What’s your life worth? A Q&A with someone who might help decide someday
Talking over ‘Worth,’ both the concept and the Netflix movie, with Kenneth Feinberg, who oversaw the 9/11 Victim Compensation program. He’ll be at Purdue for a Q&A with Mitch Daniels Tuesday
Thanks this morning to new Based in Lafayette reporting project sponsor Barash Law for support to help make this edition possible.
Next week, Purdue President Mitch Daniels is bringing attorney Kenneth Feinberg to Purdue to talk through the blunt question he put on the cover of his 2005 book: “What is Life Worth?”
Michael Keaton played Feinberg in a 2020 Netflix movie, “Worth,” which followed Feinberg and his team’s nearly three-year process of overseeing a 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund that distributed more than $7 billion to more than 5,500 survivors and the families of victims of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Spoiler alert: Finding your way to a satisfactory dollar amount isn’t the half of it.
Feinberg, once a prosecutor and former chief of staff for Sen. Ted Kennedy, has been central in negotiations over other victim compensation funds in some of the U.S.’s highest profile cases: massacres at Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook Elementary, Agent Orange compensation for Vietnam veterans, clergy abuse, the Boston Marathon bombings and the killings at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.
Here's some of a conversation we had ahead of his trip Tuesday to West Lafayette.
Question: Did the movie get it right?
Kenneth Feinberg: The movie, “Worth,” did get it right in the sense that it did a good job of accurately portraying what we went through back in 2001 in designing and administering the 9/11 Victim Compensation Program. The film, of course, takes a fair amount of dramatic license. We watch the film and sort of are amused at some of the dramatic changes they made in order to make the film more receptive to the audience. But overall, I was surprised at the skill of the director and the screenwriter and the production team and the actors in setting the tone pertaining to the challenges we confronted. That film was prepared over 10 years after the end of the 9/11 fund. And during that 10 years, the producers came back to me every two years to extend the exclusive book rights, while they mulled over whether and how a screenplay would work. I was very dubious. Frankly, I told them they were wasting their money in time. But they did it.
Q: “Spotlight” (about the Boston Globe’s investigation into child abuse scandals in the Catholic church) was another one I thought there was no way they could make this work. Reporting is essentially such boring work.
Feinberg: I never thought they'd be able to convey the emotion. But in “Spotlight” and in “Worth,” I give them a thumbs up. They did a good job.
Q: You're the new Siskel and Ebert on that. One of the opening scenes of “Worth” was chilling in a way, in a law class where you ask what a life is worth and that it’s not a trick question. I think the line was: “You haven't stumbled into a philosophy class. The answer has a number, and that's the job.” Is that still the case?
Feinberg: That’s absolutely the case. In every court, whether it's in a city, a town, a village, a county, throughout the nation. In every court, you hire your lawyer, I'll hire my lawyer. Judge and jury will calculate – with a calculator – the value of a life. And the formula is very simple, really. It's not rocket science. One: What would the victim have earned over a work life but for the tragedy. That means a stockbroker, a banker, a lawyer, an accountant will receive more money from a jury than a waiter, a busboy, a cop, a fireman, a soldier. That's the American system. Add to that economic loss, some amount for pain and suffering, emotional distress, it all equals a dollar sign. Insurance companies know this. Lawyers know this. The system, which is attacked by critics, has been the system in this country for over 200 years.
What made the 9/11 fund so unique and successful was we added to that formula the voluntary right of any victim, survivor or a family survivor to come and see me, and in a private one-on-one, confidential conference explain anything they wanted to tell me. I conducted personally about over 900 individual hearings. And my staff conducted another 600 to 700. That was how the program worked.
Q: You called it “vulgar work.” That’s the money aspect. But with so many people coming through with so many personal stories and personal expectations, how do you cope with that? Is it possible to cope and move on, dealing with it over and over?
Feinberg: It's very, very difficult. That is the most debilitating part of the assignment, not calculating a dollar figure, but acting, in effect, as a priest or a rabbi in sitting with individual family members in grief. The emotional toil, the emotional impact, the emotional toll that it takes of you is what makes the job so incredibly difficult. You lose sleep. You work constantly under a cloud. And when you take on an assignment like 9/11 or the Boston Marathon bombings or Pulse nightclub terrorist attacks in Florida, you better brace yourself. Because it's the emotional aspect that is so debilitating.
Q: Do you find when people give you small mementos of those lost that those are tougher than the bigger questions that you face? I mean, are there things that come to you that just stop you in your tracks?
Feinberg: Yes. First of all, during my administration of the 9/11 fund, my office was filled with mementos. Teddy bears, toys, medals, diplomas. I mean, my office was filled with mementos offered by individual claimants as part of the hearing. And when we conducted these hearings, it was amazing. These claimants did not come to see me privately to talk about money or compensation. They came for two primary reasons. First, to vent about life's unfairness. “Mr. Feinberg, my wife died. My husband died. My son, my daughter died at the World Trade Center. On the airplanes at the Pentagon. There is no God. No God could take my son's life. The government was asleep at the switch. And I am angry.” That is one reason they came to see me – to vent.
The other reason was to validate the memory of a lost loved one. “Mr. Feinberg, I lost my wife at the World Trade Center. We were married for 25 years. And now that I have this private hearing with you, I'd like to show you a video of our wedding 25 years ago.” “Well, Mr. Jones, you don't have to show me that video. It'll be very emotional, and it won't have any bearing on the compensation.” “No, you're gonna watch. I want you to see what those murderers did to my angel.” And then he'll show the video and comment about the wedding. I mean, that's where you're better off having a degree in divinity or psychiatry, rather than the law.
Q: What happened to all those mementos from the 9/11 cases? Do you still have them?
Feinberg: We gave them all back to the families. Or an overwhelming number of them at the end of the program.
Q: It seems like it would be a museum piece of some sort.
Feinberg: I think we asked the claimants what they wanted us to do if they wanted us to keep them. But if they did, I believe we sent them to the 9/11 fund archives, or in some cases they may have requested to send them to the 9/11 Museum in New York City.
Q: The movie depicts it as a change of heart for yourself and those private meetings. I'm not sure if that's a dramatic turn or if that's real. But did that inform how your work continues today? Was there a learning moment or a turning point there for you?
Feinberg: First of all, when I talk about dramatic license, that's one good example. The idea that I had an epiphany and, all of a sudden, I realized the importance of empathy – I mean, if it makes a good movie, fine. What we did learn in the 9/11 fund, and in every fund after that, is the value and the importance of providing individual claimants the opportunity to be heard. I must say the 9/11 fund was a success primarily because we encouraged individual claimants to come and see me and to voice their feelings. It made a huge difference, as the movie points out. I'm not sure it was a sudden awakening that I had. I think we always knew the hearings would be important. I didn't appreciate the extent to which the hearings would be critical in convincing people that the program does exhibit empathy. It does react to emotional outpouring by claimants in private. And to that extent, it was a learning experience and has proven very important going forward in the last 20 years and other programs.
Q: Do you find any of these cases are easier than another, taking into account a Sandy Hook or a Boston Marathon bombing or even Indianapolis State Fairgrounds stage collapse with the Sugarland concert?
Feinberg: Nope. They're all difficult, because they may have differences and there may be variations in the facts. But there's one common denominator in all of the tragedies you reference. And that is the emotional anger, disappointment, frustration of victims. And that makes each separate program similar in stress and angst. Now the most difficult of all of them, the one that I set aside, is 9/11. Because that was the first of that type and was a national tragedy. Gearing up for that program, when we only had 13 days’ notice from the time of the tragedy until the program was enacted by Congress, that was particularly challenging. But none of them are quote, easy, unquote, because of the emotional quotient.
Q: While you were doing all this, the New York Times, for example, was trying to run obituaries of every person involved. Those probably contained the same kinds of things you were hearing in your office. Did you find that you wanted to read those kinds of things? Or was it better to kind of divorce yourself from outside influences like that?
Feinberg: Read everyone. Read every one to learn as much as we could about each of the victims in anticipating that surviving family members would come to see us – or the victims themselves, if they survived, would come to see us privately. So, we very much added those bits to the overall file to understand as best we could the emotional overhang of the claim and frankly, in some cases, the factual information that we found so valuable.
Q: You’re coming to Purdue to talk with Mitch Daniels next week. Tell me about your ties to him in all of this.
Feinberg: I will always be in Mitch Daniels’ debt till the day I die.
Q: How so?
Feinberg: Because first, Mitch Daniels, when he was director of the Office of Management and Budget during the (George W.) Bush administration, he interviewed me for the job. Now, John Ashcroft, the attorney general, asked me to serve as the special master of the program. But John Ashcroft said, “But you better go down and talk to Mitch Daniels and get his take and make sure he's comfortable with you.” Mitch Daniels interviewed me. We agreed that the program was very unique in American history – public money for some people, but not others. He was concerned, as I was. We spent maybe an hour chatting about the program. We agreed it should not be replicated, that it was a precedent for nothing – a unique program. And he said to me at the end, “Ken, I will do what I can to back you up 100%.” And did he ever. The Bush administration – during the entire 33 months, during some tough sledding, when I was, as in the movie, attacked, vilified, criticized – Mitch Daniels, John Ashcroft, President Bush all had my back and really made the program totally apolitical and bipartisan.
And then I got a call out of a clear blue from Gov. Daniels. “Ken, we’ve had a windstorm that's resulted in deaths and injuries here in Indiana. Do you think you could design and administer a program to compensate the victims of the storm?” I flew to Indiana, met with Gov. Daniels and in one day agreed to take on that assignment, which we did successfully. Pro bono. I did not want to get paid. Gov. Daniels asked you to do something, you do it. Glad to do it, honored to do it. It worked. I had the help of the attorney general of Indiana at the time (Greg Zoeller), as well. And we managed to distribute those funds, over $5 million, to the victims.
Q: In the movie, at one point, you’re in a room with a music collection – just massive walls of CDs. Was that for dramatic effect, or was that for real?
Feinberg: That’s for real. I'm asked all the time, how did you maintain your equilibrium during 9/11 or any of these programs, which is so heart wrenching? And I tell people, during the day you're dealing with the horrors of civilization – death and destruction. At night, to get some relief, the height of civilization – Beethoven, Brahms, Bach, Mahler. So, you try as best you can to maintain your sanity by classical music, opera, chamber works, symphony. It helps me a great deal.
Q: With all your work, is there something we should expect coming from the COVID era? How do you how do you put a price on some of that, where there's so many variables? Or is that something that can be worked with?
Feinberg: You cannot set up a 9/11 fund for COVID. Just as Mitch Daniels said back in 2001, the 9/11 fund is unique. It ought to be limited to the tragedy itself. It's not a precedent. And I don't think there's going to be, nor should there be, a COVID compensation program for everybody. So I think one thing you learn from my work is when not to set up some standalone program.
IF YOU GO: Kenneth Feinberg will sit for a Q&A with Purdue President Mitch Daniels at 6:30 p.m. Feb. 1 in Stewart Center’s Loeb Playhouse. Part of the Presidential Lecture Series, the event is free. It also will be livestreamed.
CONTROVERSIAL CLASSROOM OVERSIGHT BILL ADVANCES
House Bill 1134, a controversial measure that would limit “divisive” topics in classrooms and would give parents some oversight of teachers’ lesson plans, advanced out of the Indiana House Wednesday afternoon on a 60-37 vote. It heads to the Indiana Senate, where a similar and equally controversial bill was scrubbed earlier in the session.
Rep. Tony Cook, a Cicero Republican who authored the HB 1134, defended the bill, saying lawmakers “took pains” to see that it wasn’t overreaching, while advocates in the House argued that good teachers had nothing to worry about the sort of transparency proposed for the classroom curriculum and lesson plans.
Teachers, though, have argued that the bill – bubbling up from debates about how schools handle lessons involving race and history – will have them constantly looking over their shoulders, forced to post their classroom plans and worrying about whether someone will take offense.
Rep. Sheila Klinker, a Lafayette Democrat and retired teacher, voted against the bill, saying it would push teachers to leave the profession – or at least Indiana.
“Teachers, who are already under enormous pressure to prepare our children for the future, will now have the added anxiety of trying to plan lessons that won't make their students and their parents 'uncomfortable,’” Klinker said. “It’s unsustainable.”
Among the local Indiana House delegation with districts in Tippecanoe County, the votes were along party lines. Republicans Tim Brown, Don Lehe and Sharon Negele voted yes. Klinker and Chris Campbell, both Democrats, voted no.
For closer looks at the debate on the House floor: Here are links to accounts from Indianapolis Star reporter Arika Herron and AP reporter Casey Smith.
TESTING, TESTING
The Indiana Department of Health added an option for COVID testing and vaccinations this week at the Indiana National Guard Armory, 5218 Haggerty Lane in Lafayette. (For reference: That’s directly behind the Subaru of Indiana Automotive plant.) The site opened Wednesday and will be open noon-8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday. Walk-ins are OK, according to the health department. But registrations are available for testing and for vaccines, to speed the process. For more details, here’s the health department’s release.
For more testing and vaccination options, including at the Tippecanoe County Health Department’s vaccination clinic, check ourshot.in.gov.
Thanks, again, to new Based in Lafayette sponsor Barash Law for helping make this edition possible.
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