Paying For Bin Laden's Other Crimes

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

January 8, 2002 / 5:34 PM EST / CBS

Lou Gunn of Norfolk, Va. has a simple question. What's the difference between his son's death and the deaths suffered on September 11? After all, his son was killed by terrorists, just like in New York, and these terrorists worked for Osama Bin Laden too.

It was just a different place and time. Signalman Charone Gunn died October 12, 2000 aboard the USS Cole.

"My loss is just like the loss of the people in New York. You know, the only difference between 9-11 and 10-12 is we're talking one year, one month and one day, but the pain and the grief are the same," said Gunn.

But, reports CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart, the compensation is not.

Lou Gunn's family received $15,000 in benefits for their son's death while under a program approved by Congress, families of Sept. 11 victims stand to receive on average $1.5 million.

Gunn and several other Cole families tell CBS News they now plan to challenge their exclusion from that plan, and they are not alone.

Relatives of the 12 Americans who died in the African embassy bombings in 1998 -- also Bin Laden's handiwork -- are asking the same. Edith Bartley lost her father and only brother there.

"I think that something should have been done three years ago for our families. You know the body bags came home, people saw Andrews Air Force Base, front page news, and I think the world thought, 'Oh our government is so compassionate, taking care of these families.' That is so far from the truth," she said.

Many Sept. 11 families are also unhappy about the fund. Stephen Push lost his wife, Lisa Raines, in the plane that hit the Pentagon. The fund's awards are far smaller than you might win in a lawsuit, he notes — but if you accept money from the fund, you can't sue.

"We are the only victims of terrorism who had our rights to seek compensation taken away by an act of Congress," he said.

Mostly what the families want is a sense of fairness. Just treat us as well as you treated the Chinese, one suggested, noting that after the U.S. accidentally bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade two years ago killing three employees, we gave Beijing more than $32 million for their building and their dead.