Oklahoma City bombing victims' relatives seek compensation

Through their lobbying group, Fairness for OKC, about 150 survivors and relatives of victims of the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City are pressing Congress to compensate them from the same federal fund that has been paying families of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Fairness for OKC has hired St. Louis lawyers Douglas and James Dowd of Dowd & Dowd and Charles E. Polk Jr. of Lathrop & Gage. The lobbying group was formed earlier this year by Kathleen A. Treanor, who lost her daughter in the Oklahoma bombing.

On June 6, the lawyers and Treanor traveled to Washington for meetings with Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D.; Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss.; Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Don Nickles, R-Okla.; House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt, D-Mo.; Reps. J.C. Watts, R-Okla., and Brad Carson, D-Okla.; and Washington lawyer Kenneth Feinberg, special master for the Sept. 11 fund.

According to Polk, all the lawmakers and Feinberg pledged support for the effort. Watts and Nickles agreed to sponsor legislation. Last month, the House voted to include victims of the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in the compensation fund. Stuart H. Newberger of the Washington firm Crowell & Moring represents those victims.