Red Cross’ Top Rating Suspended

A charity watchdog group has stripped its top rating from the American Red Cross, already battered for its response to the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance has taken down a favorable report on the Red Cross from its Web site, where donors are updated about whether a charity meets the watchdog’s management standards. The alliance pulled the report while it awaits the Red Cross’ response to 35 detailed questions about the charity’s relief work related to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, including its use of donated money and blood.

The move surprised and angered Red Cross officials, who are demanding that the favorable report be restored until it delivers its responses, expected March 30--a date the agency and the alliance agreed on. “It’s like being sentenced before the trial,” Red Cross spokesman Robert Chlopak said.

“We’re not singling out the Red Cross,” Bennett Weiner, the alliance’s chief operating officer, said Wednesday. “We’re going through an appropriate procedure in a charity report situation here--in this case where there has been a lot of public inquiries and discussion.”

The alliance updates its reports on the 350 charities it tracks about every 18 months. About three-fourths of the charities evaluated meet the alliance’s standards. The previous alliance report on the Red Cross was dated July 2000, Weiner said.

The Red Cross and the Wise Giving Alliance, based in Arlington, Va., declined to release the questions.

The Red Cross received nearly $850 million in donations and thousands of extra units of blood after Sept. 11 and drew criticism from the public and on Capitol Hill for its handling of both.