Washington Watch: 'Master of disaster' comes to La
by GERARD SHIELDS - Advocate (excerpt)

Ken Feinberg has become the master of American disaster — again. The Washington attorney who has been selected to distribute $20 billion to victims of the continuing BP oil gusher has been in similar positions before. A 64-year-old native of Massachusetts, Feinberg also ran the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund and handed out $7 billion to more than 5,000 victims and survivors of the terrorist attack.

Three years after that, Feinberg was called upon to oversee the fund set up to benefit the families of those killed in the 2007 Virginia Tech University student massacre. Prior to the new call from President Barack Obama for aid in the spill, Feinberg helped the administration review and cut the pay of 25 executives at seven companies that received the largest amounts of the massive American bailout money. Feinberg received the title “executive pay czar.” But when people talk about Feinberg’s negotiation successes, they point to his settlement of a class-action suit by 250,000 Vietnam veterans and their families against the producers of Agent Orange, a toxic spray used to defoliate the jungles of Vietnam.

The case had been lingering for more than eight years. In just six weeks, Feinberg reached a $180 million settlement between the chemical’s manufacturers and the victims. “His natural talent is cutting a deal that everyone can live with,” John C. Coffee Jr., a professor at the Columbia University Law School in New York, where Feinberg once taught, told The New York Times. On the Sept. 11 fund, Feinberg personally met and attended 1,500 hearings with survivors and the families of victims. Footage of victims and families yelling at Feinberg, crisply dressed in a suit and tie during the hearings, was common. He had a staff of 200 that spent nearly three years investigating claims before issuing benefits.