Attorney General John Ashcroft has named Kenneth R. Feinberg -- a former chief of staff for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) -- to head the $11 billion fund established by the federal government to compensate the families of victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the New York Times reports.

As the special master of the September 11 Victims Compensation Fund, the 56-year-old Feinberg will have final say over how the money in the fund is distributed. Ashcroft, to whom Feinberg will report, has directed Feinberg to have the fund up and running by the end of the year.

Feinberg, a liberal Democrat from Brockton, Massachusetts, has extensive litigation experience involving complicated compensation disputes, including those that arose over the Agent Orange defoliant used in Vietnam and the Dalkon Shield birth control device. In addition to overseeing the fund's operations and personally approving all awards made to claimants, Feinberg, who accepted the job without pay, will have to decide whether awards from the fund should be reduced to reflect other charitable gifts and assistance; determine how to handle claims from fragmented families; and settle on a method for dealing with inequities in compensation arising from the widely disparate economic circumstances of the victims' families.

Some fiscal conservatives in Congress have expressed concern about the ultimate size of the fund as well as the amount that any one victim's family can receive.

"All tax dollars come with some strings attached, and that string is Congressional oversight," said Jill Gerber, a spokeswoman for Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee. "Any time Congress is doling out billions of dollars, it expects a full accounting of that expenditure, and Senator Grassley is certainly in that category."

Barstow, David and Diana Henriques. "A Democrat to Run Fund for Sept. 11."
New York Times 11/27/01.