The American Red Cross is such a long established and internationally acknowledged charitable institution, showing up to help people at the scene of every major disaster, that it’s hard to imagine anything nefarious about them. But as long, painful experience has shown us, whenever large sums of money are amassed in the vicinity of human beings all bets are off. With that in mind, an article from Sharyl Attkisson this week is worth a look as she examines The Secretive American Red Cross. In it, she highlights an article from ProPublica who have asked some uncomfortable questions about donations taken in following Hurricane Sandy and the possibly even more disturbing answers.
“Just how badly does the American Red Cross want to keep secret how it raised and spent over $300 million after Hurricane Sandy? The charity has hired a fancy law firm to fight a public request we filed with New York state, arguing that information about its Sandy activities is a ‘trade secret’…As we’ve reported, the Red Cross releases few details about how it spends money after big disasters. That makes it difficult to figure out whether donor dollars are well spent. The Red Cross did give some information about Sandy spending to New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who had been investigating the charity. But the Red Cross declined our request to disclose the details.”
Apparently, where donations are spent is a "trade secret". I have some new "trade secrets" of my own