The man determining the monetary value of lives lost on 9/11 | 60 Minutes Archive
In a Nutshell
Kenneth Feinberg was granted sole, unreviewable authority to decide how much each of the 2,976 victims of 9/11 would receive from a federal compensation fund designed to shield airlines from lawsuits. He set awards by calculating economic loss plus a flat $250,000 pain-and-suffering payment, but Congress’s rules—especially deducting life insurance—created wide gaps between rich and poor families and sparked anger from both sides. Despite criticism and emotional pleas, Feinberg refused to differentiate pain levels and accepted no pay, viewing the job as an act of public service that ultimately forced grieving families to put a dollar value on the lives they lost.
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No single person in history has been given the kind of authority by the United States government that this man has. His name is Kenneth Feinberg, a 58-year-old arbitration lawyer who's been asked by Attorney General John Ashcroft to become judge and jury over the federal government's September 11th victim's compensation fund - a man who in a certain way has been asked to play God. He's been given the archaic title of special master. He is the one man who must place a value on each of the almost 3,000 lives lost that day.
Though a December 22nd deadline is fast approaching, there are still hundreds of families who've not yet applied for compensation. Fineberg has been listening to a relentless catalog of heartbreak that can often be reduced to a single word: grief.
There are many people who have been traumatized by September 11th, who when you sit with them and say, "I will help you fill out the forms, you may get $2 million tax-free. I will assist you. I'll fill it out with you." And they say, "Mr. Feinberg, leave the application. Thank you for trying. I cannot put numbers to my daughter's life, to my son's life, to my husband's life."
But that is exactly what Kenneth Feinberg must do. Attach a price tag to suffering, to injury, and a specific price tag to each of 2,976 lives.
Did Congress make your job more difficult by asking you to evaluate each life? Absolutely. As opposed to saying, "Here's four, six, 10 billion dollars, whatever. Divide it by the number of claimants and each will get the same."
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