Though it has a history of claiming to be transparent, the American Red Cross attempted last year to stop a congressional investigation into its disaster relief work, reports NPR/ProPublica.
Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, had requested that the Government Accountability Office look into how the charity coordinates with the government to respond to disasters as well as whether the group is subjected to enough oversight.
The GAO was already four months into its investigation when Red Cross CEO Gail McGovern went to visit Thompson in June 2014. A week later, on June 30, McGovern followed up with a letter asking Thompson to "end the inquiry."
"As I mentioned at the end of our discussion, I would like to respectfully request that you consider meeting face to face rather than requesting information via letter and end the GAO inquiry that is currently underway," McGovern wrote, according to NPR/ProPublica.
McGovern noted a second time that she didn't want to correspond with Thompson in writing. "I feel it was productive for us to speak in person about the issues you've been raising and hope that we can continue future conversations in the same manner," she wrote, and gave Thompson her personal cellphone number.
McGovern wrote in the letter that she would prefer to discuss the issues in person because the broadness of the questions "is using a great deal of staff resources while we are preparing for hurricane season and simultaneously responding to tornadoes, storms, wildfires and floods across multiple states."
Despite her objections, the GAO moved forward with its investigation as planned, and Thompson criticized McGovern's effort to stymie the inquiry.
"Over time, the public has come to accept the American Red Cross as a key player in the nation's system for disaster relief," Thompson said, according to NPR/ProPublica. "It is unfortunate that in light of numerous allegations of mismanagement, the American Red Cross would shun accountability, transparency and simple oversight."
The Red Cross has been criticized for mismanaging hundreds of millions of dollars in donations meant to help aid Haiti after the catastrophic 2010 earthquake. A year after the earthquake, McGovern told a group at the National Press Club that "with this outpouring of support, comes a responsibility for accountability and for transparency."
"We made a commitment that we want to lead the effort in transparency and for the most part, we share anything we have," she said.
Then after Superstorm Sandy hit the East Coast in 2012, the Red Cross struggled to meet basic needs of victims and was accused of being so consumed with public relations that it hindered its ability to provide disaster relief, as NPR reported.
Craig Holman, an advocate with the government watchdog group Public Citizen, said he couldn't recall a time when an organization under investigation by the GAO asked for the inquiry to be halted.
"This is both a unique and particularly brazen lobby campaign by Gail McGovern to bring an end to an independent GAO investigation," he said.
