The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2023

28 JULY-AUGUST 2023 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL The U.S. Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund What You Should Know Lee Ann Ross was deputy director of USAID Kenya in 1998 at the time of the bombing. In the immediate aftermath, the USAID building became the command center, and the ambassador appointed Ross the off-site incident commander. She remained at post for two years following the event and, in addition to her normal duties, ran the Bomb Recovery Unit, which managed the $37 million Congress allocated to assist Kenyan victims. She retired from the Foreign Ser- vice in 2001. This fund for victims of international terrorism needs to be better known, explains an FS survivor of the East Africa bombings. BY L EE ANN ROSS R ipple effects from the 1998 terrorist bomb- ing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania continue to this day. For many years, U.S. citizens and U.S. government non-citizen employees and contractors injured in these attacks or any other attack by state sponsors of terrorism have been eligible for victim’s compensation thanks to the 2015 act that created the U.S. Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund (usvsst.com) . If this is the first time you are hearing of this fund, read on to learn how it works. Background In 2015 Congress established the U.S. Victims of State Spon- sored Terrorism (USVSST) Fund to provide compensation to U.S. citizens and U.S. non-citizen employees and contractors who were injured in acts of state sponsored terrorism. The fund awards payment to victims of acts of international terrorism based on final judgments obtained in U.S. district courts against a state sponsor of terrorism, as well as to the Americans held hos- tage in Tehran after the U.S. embassy was overrun in 1979. While many of our foreign affairs colleagues qualify for access to this fund, few know about it. Unfortunately, there was no provi- sion in the law to notify victims that the fund exists. When I called the Department of Justice (DOJ) to ask why there was no effort to notify victims of terrorism, I was told that the DOJ had done the needful by placing advertisements in U.S. newspapers announc- ing the fund. To my knowledge, neither the State Department nor AFSA has ever made any attempt to educate employees regarding their eligibility for this compensation. Potential Claimants. A very large number of people who were affected have not been able to claim compensation. Potential claimants could include but would not be limited to victims of the following events: the 1983 embassy bombing in Beirut, the COVER STORY