9-11 fund creates feeding frenzy for families

From Behind the Lens

By Ryan Smith

If you haven’t heard of the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund you might want to check it out—it could make you a millionaire.

For those of you not already in-the-know, just 10 days after the terror acts Sept. 11, the United States government created a fund available to relatives of deceased victims from the World Trade Center and the airlines involved in the Trade Center bombings.

The fund was part of a law titled “To preserve the continued viability of the United States air transportation system,” which was enacted to preempt lawsuits threatening the airline industry.

To receive compensation, relatives could file a claim to the government and after it reviewed those claims it would give relatives a check. As of April, 98 percent of families eligible for the fund had filed a claim.

And of those claims that were filed, an average of $1.8 million was awarded.

Interestingly enough, though the deadline to file a claim ended Dec. 22, 2003, people are still flocking to the government seeking their share.

But, it’s not just families of deceased victims from Sept. 11 that are lining up outside the front door of the program’s office looking for handouts.

Families of victims in the USS Cole, Oklahoma City, and Kenyan Embassy bombings are coming forward also to find out how much their deceased relatives are worth.

It’s funny how money has a way of distorting reality because I am struggling to find the link between Sept. 11 victim compensation and the USS Cole.

If those reasons don’t already seem unrelated to Sept. 11, here are a couple more proposed funds that stretch the imagination and have emerged since the Victim Compensation Fund was founded:

• Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy introduced the Anthrax Victims Fund Fairness Act that would allow compensation under the terms offered by the VCF for those affected by anthrax delivered in the mail to the Senate.

• Senator Arlen Specter has also found a way to link the Sept. 11 fund to the U.S. embassy bombing in Tanzania in 1998.

Kenneth Feinberg, head of the Victim Compensation Fund, stated in a Fox News report that an estimated $5 billion would eventually be paid from the fund. An estimate that Feinberg declares a “dramatic success.”

Recent winners from the Victim Compensation Fund have received anywhere from $500 to as much as $7.8 million.

The scenario sounds like the next installment of a Geico car insurance commercial, “It’s tragic about the loss of my husband to those terrible terror attacks, but I just made a ton of money from his death. Thank you Al-qaeda.”

It’s shameful to see thousands of people salivating over money at the expense of their relatives who died in a tragic event, while our troops are dying everyday in Iraq to avenge those that died on Sept. 11 and to protect the rest of the country from similar attacks.

It’s an interesting new concept, putting a price on a man’s life, when all this time I thought it was priceless.

If a soldier dies in Iraq, that soldier’s family gets a flag and his life insurance, that’s it.

For family members to say that they deserve money because their son or daughter died on the USS Cole is absurd. Those soldiers knew the risk of being in the military. What makes them any different than the kid who gets shot on the streets of Fallujah?

If family members need help getting back on their feet after a tragedy like that, fine, I understand. But asking for $7.8 million dollars for your wife or husband’s death so that you can keep sitting around and not working is ridiculous.

This country was built on sacrifices and hard work. So while I, too, recognize and mourn those that have died at the hands of terrorists, I don’t feel the least bit sympathetic to those who don’t find life-sized checks propped up against their front doors when they wake up to get the morning paper.

— This columnist can be reached at collegian@csufresno.edu