H&K's Baby Incubator Story Still Debated

"Lauri Fitz-Pegado, the former Hill and Knowlton staffer who promoted the story about armed Iraqi troops tossing Kuwaiti babies out of their incubators - one of the biggest PR stories of the `90s - is now handling PR for the Cayman Island Cultural Center in New York," noted O'Dwyer's PR Daily on May 28. "H&K, on behalf of the Citizens for a Free Kuwait front group of exiled royals, produced a 15-year-old girl 'Nayirah' who testified that she saw Iraqi troops committing the atrocity in a Kuwaiti hospital. She testified before the Congressional Human Rights caucus in Oct. 1990 that Iraqis took 15 babies from incubators, which they then stole, and left premature infants 'on the cold floor to die.' ... Fitz-Pegado provided media coaching skills to Nayirah, who as it turned out, was the daughter of Kuwait's Ambassador to the U.S., and had never visited the hospital." The O'Dwyer's story includes Fitz-Pegado's angry attempt to refute charges that she coached Nayirah to lie, followed by a critique of Fitz-Pegado's response by PR Watch editor Sheldon Rampton.