The congressmen co-chairing the committee, who apparently knew the true identity of the teen-age witness, had close relationships to Hill and Knowlton, the public relations firm hired by Citizens for a Free Kuwait, the group financed by Kuwait which lobbied for Congress for U.S. military intervention. A vice president of Hill and Knowlton helped organize the congressional hearings. The same Hill & Knowlton vice president had previously defended the human rights record of Turkey, which had been criticized for jailing people without due process and torturing and killing them. He also lobbied for Hill & Knowlton on behalf of Indonesia, which has, since 1975, killed more than 100,000 people in East Timor.