Kuwaitgate.

• Author: Rowse, Ted
• Position: Killing of Kuwaiti babies by Iraqi soldiers exaggerated

On October 10, 1990, 15-year-old Nayirah was the most influential girl in the world. Tearfully relaying to Congress how she had witnessed Saddam's soldiers removing Kuwaiti babies from incubators and leaving them to die on a hospital floor, she added a crucial emotional rationale to the economic argument for U.S. involvement in the Gulf. For Robert Gray's Hill and Knowlton, which helped engineer her hearings and testimony, it was a PR masterstroke. Until, of course, it became the master's worst nightmare. Today, the validity of Nayirah's account is in doubt, and Hill and Knowlton is in the unenviable position of defending itself against charges of doctoting evidence.

But don't feel sorry for Hill and Knowlton yet. The firm has mounted a crafty self-defense, not only effectively quashing criticism, but even prompting journalists to issue retractions based on the flimsiest of evidence. Today, opponents of the war insist that the stories of mass murder of Kuwaiti babies were manufactured; yet Hill and Knowlton stands by the claims made in its original PR effort. Who's right? To find out requires dissecting Hill and Knowlton's savvy PR efforts on its own behalf.

Human wrongs

Hill and Knowlton and the Kuwaiti government began talking in August 1990--shortly after the Iraqi invasion--about ways to drum up support in the U.S. for strong military action against Iraq. The meetings led to the formation of a front group, Citizens for a Free Kuwait, which was financed almost entirely by the Kuwaiti government and which paid Hill and Knowlton $11.5 million to get its message to the right people.

A few months later, at a hearing of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, Nayirah relayed her shocking story of babies left to die. The press latched on to the story, and the reported number of incubator deaths eventually jumped from the 15 stated in Nayirah's written testimony to 312--far more than the total number of incubators in the tiny Arab nation. Several members of Congress said the testimony influenced their votes to approve military action against Iraq, and President Bush frequently mentioned the incubator story as a reason for military intervention.

But shortly after the war ended, Nayirah's story came into question. In March 1991, ABC News interviewed Kuwaiti hospital officials who denied that any babies had been dumped out of incubators by Iraqi troops. A month later, Amnesty International, which earlier had reported the figure of 312 dead, said it...