The financial impacts of 9/11, and where the money went

I wrote after 9/11 that one of the most disturbing things about the attack by the 19 terrorists was that we didn’t know who our enemy was.

We couldn’t identify any other country as being the instigator and still haven’t for that matter, other than determining that training camps were being run in Afghanistan by an American hating terrorist group called A-Qaida led by an Arab named Osama bin Laden.

He was a citizen of Saudi Arabia, of Yemeni ancestry and had a Syrian mother. His father ran a large multi-national building company and was killed in an aircraft crash when Osama was 10, leaving his son a reported $80 million. His mother remarried and most of his relatives disassociated themselves from his terrorist activities.

It was bin Laden who called on every Muslim “by God’s will to kill the Americans and plunder their possessions wherever he finds them and whenever he can.” What set him off was the presence of U.S. troops in the land of Islam’s holiest shrines when we came in to protect Kuwait. He led Al Qaida in declaring war on the U.S. in 1996.

When the U.S. stepped up the war in Afghanistan, bin Laden moved his operation to neighboring Pakistan where he was surprised and killed in his home by Navy Seals on May 1 of this year.

I also quoted in 2001 a friend of mine in high places who was in the know on what was going on militarily and politically who said that when the day came that bin Laden was disposed of, that wouldn’t be the end of the terrorism threat. My friend, who goes unnamed because to identify him would eliminate him as a news source but some day I’ll tell you, maintained that Russia was behind the 9/11 plot because it was too sophisticated to have come from Al Qaida and the Arabs.

“Russia is not our friend,” he said. “We killed them. We lowered the price of gold and oil to below what it took to get it out of the ground. That was Reagan’s idea. They’ll team up with China and there’s no love in the Arab world for us, so it’s got to be two or three countries.”

Well, enough of that. My brother called me after the 9/11 tenth anniversary shows to ask what happened to all the millions of dollars meant for families of the victims. I have a question too, I said. Of the 2,996 victims from 93 nations, how many were Americans? I called my daughter the computer junkie and she reported Wikipedia said of the 2,996 victims, 372 were foreign nationals, not including the 19 hijackers.

There were several funds distributing retribution money. The September 11 Victim Compensation Fund had $7 billion from airlines, insurance companies, government, etc. Attorney General John Ashcroft named Ken Feinberg a special master to determine how to divide it up. That took 33 months and the money was to be distributed according to the estimated earning each victim was expected to make in the remainder of his lifetime.

The average payment was $1.8 million. But if you chose to take what was offered, you had to agree not to sue the airlines. Some of the victims, however, had been very highly paid and considered $1.8 million too low. They sued. I’m not sure what happened but I don’t think they got any more.

I also saw an article in Parade magazine this last Sept. 11 about a celebrity telethon that raised $129 million. Allotments of up to $20,000 were given to family members and financial dependents of those killed in the attacks and to anyone who was seriously injured.

It was used, according to the fund’s CEO Joshua Gotbaum, to provide cash, counseling and a helping hand with government red tape.

–Adele

(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, WA. 98340)