Victims of pre-Sept. 11 attacks may get access to compensation fund

Spurred by the lobbying of grieving families, the Senate Judiciary Committee is poised to expand the Sept. 11 Compensation Fund to include victims of other terrorist acts committed against Americans.

The move, which could come as early as this week, would designate substantial payments to families of those killed in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the 2001 anthrax attacks. Senators are also considering whether to include the families of sailors killed in 2000 aboard the USS Cole, which was nearly sunk in a suicide bombing while refueling in Yemen.

The original Sept. 11 fund--created by Congress in the wake of last year's attacks--offered compensation to those victims' families who agreed not to sue the airlines. Payouts will average $1.8 million, with about 500 families already filing applications for compensation.

But immediately after last fall's creation of the fund as part of the airline industry bailout bill, Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating (R) complained that Oklahoma City victims had never been compensated. Then in February, Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., began pushing to include the 1993 World Trade Center victims. And in a 391-18 vote in May, the House passed the Embassy Employee Compensation Act, which includes the families of the 1998 embassy bombing victims in the fund. The Bush administration criticized that legislation and is working on its own plan for compensating terrorism victims.

But senators have cited the House bill as justification for expanding the fund. In May, Sen. Don Nickles, R-Okla., said that if Congress expands eligibility for the fund to attacks beyond Sept. 11, "it is a simple matter of fairness to include Oklahoma City victims as well."

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., has led the effort to include Cole victims, the most controversial compensation proposal. To help the families of Cole victims, senators are considering other possibilities, including dramatically increasing the regular payouts that military families receive when a relative is killed while on duty.

Senators do seem to have agreed that the families should not be allowed to pay their advocates with compensation they would receive--a potential agreement that worries the families' lobbyists. Stuart H. Newberger and Karen Hastie Williams of Crowell & Moring, who represent 10 families of victims of the 1998 Kenya Embassy bombing, and Charles E. Polk Jr., who represents some Oklahoma City victims, have led the lobbying effort.

Newberger and Hastie Williams had previously filed a claim on behalf of their clients with the State Department. That filing argued that then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had failed to heed warnings from the U.S. ambassador to Kenya that the embassy was unsafe. The attorneys have agreed to withdraw the claim if the Kenya victims are included in the Sept. 11 fund.

Polk, vice chairman of the St. Louis law firm Lathrop & Gage, is a former adviser to Attorney General John D. Ashcroft. He's working with lawyer Douglas P. Dowd of St. Louis, whose father's 1972 campaign for Missouri governor was managed by current House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt, D-Mo.

A lingering issue is the size of the payments to victims' families. Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, has proposed that all new entrants to the fund receive payouts equivalent to those given to survivors of police officers and firefighters. Those payouts are currently $250,000 but could be increased to as much as $500,000.

Polk says that would be unacceptable, and he is threatening to file a lawsuit to ensure that Oklahoma City victims receive the same million-dollar-plus payments that will be made to Sept. 11 families who've signed on to the fund.

Budget hawks, as yet, have not opposed the fund's expansion. Concord Coalition Executive Director Robert Bixby says that including the other victims would not add significantly to the overall cost, which is running lower than original estimates because many families have opted to retain their right to sue.

But Bixby warns that such an expansion "could set a precedent that would greatly expand the role of government in compensating victims of tragedy." If Oklahoma City victims win government compensation, Bixby says, victims of natural disasters and street crimes might also make a case for compensation.

Nickles lambastes the lobbyists, saying he doesn't "want these families victimized twice-once by the bombing and again by any attorneys or lobbyists charging unreasonable fees." He is spearheading the effort to nullify all contingency arrangements between victims' families and their lawyer-lobbyists. An aide to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., agreed that the fees looked "ethically questionable."

In an effort to quell the dispute, Polk agreed in mid-June to reduce his fee from 25 percent to 10 percent of the compensation that each family would receive. But he was also dismissive of Nickles's effort. "Everyone has a constitutional right to hire a lawyer," he says.

Kathleen Treanor, a Polk client, says that Nickles earlier this year opposed including Oklahoma City victims in the Sept. 11 fund because he said it "would open the floodgates and that every gun-shooting and murder victim would have to be included."

Only when she turned to a lobbyist and threatened to file a lawsuit, Treanor says, did "people start taking notice."