ``She'll go through the Commerce Committee a lot more 
     easily than she deserves,'' said a Senate source. ``The 
     Republicans don't want to hear anything that hurts their 
     favorite war.''
       Secondly, Fitz-Pegado illustrates once again how vulnerable 
     we are, even in this sophisticated age, to atrocity stories.
       Following the example of Kuwait and Hill & Knowlton, 
     Bosnia's Muslims and the Republic of Croatia both employed 
     Ruder Finn, a U.S. public-relations firm, to mobilize opinion 
     against Serbian war crimes--the much-publicized and truly 
     horrendous mass expulsions, rapes and murders.
       The Serbian behavior was atrocious enough without 
     exaggeration, but it was insufficient to outrage Americans 
     into going to war to rescue Bosnia. James Harff of Ruder Finn 
     said ``desperate people will exaggerate,'' but he denies that 
     his company invented any atrocity stories; but he does claim 
     credit for helping Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, a 
     former Nazi sympathizer, clean up his image with the American 
     Jewish community.
       Partly thanks to Ruder Finn, the Jewish community has been 
     among the foremost defenders of Bosnia's Muslim community. 
     ``It's part of the American Jewish Committee's strong `Never 
     again' feeling,'' says a Senate staffer.
       David Keane, a Washington public-relations consultant who 
     tried to help Serbian-Americans soften the evil image of the 
     Bosnian Serbs, gives Ruder Finn his professional admiration 
     for focusing attention on Serbian crimes: ``However much 
     Ruder Finn charged Croatia, they earned it. The imagery [of 
     the Serbian crimes] was wonderful. It was really well done. 
     You could do that for almost any side in any war.''

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