The Victims of Terrorism: An Assessment of Their Influence and Growing Role in Policy, Legislation, and the Private Sector

Little attention and analysis have focused on terrorism victims, including survivors. This report focuses on the organized groups of families and friends that have emerged since September 11, 2001, to become a powerful voice in U.S. counterterrorism policy and legislation. These groups were remarkably successful in getting the 911 Commission established as well as the enactment of the commissions most important recommendations. This report documents these groups number and diversity, their wide disparity in mission and services, in addition to the effectiveness of their strategies for achieving their missions. It also compares the 911 victims groups to those formed in response to previous terrorist attacks both in the United States and abroad, highlighting the lessons the 911 groups learned from these precedents and the differences between 911 groups and those that preceded them. This is the second release of this Occasional Paper. After completion of RANDs quality-assurance process and first release of the paper, RAND learned of concerns from some readers about the authors way of describing distinctions among various groups. Some viewed the authors placement of such groups into a tier system as a ranking of the groups general influence and importance. This had not been the authors intent. To address this ambiguity in classification, RAND undertook a second editing of the document. The tier description has been replaced by a categorization of groups -- an approximation based on the groups own stated agendas and activities -- into national policy reform, state and local policy reform, and victim and family support groups. The paper no longer contains any suggestion of a ranking or scoring of groups influence. In addition, RAND has amended the dates on which various groups were formed and the types of membership categories of certain groups and their membership numbers.