Report on Sept. 11 Fund Is Released

Kenneth Feinberg, shown in November 2001 with Attorney General John Ashcroft, issued his final report on the fund. (J. Scott Applewhite -- AP)

The fund also provided many families with a much-needed sense of closure that would have eluded them in legal battles, Feinberg said. Thirteen families neither filed lawsuits nor applied to the fund by the deadline, he said.

"The major reason was grief," he said. "There are a number of people so clinically depressed that, despite my urging, they could not pick up a pen and fill out the forms."

Nikki Stern, whose husband, James Potorti, 52, was killed in the World Trade Center attacks, said she received a "comfortable" award from the fund. "It was a decent process," she said. "The application was almost impossible for anyone unless you had a master's degree. Maybe that can be simplified."

Beverly Eckert of Stamford, Conn., whose husband, Sean Rooney, 50, perished in the World Trade Center attacks, decided to file a lawsuit and forgo an award. "This wasn't about being compensated for loss. It was about how did it happen, how can you prevent it, and ensuring that there is some sort of accountability," said Eckert, a member of the Family Steering Committee for the Sept. 11 commission.

The compensation fund drew considerable criticism in the year after it was enacted. Grieving families labored over the extensive paperwork required to file a claim. Some families complained that "collateral offsets," such as life insurance and other payments from outside sources, were deducted from the federal compensation awards. Feinberg noted in his report that this problem would not have existed under a system of uniform awards.

And the families of victims of earlier terrorist attacks asked why they were not entitled to federal compensation as well.

"We have been thrown against the curb. We have been forgotten," said Kathleen A. Treanor, a leader of the now-defunct group Fairness for OKC, whose 4-year-old daughter died in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, along with two other Treanor relatives. "It's disgraceful. When someone can tell me why a rich New York stockbroker's wife deserves compensation, and a poor farmer's family that lost everything does not, I'll shut the . . . up."

Feinberg defended the government's decision not to cover the victims of other attacks under the fund. The Sept. 11 attacks were a "unique historical event" that triggered a "universal and profound" national response that justified limiting the compensation program to their victims, he said in his report.

A recent report by the Rand Institute for Civil Justice recommended that the government create a system of compensation for future attacks. Feinberg argued against that, saying officials should wait to see the magnitude of and reaction to a strike, should it occur.