---
title: The Nayirah testimony:a Kuwaiti government PR campaign at a House human rights caucus
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/nayirah-testimony-1990/
description: in October 1990 a 15-year-old identified only as "Nayirah" told an informal House human rights caucus that Iraqi soldiers had taken babies out of…
section: Case studies
---

![Illustration: a Cold War intelligence-dossier collage dominated by a distressed world map with connecting routes, coordinates and highlighted regions.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-map-heavy.jpg)

[Case studies](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/)

# The Nayirah testimony:a Kuwaiti government PR campaign at a House human rights caucus

At a glance

In October 1990 a 15-year-old identified only as "Nayirah" told an informal House human rights caucus that Iraqi soldiers had taken babies out of incubators in Kuwait and left them to die…

- **When:** October 10, 1990
- **Actor:** Government of Kuwait, through Citizens for a Free Kuwait and the U.S. public relations firm Hill &…
- **Target:** U.S. public, members of Congress and the news media during the debate on war with Iraq
- **Source:** Unidentified Source blurred: contractors, cutouts, buried disclosure
- **Confidence:** **documented** Primary documents, court records, official disclosures
- **Techniques:** [Astroturfing](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/astroturf/) [Narrative laundering](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/narrative-laundering/) [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/) [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/) [Testimonial](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/testimonial/)

Full details

- **Actor:** Government of Kuwait, through Citizens for a Free Kuwait and the U.S. public relations firm Hill & Knowlton

On this page

- [What happened](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/nayirah-testimony-1990/#what-happened)
- [How it works](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/nayirah-testimony-1990/#how-it-works)
- [Then and now](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/nayirah-testimony-1990/#then-and-now)
- [Positions on the record](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/nayirah-testimony-1990/#positions-on-the-record)
- [Same-method test](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/nayirah-testimony-1990/#same-method-test)
- [How to spot it](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/nayirah-testimony-1990/#how-to-spot-it)
- [Images](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/nayirah-testimony-1990/#images)
- [Sources](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/nayirah-testimony-1990/#sources)

On this page

> **Content note.** This case quotes a witness account of infants being left to die. The account is quoted as evidence of how the campaign worked. Later investigations did not corroborate it.

**In one line:** in October 1990 a 15-year-old identified only as "Nayirah" told an informal House human rights caucus that Iraqi soldiers had taken babies out of incubators in Kuwait and left them to die; she was the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador, her appearance was arranged within a campaign that Kuwait's government funded through a PR firm, and the story was then repeated by the President and by senators before the vote on war.

![Diagram: Kuwaiti government money funds Citizens for a Free Kuwait, which pays Hill & Knowlton; a witness with an undisclosed family tie speaks at an informal House caucus; the President and senators repeat the story; later investigations do not corroborate it](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/nayirah-testimony-1990-diagram.svg)

## What happened

- **2 August 1990.** Iraq invades and occupies Kuwait.
- **August 1990.** Citizens for a Free Kuwait (CFK) is set up in the United States. Its filings under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, as summarised by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, show that over about six months the Kuwaiti government gave it about $11.9 million, and that its only other funding was $17,861 from 78 individuals. About $10.8 million went to Hill & Knowlton (H&K) as fees. H&K's Washington operation was run by Craig Fuller, who had been chief of staff to George H. W. Bush when Bush was vice-president. Frank Mankiewicz, a former NPR president, was vice-chairman and handled media relations. H&K vice-president Lauri Fitz-Pegado ran the account, and the Wirthlin Group, H&K's research arm, reported about $1.1 million for research for the Kuwaitis.
- **10 October 1990.** The Congressional Human Rights Caucus holds a session. The caucus was an informal, bipartisan group founded in 1983 by Representatives Tom Lantos (D-CA) and John Porter (R-IL). It was not a House committee, and witnesses did not testify under oath. A witness named only as Nayirah, with her surname withheld on the stated grounds of protecting her family, says she volunteered at al-Addan hospital and saw Iraqi soldiers come in with guns: "They took the babies out of incubators, took the incubators and left the children to die on the cold floor." Porter says that in eight years on the caucus he had never heard such "brutality and inhumanity and sadism." C-SPAN recorded the session.
- **Same evening.** According to Stauber and Rampton, H&K sent a video news release through MediaLink, a service reaching about 700 U.S. stations. Portions aired on ABC's *Nightline* and NBC's *Nightly News*, with an estimated audience of 35 to 53 million.
- **October to December 1990.** President Bush cites the incubator story in speeches. Later reporting quotes him describing babies "pulled from incubators and scattered like firewood across the floor."
- **19 December 1990.** Amnesty International publishes an 84-page report on violations in occupied Kuwait. Alongside torture, executions and mass arrests, it states that 300 premature babies "were reported to have died after Iraqi soldiers removed them from incubators, which were then looted."
- **12 January 1991.** Congress authorises the use of force. The Senate vote is 52-47 and the House vote 250-183. MacArthur later counted seven senators who cited the incubator story in their speeches supporting the resolution.
- **March 1991.** After Iraqi forces left Kuwait, ABC's John Martin reports that premature babies and other patients did die when many nurses and doctors stopped working or fled, but that Iraqi troops "almost certainly had not stolen hospital incubators and left hundreds of Kuwaiti babies to die."
- **19 April 1991.** After a visit to Kuwait, Amnesty issues a news release correcting its December text. It says its team was shown alleged mass graves of babies, but "it was not established how they had died and the teams found no reliable evidence that Iraqi forces had caused the deaths of babies by removing them or ordering their removal from incubators."
- **6 January 1992.** John R. MacArthur, publisher of *Harper's*, reveals in a *New York Times* op-ed, "Remember Nayirah, Witness for Kuwait?", that the witness was Nayirah al-Sabah, daughter of Saud Nasser al-Sabah, Kuwait's ambassador to the United States. He sets out the H&K arrangement in his 1992 book *Second Front*.
- **27 January 1992.** Lantos replies in a *New York Times* letter headed "Kuwaiti Gave Consistent Account of Atrocities." He writes that her being the ambassador's daughter "made her a more credible witness."
- **6 February 1992.** Middle East Watch publishes *Kuwait's "Stolen" Incubators: The Widespread Repercussions of a Murky Incident*. Its director Andrew Whitley says there is "no truth to the charge" that Iraqi forces "stole incubators and callously removed babies allowing them to die on the floor," and that the stories "were manufactured from germs of truth by people outside the country who should have known better."
- **1992.** Kuwait's government commissions Kroll Associates to investigate. Kroll's nine-week inquiry, with more than 250 interviews, does not find evidence for the large-scale hospital raids and deaths of scores or hundreds of babies that official Kuwaiti spokesmen had described. It says it found support for a smaller version. Nayirah tells Kroll that she saw one baby outside an incubator for "no more than a moment" and that she had not been a volunteer but had "only stopped by for a few minutes." H&K spokesman Tom Ross calls the report a "vindication."
- **December 1992.** CBC's *The Fifth Estate* broadcasts "To Sell a War" (producer Neil Docherty), which wins the 1993 International Emmy for documentary.

![Tom Lantos, U.S. House of Representatives official portrait](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/nayirah-testimony-1990-lantos.jpg)

*Representative Tom Lantos, co-chair of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus. Official portrait, U.S. Congress. Public domain.*

## How it works

- [Astroturfing](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/astroturf/): the campaign was fronted by a group called "Citizens for a Free Kuwait". By its own FARA filings, nearly all of its money came from the Kuwaiti government. The registration was on file with the Justice Department, but the caucus audience and TV viewers saw a citizens' group, not the government paying for it.
- [Narrative laundering](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/narrative-laundering/): a foreign government's case reached U.S. voters through a PR firm, then through a House human rights caucus, then through network news. Each step made the source harder to see. The last step, the President and senators repeating the story, turned it into a U.S. public claim.
- [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/): a caucus session on Capitol Hill, run by sitting members, looks like a congressional hearing. That look lent the account authority, even though the caucus was informal and no oath was taken.
- [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/): the one fact most useful for judging the witness, that she was the ambassador's daughter, was left out. The stated reason was her family's safety. Lantos later argued the tie made her more credible, but viewers in 1990 had no chance to weigh it either way.
- [Testimonial](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/testimonial/): once the President and senators repeated the story, their standing vouched for it. Viewers now heard it from their own elected officials rather than from an unnamed witness. The record reviewed here does not show that Bush or the senators knew who she was.

![George H. W. Bush, official presidential portrait, 1989](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/nayirah-testimony-1990-bush.jpg)

*President George H. W. Bush, who cited the incubator story in autumn 1990 speeches. Official portrait by David Valdez, White House, 15 February 1989. Public domain (U.S. government work).*

## Then and now

![Remember Belgium — Enlist To-Day (1915)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/remember-belgium-1915.jpg)

*[Remember Belgium — Enlist To-Day](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/remember-belgium-1915/), Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, United Kingdom, 1915. Public domain.*

In 1915 the British government published the Bryce Report on German conduct in Belgium. Its appendix of witness statements included vivid accounts of mutilation for which, according to later historians, there is no other evidence, and those stories stuck to the report for decades. The underlying atrocities were real: John Horne and Alan Kramer document the killing of about 6,500 Belgian and French civilians in 1914. Kuwait in 1990 had the same shape. Documented abuses under occupation sat beside a single striking story that investigators could not confirm, and the striking story was the one repeated. What differed was the channel. In 1915 a government published its own inquiry under its own name. In 1990 a foreign government's campaign reached the public through a U.S. citizens' group, a House caucus and U.S. officials.

A later U.S. case with a similar structure is [Mobile Production Facilities for Biological Agents (UN Security Council slide)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/powell-un-mobile-labs-2003/). In 2003 a claim resting mainly on one defector, "Curveball", was presented at the UN Security Council before a war, and the Senate Intelligence Committee (2004) and the Robb-Silberman commission (2005) later found it unsupported. The difference is that Powell's claim came from U.S. intelligence, not a foreign government's PR campaign.

## Positions on the record

- **Kuwait's government and its advocates:** Kuwait was an occupied country making its case to allies. Its ambassador's family, like other Kuwaitis, had reasons to fear reprisal, which was the stated reason for withholding her name. Lantos wrote in 1992 that her account was consistent and that her family tie made her more credible. H&K said the Kroll report showed "there were incubator atrocities and that Nayirah was a witness to them."
- **Critics:** MacArthur argued that the caucus co-chairs' ties to H&K deserved a congressional inquiry, and asked whether they knew who she was in October 1990. Middle East Watch said the story was built from "germs of truth" by people outside the country. Critics of the Kroll report said some doctors it quoted had denied the story to Middle East Watch and Physicians for Human Rights soon after Iraqi forces withdrew.
- **What the record shows about the occupation:** Amnesty International's December 1990 report documented torture by Iraqi forces, the execution of hundreds of unarmed civilians and the arrest of thousands. Middle East Watch reported on the occupation, and the UN Commission on Human Rights appointed a special rapporteur, Walter Kälin, whose January 1992 report (E/CN.4/1992/26) covered human rights in Kuwait under Iraqi occupation. Kuwait's missing-persons committee counts about 605 people missing as a result of the invasion. In 2019 and 2020 a burial site was found at Samawa in Iraq, and 59 sets of remains from it were identified as Kuwaiti and third-country nationals, as the ICRC-chaired Tripartite Commission and the UN Security Council have recorded.
- **This archive's reading:** documented are the government funding of CFK, H&K's role, the informal and unsworn caucus setting, the witness's undisclosed identity, the repetition by the President and senators, and the corrections by Amnesty, Middle East Watch and Kroll. The incubator claim as told in October 1990 was not corroborated by any of those investigations. **Not shown:** that the story changed the Senate outcome (seven citations and a five-vote margin show that it was used, not that it decided votes), or that Lantos, Porter or Bush knew her identity in October 1990. This archive makes no finding on whether the war was justified.

## Same-method test

The finding would be the same with the flags swapped. In July 2014, Russia's state-owned Channel One aired a woman who described a three-year-old being crucified by Ukrainian forces in Sloviansk. Reporters from *Novaya Gazeta* and Dozhd found no evidence in the town, and in 2021 the woman told the Russian journalist Masha Borzunova that she regretted the story. The channel differs: a domestic state broadcaster, not a foreign government's PR firm working through a legislature. The method is the same: one unverified eyewitness atrocity, delivered through a trusted institution, at a moment of decision about war. A foreign embassy funding a "citizens" group in any capital to put an unnamed relative of its ambassador before a parliamentary committee would be scored the same way.

## How to spot it

- Ask who is paying for the "citizens" group. FARA filings are public, and the money trail is often there before the story breaks.
- Check the venue. A caucus, briefing or "forum" held in a legislative building is not a sworn hearing.
- When a key witness's identity is withheld, note it and give the testimony less weight until it is corroborated.
- Separate the documented pattern (abuses investigators confirmed) from the single vivid story (what they could not confirm). Propaganda often uses the second to stand in for the first.
- Watch for repetition by officials: when a leader repeats a claim, it gains authority but no new evidence.

## Images

| Image | Source | Licence |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Mechanism diagram (above) | Drawn for FRAME from the sources below (`make_diagrams.py`) | CC BY 4.0, FRAME |
| Tom Lantos, official portrait | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tom_Lantos.jpg), U.S. Congress | Public domain (U.S. government work) |
| George H. W. Bush, official portrait (1989) | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:George_H._W._Bush_presidential_portrait_(cropped).jpg), David Valdez, White House | Public domain (U.S. government work) |
| *Remember Belgium — Enlist To-Day* (1915) | FRAME gallery | Public domain (published before 1923) |

### Image gaps

- **A still of Nayirah's 10 October 1990 testimony.** C-SPAN recorded the session, but C-SPAN footage is not public domain, and the witness was a minor at the time. Not filled.
- **Citizens for a Free Kuwait's FARA registration pages.** These are U.S. government records and public domain, but efile.fara.gov could not be reached from the environment used to build this page. **This gap can be filled** from a machine that can reach the FARA e-file archive.
- **The Senate roll call for S.J.Res.2 (12 January 1991).** The official record is public domain, but senate.gov and congress.gov could not be reached from this environment. **This gap can be filled.**
- **A photograph of Kuwait City after the occupation, 1991.** U.S. Department of Defense photos on Wikimedia Commons (for example a Kuwaiti checkpoint after Iraqi forces withdrew) are public domain, but the Commons API was rate-limited while this page was built, so the licence could not be checked. **This gap can be filled.**
- **Pages from the Middle East Watch and Kroll reports.** The Middle East Watch report is © Human Rights Watch, and the Kroll report was not found online. Not filled.

## Sources

- [John R. MacArthur, "Remember Nayirah, Witness for Kuwait?", *New York Times*, 6 January 1992](https://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/06/opinion/remember-nayirah-witness-for-kuwait.html)
- [John R. MacArthur, *Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War* (Hill and Wang, 1992)](https://books.google.com/books/about/Second_Front.html?id=kZmTBdouyQwC)
- ["Witness for Kuwait", *Baltimore Sun*, 7 January 1992](https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1992-01-07-1992007123-story.html)
- [John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, "How PR Sold the War in the Persian Gulf", from *Toxic Sludge Is Good for You* (1995), PR Watch](https://www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy10.html)
- [MERIP, "The News Industry", July 1992](https://www.merip.org/1992/07/the-news-industry/)
- [C-SPAN, clip of Nayirah's testimony, 10 October 1990](https://www.c-span.org/clip/public-affairs-event/user-clip-nayirahs-testimony/4686475)
- [Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, history (successor to the Congressional Human Rights Caucus)](https://humanrightscommission.house.gov/about/history)
- [*Washington Post*, "Amnesty International accuses Iraq of atrocities in Kuwait", 19 December 1990](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1990/12/19/amnesty-international-accuses-iraq-of-atrocities-in-kuwait/78f4f740-dc16-4386-976e-21f54007e7ee/)
- [Congressional Record, Senate, 16 June 1994 (quotes Amnesty's April 1991 release and the Kroll findings)](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CREC-1994-06-16/html/CREC-1994-06-16-pt1-PgS6.htm)
- [Middle East Watch, *Kuwait's "Stolen" Incubators: The Widespread Repercussions of a Murky Incident*, 6 February 1992](https://www.hrw.org/reports/pdfs/k/kuwait/kuwait922.pdf)
- [Democracy Now!, debate on the incubator story with John MacArthur, 2 December 2003](https://www.democracynow.org/2003/12/2/a_debate_on_one_of_the)
- [*Christian Science Monitor*, "When contemplating war, beware of babies in incubators", 6 September 2002](https://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0906/p25s02-cogn.html)
- [U.S. Senate roll call vote 2, 102nd Congress, 12 January 1991 (S.J.Res.2, 52-47)](https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1021/vote_102_1_00002.htm)
- [U.S. House History, "House Passage of the 1991 Resolution Authorizing the Use of Force Against Iraq"](https://history.house.gov/HistoricalHighlight/Detail?id=35252)
- [Paley Center, *The Fifth Estate*: "To Sell a War" (CBC, 1992)](https://www.paleycenter.org/collection/item?q=people&p=256&item=T:27700)
- [Walter Kälin, UN Commission on Human Rights, *Report on the situation of human rights in Kuwait under Iraqi occupation*, E/CN.4/1992/26, 16 January 1992](https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/225886)
- [International Commission on Missing Persons, Kuwait](https://icmp.int/the-missing/where-are-the-missing/kuwait/)
- [ICRC, Tripartite Commission statement on Gulf War missing persons](https://www.icrc.org/en/document/joint-statement-tripartite-commission-gulf-war)
- [Western Front Association, "The Truth About German Atrocities? The Bryce Report of 1915"](https://www.westernfrontassociation.com/world-war-i-articles/2008/may/the-truth-about-german-atrocities-the-bryce-report-of-1915/)
- [John Horne and Alan Kramer, *German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial* (Yale University Press, 2001)](https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300107913/german-atrocities-1914/)
- [*Moscow Times*, "State-Run News Station Accused of Making Up Child Crucifixion", 14 July 2014](https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2014/07/14/state-run-news-station-accused-of-making-up-child-crucifixion-a37289)
- [EUvsDisinfo, "Anniversary: 'The crucified boy' turns two"](https://euvsdisinfo.eu/anniversary-the-crucified-boy-turns-two/)
- [Wikipedia, "Crucified boy" (secondary compilation; Borzunova 2021 interview)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucified_boy)
- [Wikipedia, "Nayirah testimony" (secondary compilation, used to cross-check dates)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony)