Man who led 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund looks back
Kenneth Feinberg reflects on the emotional toll of leading the 9/11 victims compensation fund 25 years later
Kenneth Feinberg reflects on the emotional toll of leading the 9/11 victims compensation fund 25 years later
The man who led the unprecedented effort to compensate victims' families after the 9/11 attacks is looking back 25 years later.
As special master of the Victims Compensation Fund, it fell to Kenneth Feinberg to answer a seemingly impossible question: what is life worth?
"Courts, judges, juries every day in Boston and throughout the nation answer that question," Feinberg said. "What would the victim have earned during a work life? And you get a pretty good legal, calculated cold view of what a life is worth."
He said one of the difficulties after 9/11 was that so many victims and their families were asked to respond to the fund so soon after the tragedy.
"I quickly came to realize that money is a pretty poor substitute for a loved one lost or somebody whose life has been completely ripped asunder," Feinberg said. "That's what we learned on 9/11."
He said anyone taking on this kind of task should be ready for the emotions that come with it.
"You better anticipate anger, frustration, grief, sobbing," he said.
Feinberg conducted about 950 individual hearings with victims or their families.
"What you learn when you listen to people in grief is listen — listen," he said. "Don't try to put yourself in their shoes. Don't say, gratuitously, 'I know how you feel.' You have no idea what they're going through."
Feinberg said his law degree didn't do him much good during that process.
"People would come to see me and say, 'Mr. Feinberg, you're offering me $2 million for the death of my daughter. I haven't even got a body back from the World Trade Center. I have a better idea. Bring my daughter back.'"
He said nothing in his life prepared him to handle that.
Feinberg's book, "What is Life Worth?" is being rereleased with added commentary 25 years after the 9/11 attacks.