Nayirah, 1990: how an atrocity story is built

Series: How minds are moved · The record: documented campaigns · 3 of 7

On 10 October 1990 a fifteen-year-old girl, introduced only as Nayirah, spoke for about four minutes to an informal caucus of the US Congress. She said she had volunteered at a hospital in occupied Kuwait and had watched Iraqi soldiers take premature babies out of their incubators and leave them “on the cold floor to die”. She cried. The clip went around the world. President George H. W. Bush repeated the story in speech after speech. Seven senators cited it in the January 1991 debate that authorised the Gulf War, which passed the Senate by just five votes.

Fifteen months later, the public learned that Nayirah was the daughter of Kuwait’s ambassador in Washington, that her appearance had been prepared by one of the largest public relations firms in the world, and that there was no reliable evidence for the incubator story. In the book I am writing, SHTF vs STFU, a whole chapter, “Nothing Incredible”, is about atrocity stories: the ones that were invented, the ones that were real, and how hard it is to tell them apart in the moment. This post takes the most famous modern case apart, piece by piece.

Contents · 9 sections

TL;DR #

• The incubator story was presented by a witness with a hidden identity, prepared by Hill & Knowlton, which was paid by a group funded by the Kuwaiti government in exile.
• Hill & Knowlton’s own audience research had shown that atrocity stories moved American opinion more than arguments about oil or law.
• The occupation of Kuwait was real and brutal. The specific story that sold the war was not substantiated.
• The opposite failure is just as dangerous: real atrocities, from the Holocaust to Bucha, have been dismissed as “another invented story”.
• The defence is the same for both: check the witness, the sponsor and the corroboration, and wait.

How the story was built #

The structure is worth looking at in detail, because it is reusable.

A client with a cause. After Iraq invaded Kuwait on 2 August 1990, a group called Citizens for a Free Kuwait was set up in the United States. Almost all its money came from the Kuwaiti government in exile. It hired Hill & Knowlton, which, according to later reporting, received somewhere between ten and twelve million dollars for the campaign.

Research before message. The firm commissioned focus groups and polling to find what would move Americans. The answer, according to accounts of that research, was atrocities. Not oil, not international law, but cruelty to the helpless.

A venue that looked like a hearing but was not. The Congressional Human Rights Caucus, co-chaired by Representatives Tom Lantos and John Porter, was not a formal committee of Congress. Witnesses did not testify under oath, so lying was not perjury. To a television viewer, however, it looked exactly like Congress hearing evidence.

A witness whose identity was hidden for a believable reason. Nayirah’s surname was withheld “to protect her family” in occupied Kuwait. The explanation was plausible, and it also meant nobody could check who she was. A Hill & Knowlton executive, Lauri Fitz-Pegado, was later reported to have coached her.

Emotion that carries the facts. A child, a hospital, babies, a soldier with a gun, tears. Every element bypasses analysis.

Repetition by authority. Once the President and senators repeated the story, it no longer seemed to come from a PR firm. It came from the President.

How it came apart #

In March 1991, after liberation, ABC News reporter John Martin interviewed doctors who had stayed in Kuwait. Premature babies had died, mainly because medical staff had fled, but they found no evidence that soldiers had taken incubators and left babies on the floor. Amnesty International, which had initially repeated a version of the story, withdrew its support. In January 1992, the publisher John MacArthur revealed in a New York Times opinion piece who Nayirah was.

Kuwait then hired the investigation firm Kroll Associates. Its report said Nayirah had made a brief visit to al-Addan hospital and had seen one baby taken out of an incubator, for only a moment; she had not worked there as a volunteer, as her testimony suggested. Kuwait and Hill & Knowlton cited the Kroll findings in their defence, and the firm denied that it had knowingly helped anyone deceive Congress. Critics noted that the investigation was paid for by the government it examined. Readers can weigh both.

What is not in dispute: the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait was real, illegal and violent, with looting, torture and killings documented by human rights groups. The story chosen to sell the war was the one that was not true. That is the uncomfortable lesson: you do not need to lie about everything. You need to lie about the one image that people will remember.

The other half: when the truth is called a lie #

If the story ended there, the easy conclusion would be “atrocity stories are always propaganda”. The chapter on the Holocaust reports in my book, “Too Similar to the Old Lie”, is about why that conclusion kills people.

In 1942 the first detailed reports of the mass murder of Europe’s Jews reached London and Washington. British and American officials called them “unsubstantiated”. In April 1943 the American minister in Stockholm, Herschel Johnson, cabled, as Samantha Power records in A Problem from Hell, that the story of what was being done to the Jews of Warsaw was “so fantastic” that he hesitated to make it the subject of an official report. In August 1943 the chairman of Britain’s Joint Intelligence Committee wrote that such reports reminded him of the First World War story that the Germans boiled corpses for fat, which had been “a grotesque lie”. The reports were true. A generation that had learned not to believe atrocity stories now refused to believe the biggest one in history. I trace that precedent in the last post of this family.

The pattern did not stop in 1945:

• Srebrenica, 1995. About eight thousand Bosniak men and boys were killed. It is documented by mass graves, DNA identification, intercepts and convictions for genocide in two international courts. It is still called a staged or exaggerated story by deniers in the region.
• Bucha, 2022. When Russian troops withdrew from the town near Kyiv, the bodies of civilians lay in the streets; local authorities later recovered more than four hundred. Russian officials called it a “staged performance”. Commercial satellite images taken while Russian forces still held the town showed bodies in the same places.
• The Balkan wars in both directions. During the Yugoslav wars, every side invented atrocity stories about the others, and every side’s real crimes were denied by its own supporters. The American PR firm Ruder Finn worked for Croatian and Bosnian clients; Serbian state media manufactured its own stories. Both trades existed at once.

So two errors exist, and they mirror each other. “Nothing incredible” was the phrase a British minister used in 1917 to defend an invented atrocity. “Too similar to the old lie” was the reaction in 1942 and 1943 to a real one. Each was caution or credulity in the wrong place.

What it feels like from the inside #

When you watch a crying child describe babies dying, the feeling is not “I am being persuaded”. The feeling is moral clarity: anyone who questions this is heartless. That feeling is exactly what makes the method work. And the same feeling, in reverse, protects deniers: when you have been fooled before, every new atrocity report triggers a sense of being clever, of not falling for it again. Both feelings are pleasant. Neither is evidence.

What it can and cannot do #

Did the incubator story cause the Gulf War? No. Iraq had invaded a sovereign country, the UN Security Council had authorised force, and a large coalition existed. The story affected the margin: public mood, and perhaps some votes in a Senate that was split by five. In close decisions, the margin is everything, which is why firms are paid to work on it.

How to notice it #

• Who is the witness? An anonymous witness can be genuine, but anonymity also means nobody can check. Ask whether anyone independent has verified the identity.
• Who paid for the venue? A “hearing”, a “report” or a “commission” may be informal, unsworn or sponsored.
• Is there corroboration from someone without a stake? Doctors, journalists on the ground, neutral investigators.
• Does the story match an old template? Babies, hospitals, corpses turned into products. Templates return because they work, whether the story is true or false.
• Is “it was staged” itself backed by evidence? Denial is a claim too. Check it with the same tools.
• Wait. The truth about Nayirah took fifteen months. The first days of a war are when you are pushed hardest to decide.

Frequently asked questions #

Did nothing bad happen in Kuwait hospitals? #

Premature babies did die during the occupation, mainly because staff fled and care collapsed. What was not substantiated was the claim that soldiers removed babies from incubators and left them to die.

Was Hill & Knowlton ever punished? #

No court found it guilty of anything. The testimony was not under oath. The firm denied knowingly deceiving anyone. The consequences were reputational.

If atrocity stories can be fabricated, how can I believe any? #

By the same tests you would use to reject one: identified witnesses, independent corroboration, physical evidence, investigations over time. Srebrenica and Bucha pass those tests; the incubator story did not.

Is this only a Western technique? #

No. Atrocity stories, real and invented, have been used by every side in modern wars, and denial of real atrocities is used by every side as well.

The lesson #

The Nayirah case teaches two things at once. A small, well-designed story, carried by a child and repeated by a president, can tilt a nation’s mood at the moment of decision. And the cynicism that such cases create can later be used to bury true reports of mass murder. The answer is not to believe or to disbelieve atrocity stories by default. It is to ask the same plain questions every time, whoever is telling the story and whichever side it helps.