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American Morning

'Home Fronts': Distributing Charity Money to Victims' Families

Aired December 17, 2001 - 07:52   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: This morning, we begin a new weekly segment called "Home Fronts" with publisher Steven Brill. Every Monday at this time, in conjunction with his "Newsweek" column, Steven will explore how America's institutions -- legal, financial and otherwise -- have been transformed since 9/11.

Well, today we begin with Steve's take on the issues related to distributing charity money to victims' families -- welcome aboard -- good to have you with us.

STEVEN BRILL, PUBLISHER: Thank you -- good to be here.

ZAHN: So Kenneth Feinberg is the man this week that will be setting the guidelines for how billions of dollars will be disbursed. The bottom line, is it not, that he has to figure out how you assign a value to...

BRILL: Well, what...

ZAHN: ... individual human life?

BRILL: What he has to do -- first is the issue of the private charities that we've been reading about: the Red Cross, the September 11 Fund and all of that. And that's relatively, believe it or not, small money compared to this government victims' fund that was set up at the same time that the government bailed the airlines out of liability for this. And what this guy, Feinberg, called the -- quote -- "special master," and he is quite special in this case -- has to do is he has to decide the value of human life.

ZAHN: How do you do that?

BRILL: And what's going to happen is at the end of the day, we'll have, you know, the 3,000 victims, and each of them will have had a price put on their life, or in this case their death. And the way you're supposed to do it in court is you look at the future earnings of the people. You actually -- there are court cases where you litigate the value of their services as a parent. Was this father particularly close to this child? Was this father a bad parent? Were the parents about to be separated? You actually do sometimes litigate this stuff in court.

Feinberg is going to try to sidestep that, as he should, and set some basic guidelines. My guess is he'll come out with basically an average payment of about 1.2 million, 1.3 million -- a minimum payment. Then each family will get money based on how many children were in the family, based on the age of the person.

But the bottom line is for the first time, Americans are going to confront what has happened sort of piece by piece in the court system, case by case, which is the government is going to be deciding the comparative value of human life. Your life would be worth X, and my life would be worth Y, and that's going to drive a lot of people really crazy.

ZAHN: Well, it has to, because no matter what kind of guidelines you set up, you're making some very subjective calls, you know.

BRILL: Right. And this happens in courts all of the time, you know.

ZAHN: Of course.

BRILL: You know, if someone who is a 30-year-old stockbroker making $1 million a year gets killed, his family goes to court and says, he would have earned, you know, $10 million. And that's more than someone is going to get whose father was a janitor or a dishwasher. That's the way the legal system works, because the legal system is supposed to say to the families, here are your -- quote -- "lost earnings," plus in some states pain and suffering and things like that.

But it is not going to be a pretty sight. It's going to be frustrating. We have -- we're going to be forced to confront as a society the fact that our government and our society often makes decisions, really sensitive decisions and decisions we don't like to look at, about the value of human life.

ZAHN: You have spent time with a lot of these victims' families. Some of them already feel that they are being discriminated against...

BRILL: Oh, sure they do.

ZAHN: ... their father wasn't a firefighter or a policeman or a policewoman.

BRILL: Yes, this is really -- you know, you just don't know which side, you know, to be on, and the answer is you really can't be on any side. But you know, there are some families who, you know, who -- you know, an electrician working on, you know, the 85th floor. And that person died and hasn't received any money yet, whereas, you know, the firemen and the policemen, you know, they have gotten instant cash payments. But you know, their contracts that they bargained for stipulate that. You know, the police are supposed to get X dollars if they die.

But it is not -- you know, it's just not pleasant to watch people you know, really kind of turning on each other for very understandable reasons. But, you know, I wouldn't want to be Ken Feinberg.

ZAHN: I've got to move you very quickly along, because I only just have 20 seconds left of the issue of Zacarias Moussaoui, the man who now has been transferred to Virginia court, where he will stand trial that may bring him the death penalty. This guy is the so-called 20th hijacker.

BRILL: Yes.

(CROSSTALK)

ZAHN: What do you think is going to happen to him?

BRILL: Well, the first thing that happened to him is he got a gift last week. Of the six counts against him, five of these conspiracy counts are very specific to him conspiring to blow up an airplane, to use an airplane as a weapon of mass destruction, et cetera. And the Osama bin Laden tape seems to indicate that, you know, Osama bin Laden is bragging that these people didn't know that they were doing that. So therefore, they couldn't have conspired to do that.

There is one general conspiracy count against him, which looks as good as these general, vague conspiracy counts usually look, and those are -- you know, those are the closest things to sort of crime by association and speech that we have in our system.

ZAHN: So you're saying a conviction is tough in this one?

BRILL: On one count, it's not as tough as the other more specific counts.

ZAHN: All right. Steven Brill, good to have you aboard -- look forward to seeing you every Monday morning at this time...

BRILL: Thanks.

ZAHN: ... for your "Home Fronts" column in "Newsweek," and your HOME FRONTS piece here on the air at CNN.

BRILL: Terrific.

ZAHN: Thank you for your time.

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