 In 1987, Yeghiayan came across a passage in the memoirs of Henry Morgenthau, Sr., the American Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1913–16, describing an exchange between him and Mehmed Talat Pasha, the man chiefly held responsible for the Armenian Genocide.The text in question spoke of Talat's and, by extension, the state's interest in claiming as beneficiaries the life insurance policies of the Armenians who had perished during the genocide.The Armenians had purchased these policies from New York Life and Equitable Life of New York prior to the beginning of the war and, after exploring the issue more in depth, Yeghiayan came to the conclusion that New York Life, as well as other insurance companies, had withheld death benefits totaling in the tens of millions from the descendants of the deceased.