The 9/11 Fund Worked Because Victims Felt Heard, Not Just Paid

When Kenneth Feinberg, the Washington lawyer who ran the federal fund that paid families after the September 11 attacks, was asked about one striking result of that effort, that responsibility for the attacks never went to trial, he did not talk first about money. He talked about listening.

About 97% of the 5,300 eligible claimants accepted awards and gave up the right to sue, while only 94 people opted out and later settled, so no court ever tried who was legally responsible.

Feinberg said, “The primary reason for the success of the 9-11 fund and a valuable lesson for me thereafter, give victims the opportunity to be heard.”

He meant something specific, he said, not only large public town hall meetings where people vent together, but private sessions behind closed doors with just a claimant and the official in charge. Those meetings could be with Feinberg himself or with Camille Biros, his longtime deputy, a nonlawyer who helps design and run his compensation programs, acting as the face of the government. Claimants could express anger, frustration, and uncertainty directly to the people deciding the checks.

He said he will never recover from the work on the fund, but the strain was not the math of valuing a life. He said judges and juries place a value on life daily in courtrooms in New Jersey and around the country. You estimate what the victim would have earned over a working life and add an amount for pain, suffering, and emotional distress.

The strain, he said, was empathy, sitting through more than 900 separate hearings alone with family members or injured victims and trying to make each meeting worthwhile and constructive from their perspective. He said he stayed composed as a professional with “a job to do for the president of the United States,” even when the person across the table was distraught, because “You can't start wailing and crying in the presence of somebody who is also wailing and crying.”