January 10, 2002 | Read Time: 2 minutes
The American Red Cross has named former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell as “independent overseer” of its $667-million Liberty Disaster Fund, which pays for disaster-relief efforts stemming from the September 11 terrorist attacks.
The decision to bring in the well-known Mr. Mitchell as an adviser is apparently part of the Red Cross’s continuing efforts to reassure the public that its controversial Liberty Fund is being managed well.
The Red Cross said that Mr. Mitchell, who has worked in recent years to bring peace to Northern Ireland and the Middle East, will help develop and carry out a plan to spend the balance of the donations made to the Liberty Fund “in a manner that best meets the ongoing and long-term needs of those affected by September 11.”
The charity said that it had distributed $317.5-million from the Liberty Fund by the end of 2001 — $42.5-million more than it had predicted in November — to provide assistance to some 36,000 families.
Blueprint for Spending
The Red Cross said that Mr. Mitchell will help the charity formulate — and make public at the end of January — a blueprint of how it will spend the Liberty Fund’s nearly $350-million balance.
Bernadine P. Healy, the organization’s former chief executive, created the Liberty Fund a short time after the terrorist attacks. The decision marked a departure from Red Cross policy, which has been to ask donors to give to the charity’s general Disaster Relief Fund so that money raised can go wherever it is needed for current and future disasters.
A few weeks later, Dr. Healy announced that she would resign. Critics inside and outside the charity had charged that she was slow to disclose how the Red Cross would spend the money it raised, that she did not make clear that she planned to spend some of the money not for direct aid for attack victims but to prepare for future terrorist attacks, and that she should not have taken the unusual step of establishing the separate Liberty Disaster Fund.
Dr. Healy has adamantly denied that she or the charity deceived the public.
In November, after Dr. Healy announced her departure, the Red Cross said that it would narrow the focus of the Liberty Fund and use the account’s money exclusively for people affected by the September 11 disasters.
