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CounterPunch
December
7, 2002
Flashback
How PR Sold the War in the Gulf
by JOHN STAUBER AND
SHELDON
EDITORS NOTE: Fairness and Accuracy in
Reporting (FAIR) warns that "the fraudulent story of Iraqi
soldiers throwing Kuwaiti babies out of incubators during the
occupation of Kuwait in 1990 is depicted as if it were true in
'Live from Baghdad,' the HBO film premiering on the cable network
this Saturday that purports to tell the story behind CNN's coverage
of the Gulf War. HBO and CNN are both owned by the AOL Time Warner
media conglomerate. ... In the film, the story is turned upside
down, portrayed as a deft public relations move by the Iraqi
government, who grant CNN access to Kuwait in a calculated attempt
to discredit the rumors that their soldiers were pulling babies
from incubators. ... 'Live from Baghdad' is a dramatization,
not a documentary, but it is being presented by HBO as a 'behind-the-scenes
true story' of the Gulf War and is being released at a crucial
political moment." TV critics including Tom Shales of the
Washington Post are giving the PR scam new life and a new spin.
Shales writes that in the HBO film "The horror wreaked on
Kuwait is brought back vividly during a sequence in which [CNN
producer Robert] Wiener and his team travel to Kuwait to investigate
allegations that Iraqi troops had ripped babies out of incubators
as part of their plundering -- remember? Too late, Wiener realizes
that he and CNN have been duped by the Iraqis for propaganda
purposes and that they were allowed into Kuwait only so the Iraqis
could use them to help discredit the incubator allegations."
But who was and is duping whom? Hill & Knowlton PR duped
Shales and the rest of the nation back in 1990 and now tonight's
HBO piece will reinforce that Big Lie. For the real story we
reprint here a chapter from John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton's
groundbreaking book, Toxic
Sludge is Good for You.
Excerpted from Toxic Sludge Is Good
For You, Chapter 10
"If I wanted to lie, or if we wanted
to lie, if we wanted to exaggerate, I wouldn't use my daughter
to do so. I could easily buy other people to do it."
--Saud Nasir al-Sabah,
Kuwait's Ambassador to the United States and Canada
The Mother
of All Clients
On August 2, 1990, Iraqi troops led by
dictator Saddam Hussein invaded the oil-producing nation of Kuwait.
Like Noriega in Panama, Hussein had been a US ally for nearly
a decade. From 1980 to 1988, he had killed about 150,000 Iranians,
in addition to at least 13,000 of his own citizens. Despite complaints
from international human rights group, however, the Reagan and
Bush administrations had treated Hussein as a valuable ally in
the US confrontation with Iran. As late as July 25--a week before
the invasion of Kuwait--US Ambassador April Glaspie commiserated
with Hussein over a "cheap and unjust" profile by ABC's
Diane Sawyer, and wished for an "appearance in the media,
even for five minutes," by Hussein that "would help
explain Iraq to the American people."
Glaspie's ill-chosen comments may have
helped convince the dictator that Washington would look the other
way if he "annexed" a neighboring kingdom. The invasion
of Kuwait, however, crossed a line that the Bush Administration
could not tolerate. This time Hussein's crime was far more serious
than simply gassing to death another brood of Kurdish refugees.
This time, oil was at stake.
Viewed in strictly moral terms, Kuwait
hardly looked like the sort of country that deserved defending,
even from a monster like Hussein. The tiny but super-rich state
had been an independent nation for just a quarter century when
in 1986 the ruling al-Sabah family tightened its dictatorial
grip over the "black gold" fiefdom by disbanding the
token National Assembly and firmly establishing all power in
the be-jeweled  hands of the ruling Emir. Then, as now,
Kuwait's ruling oligarchy brutally suppressed the country's small
democracy movement, intimidated and censored journalists, and
hired desperate foreigners to supply most of the nation's physical
labor under conditions of indentured servitude and near-slavery.
The wealthy young men of Kuwait's ruling class were known as
spoiled party boys in university cities and national capitals
from Cairo to Washington.
Unlike Grenada and Panama, Iraq had a
substantial army that could not be subdued in a mere weekend
of fighting. Unlike the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, Hussein was
too far away from US soil, too rich with oil money, and too experienced
in ruling through propaganda and terror to be dislodged through
the psychological-warfare techniques of low-intensity conflict.
Waging a war to push Iraq's invading army from Kuwait would cost
billions of dollars and require an unprecedented, massive US
military mobilization. The American public was notoriously reluctant
to send its young into foreign battles on behalf of any cause.
Selling war in the Middle East to the American people would not
be easy. Bush would need to convince Americans that former ally
Saddam Hussein now embodied evil, and that the oil fiefdom of
Kuwait was a struggling young democracy. How could the Bush Administration
build US support for "liberating" a country so fundamentally
opposed to democratic values? How could the war appear noble
and necessary rather than a crass grab to save cheap oil?
"If and when a shooting war starts,
reporters will begin to wonder why American soldiers are dying
for oil-rich sheiks," warned Hal Steward, a retired army
PR official. "The US military had better get cracking to
come up with a public relations plan that will supply the answers
the public can accept."
Steward needn't have worried. A PR plan
was already in place, paid for almost entirely by the "oil-rich
sheiks" themselves.
Packaging the
Emir
US Congressman Jimmy Hayes of Louisiana--a
conservative Democrat who supported the Gulf War--later estimated
that the government of Kuwait funded as many as 20 PR, law and
lobby firms in its campaign to mobilize US opinion and force
against Hussein. Participating firms included the Rendon Group,
which received a retainer of $100,000 per month for media work,
and Neill & Co., which received $50,000 per month for lobbying
Congress. Sam Zakhem, a former US ambassador to the oil-rich
gulf state of Bahrain, funneled $7.7 million in advertising and
lobbying dollars through two front groups, the "Coalition
for Americans at Risk" and the "Freedom Task Force."
The Coalition, which began in the 1980s as a front for the contras
in Nicaragua, prepared and placed TV and newspaper ads, and kept
a stable of fifty speakers available for pro-war rallies and
publicity events.
Hill & Knowlton, then the world's
largest PR firm, served as mastermind for the Kuwaiti campaign.
Its activities alone would have constituted the largest foreign-funded
campaign ever aimed at manipulating American public opinion.
By law, the Foreign Agents Registration Act should have exposed
this propaganda campaign to the American people, but the Justice
Department chose not to enforce it. Nine days after Saddam's
army marched into Kuwait, the Emir's government agreed to fund
a contract under which Hill & Knowlton would represent "Citizens
for a Free Kuwait," a classic PR front group designed to
hide the real role of the Kuwaiti government and its collusion
with the Bush administration. Over the next six months, the Kuwaiti
government channeled $11.9 million dollars to Citizens for a
Free Kuwait, whose only other funding totalled $17,861 from 78
individuals. Virtually all of CFK's budget--$10.8 million--went
to Hill & Knowlton in the form of fees.
The man running Hill & Knowlton's
Washington office was Craig Fuller, one of Bush's closest friends
and inside political advisors. The news media never bothered
to examine Fuller's role until after the war had ended, but if
America's editors had read the PR trade press, they might have
noticed this announcement, published in O'Dwyer's PR Services
before the fighting began: "Craig L. Fuller, chief of staff
to Bush when he was vice-president, has been on the Kuwaiti account
at Hill & Knowlton since the first day. He and [Bob] Dilenschneider
at one point made a trip to Saudi Arabia, observing the production
of some 20 videotapes, among other chores. The Wirthlin Group,
research arm of H&K, was the pollster for the Reagan Administration.
. . . Wirthlin has reported receiving $1.1 million in fees for
research assignments for the Kuwaitis. Robert K. Gray, Chairman
of H&K/USA based in Washington, DC had leading roles in both
Reagan campaigns. He has been involved in foreign nation accounts
for many years. . . . Lauri J. Fitz-Pegado, account supervisor
on the Kuwait account, is a former Foreign Service Officer at
the US Information Agency who joined Gray when he set up his
firm in 1982."
In addition to Republican notables like
Gray and Fuller, Hill & Knowlton maintained a well-connected
stable of in-house Democrats who helped develop the bipartisan
support needed to support the war. Lauri Fitz-Pegado, who headed
the Kuwait campaign, had previously worked with super-lobbyist
Ron Brown representing Haiti's Duvalier dictatorship. Hill &
Knowlton senior vice-president Thomas Ross had been Pentagon
spokesman during the Carter Administration. To manage the news
media, H&K relied on vice-chairman Frank Mankiewicz, whose
background included service as press secretary and advisor to
Robert F. Kennedy and George McGovern, followed by a stint as
president of National Public Radio. Under his direction, Hill
& Knowlton arranged hundreds of meetings, briefings, calls
and mailings directed toward the editors of daily newspapers
and other media outlets.
Jack O'Dwyer had reported on the PR business
for more than twenty years, but he was awed by the rapid and
expansive work of H&K on behalf of Citizens for a Free Kuwait:
"Hill & Knowlton . . . has assumed a role in world affairs
unprecedented for a PR firm. H&K has employed a stunning
variety of opinion-forming devices and techniques to help keep
US opinion on the side of the Kuwaitis. . . . The techniques
range from full-scale press conferences showing torture and other
abuses by the Iraqis to the distribution of tens of thousands
of 'Free Kuwait' T-shirts and bumper stickers at college campuses
across the US."
Documents filed with the US Department
of Justice showed that 119 H&K executives in 12 offices across
the US were overseeing the Kuwait account. "The firm's activities,
as listed in its report to the Justice Department, included arranging
media interviews for visiting Kuwaitis, setting up observances
such as National Free Kuwait Day, National Prayer Day (for Kuwait),
and National Student Information Day, organizing public rallies,
releasing hostage letters to the media, distributing news releases
and information kits, contacting politicians at all levels, and
producing a nightly radio show in Arabic from Saudi Arabia,"
wrote Arthur Rowse in the Progressive after the war. Citizens
for a Free Kuwait also capitalized on the publication of a quickie
154-page book about Iraqi atrocities titled The Rape of Kuwait,
copies of which were stuffed into media kits and then featured
on TV talk shows and the Wall Street Journal. The Kuwaiti embassy
also bought 200,000 copies of the book for distribution to American
troops.
Hill & Knowlton produced dozens of
video news releases at a cost of well over half a million dollars,
but it was money well spent, resulting in tens of millions of
dollars worth of "free" air time. The VNRs were shown
by eager TV news directors around the world who rarely (if ever)
identified Kuwait's PR firm as the source of the footage and
stories. TV stations and networks simply fed the carefully-crafted
propaganda to unwitting viewers, who assumed they were watching
"real" journalism. After the war Arthur Rowse asked
Hill & Knowlton to show him some of the VNRs, but the PR
company refused. Obviously the phony TV news reports had served
their purpose, and it would do H&K no good to help a reporter
reveal the extent of the deception. In Unreliable Sources, authors
Martin Lee and Norman Solomon noted that "when a research
team from the communications department of the University of
Massachusetts surveyed public opinion and correlated it with
knowledge of basic facts about US policy in the region, they
drew some sobering conclusions: The more television people watched,
the fewer facts they knew; and the less people knew in terms
of basic facts, the more likely they were to back the Bush administration."
Throughout the campaign, the Wirthlin
Group conducted daily opinion polls to help Hill & Knowlton
take the emotional pulse of key constituencies so it could identify
the themes and slogans that would be most effective in promoting
support for US military action. After the war ended, the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation produced an Emmy award-winning TV documentary
on the PR campaign titled "To Sell a War." The show
featured an interview with Wirthlin executive Dee Alsop in which
Alsop bragged of his work and demonstrated how audience surveys
were even used to physically adapt the clothing and hairstyle
of the Kuwait ambassador so he would seem more likeable to TV
audiences. Wirthlin's job, Alsop explained, was "to identify
the messages that really resonate emotionally with the American
people." The theme that struck the deepest emotional chord,
they discovered, was "the fact that Saddam Hussein was a
madman who had committed atrocities even against his own people,
and had tremendous power to do further damage, and he needed
to be stopped."
Suffer the
Little Children
Every big media event needs what journalists
and flacks alike refer to as "the hook." An ideal hook
becomes the central element of a story that makes it newsworthy,
evokes a strong emotional response, and sticks in the memory.
In the case of the Gulf War, the "hook" was invented
by Hill & Knowlton. In style, substance and mode of delivery,
it bore an uncanny resemblance to England's World War I hearings
that accused German soldiers of killing babies.
On October 10, 1990, the Congressional
Human Rights Caucus held a hearing on Capitol Hill which provided
the first opportunity for formal presentations of Iraqi human
rights violations. Outwardly, the hearing resembled an official
congressional proceeding, but appearances were deceiving. In
reality, the Human Rights Caucus, chaired by California Democrat
Tom Lantos and Illinois Republican John Porter, was simply an
association of politicians. Lantos and Porter were also co-chairs
of the Congressional Human Rights Foundation, a legally separate
entity that occupied free office space valued at $3,000 a year
in Hill & Knowlton's Washington, DC office. Notwithstanding
its congressional trappings, the Congressional Human Rights Caucus
served as another Hill & Knowlton front group, which--like
all front groups--used a noble-sounding name to disguise its
true purpose.
Only a few astute observers noticed the
hypocrisy in Hill & Knowlton's use of the term "human
rights." One of those observers was John MacArthur, author
of The Second Front, which remains the best book written about
the manipulation of the news media during the Gulf War. In the
fall of 1990, MacArthur reported, Hill & Knowlton's Washington
switchboard was simultaneously fielding calls for the Human Rights
Foundation and for "government representatives of Indonesia,
another H&K client. Like H&K client Turkey, Indonesia
is a practitioner of naked aggression, having seized . . . the
former Portuguese colony of East Timor in 1975. Since the annexation
of East Timor, the Indonesian government has killed, by conservative
estimate, about 100,000 inhabitants of the region."
MacArthur also noticed another telling
detail about the October 1990 hearings: "The Human Rights
Caucus is not a committee of congress, and therefore it is unencumbered
by the legal accouterments that would make a witness hesitate
before he or she lied. ... Lying under oath in front of a congressional
committee is a crime; lying from under the cover of anonymity
to a caucus is merely public relations."
In fact, the most emotionally moving
testimony on October 10 came from a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl,
known only by her first name of Nayirah. According to the Caucus,
Nayirah's full name was being kept confidential to prevent Iraqi
reprisals against her family in occupied Kuwait. Sobbing, she
described what she had seen with her own eyes in a hospital in
Kuwait City. Her written testimony was passed out in a media
kit prepared by Citizens for a Free Kuwait. "I volunteered
at the al-Addan hospital," Nayirah said. "While I was
there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns,
and go into the room where . . . babies were in incubators. They
took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and
left the babies on the cold floor to die."
Three months passed between Nayirah's
testimony and the start of the war. During those months, the
story of babies torn from their incubators was repeated over
and over again. President Bush told the story. It was recited
as fact in Congressional testimony, on TV and radio talk shows,
and at the UN Security Council. "Of all the accusations
made against the dictator," MacArthur observed, "none
had more impact on American public opinion than the one about
Iraqi soldiers removing 312 babies from their incubators and
leaving them to die on the cold hospital floors of Kuwait City."
At the Human Rights Caucus, however,
Hill & Knowlton and Congressman Lantos had failed to reveal
that Nayirah was a member of the Kuwaiti Royal Family. Her father,
in fact, was Saud Nasir al-Sabah, Kuwait's Ambassador to the
US, who sat listening in the hearing room during her testimony.
The Caucus also failed to reveal that H&K vice-president
Lauri Fitz-Pegado had coached Nayirah in what even the Kuwaitis'
own investigators later confirmed was false testimony. If Nayirah's
outrageous lie had been exposed at the time it was told, it might
have at least caused some in Congress and the news media to soberly
reevaluate the extent to which they were being skillfully manipulated
to support military action. Public opinion was deeply divided
on Bush's Gulf policy. As late as December 1990, a New York Times/CBS
News poll indicated that 48 percent of the American people wanted
Bush to wait before taking any action if Iraq failed to withdraw
from Kuwait by Bush's January 15 deadline.85 On January 12, the
US Senate voted by a narrow, five-vote margin to support the
Bush administration in a declaration of war. Given the narrowness
of the vote, the babies-thrown-from-incubators story may have
turned the tide in Bush's favor.
Following the war, human rights investigators
attempted to confirm Nayirah's story and could find no witnesses
or other evidence to support it. Amnesty International, which
had fallen for the story, was forced to issue an embarrassing
retraction. Nayirah herself was unavailable for comment. "This
is the first allegation I've had that she was the ambassador's
daughter," said Human Rights Caucus co-chair John Porter.
"Yes, I think people . . . were entitled to know the source
of her testimony." When journalists for the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation asked Nasir al-Sabah for permission to question Nayirah
about her story, the ambassador angrily refused.
Front-line
Flacks
The military build-up in the Persian
Gulf began by flying and shipping hundreds of thousands of US
troops, armaments and supplies to staging areas in Saudi Arabia,
yet another nation with no tolerance for a free press, democratic
rights and most western customs. In a secret strategy memo, the
Pentagon outlined a tightly-woven plan to constrain and control
journalists. A massive babysitting operation would ensure that
no truly independent or uncensored reporting reached back to
the US public. "News media representatives will be escorted
at all times," the memo stated. "Repeat, at all times."
Deputy Secretary of Defense for Public
Affairs Pete Williams served as the Pentagon's top flack for
the Gulf War. Using the perennial PR strategy of "good cop/bad
cop," the government of Saudi Arabia played the "heavy,"
denying visas and access to the US press, while Williams, the
reporters' friend, appeared to intercede repeatedly on their
behalf. This strategy kept news organizations competing with
each other for favors from Williams, and kept them from questioning
the fundamental fact that journalistic independence was impossible
under military escort and censorship.
The overwhelming technological superiority
of US forces won a decisive victory in the brief and brutal war
known as Desert Storm. Afterwards, some in the media quietly
admitted that they'd been manipulated to produce sanitized coverage
which almost entirely ignored the war's human cost--today estimated
at over 100,000 civilian deaths. The American public's single
most lasting memory of the war will probably be the ridiculously
successful video stunts supplied by the Pentagon showing robot
"smart bombs" striking only their intended military
targets, without much "collateral" (civilian) damage.
"Although influential media such
as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal kept promoting
the illusion of the 'clean war,' a different picture began to
emerge after the US stopped carpet-bombing Iraq," note Lee
and Solomon. "The pattern underscored what Napoleon meant
when he said that it wasn't necessary to completely suppress
the news; it was sufficient to delay the news until it no longer
mattered."
John Stauber
and Sheldon Rampton run PR
Watch. They are also the authors of Mad
Cow USA and Trust
Us We're Experts. They can be reached at:
stauber@tds.net
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