President of Red Cross Is Forced to Resign

News of Everson's ouster shocked leaders of nonprofit groups and his former colleagues in the Bush administration.

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"I'm stunned. . . . I just can't imagine what would have led to this," said Sean O'Keefe, a former Navy secretary and NASA chief who worked with Everson in the early years of the administration.

"His work ethic was impeccable. His judgment from what I saw was outstanding, and he helped lead a series of management initiatives," O'Keefe, chancellor at Louisiana State University, said in an interview yesterday.

The Red Cross has faced top leadership turnover as executives have clashed with the agency's large activist board. Everson was the sixth permanent or interim chief since Elizabeth Dole stepped down as president in 1999 before being elected a Republican senator from North Carolina.

"Good God, how many CEOs have they gone through in the last five years? Four? Five?" asked Peter Dobkin Hall, a Harvard University lecturer who specializes in nonprofit groups. "You can't have a revolving-door chief executive in an organization like that and retain its credibility."

Bernadine Healy, chief executive of the Red Cross from 1999 until she was forced out in 2001 after clashing with the board, said yesterday that the turnover rate damages the organization.

"I think it's a tragedy that this organization is not able to have stable leadership, particularly at a time at which America needs such an enterprise," Healy said.

Everson oversaw a broad restructuring plan for the $3.4 billion organization as it sought to overcome sharp criticism from members of Congress about its performance after Hurricane Katrina and other major disasters.

The Red Cross was applauded for its relief efforts after last month's wildfires in Southern California. But observers said the agency has a long way to go to restore confidence.

Paul C. Light, a professor at New York University's Wagner School of Public Service who is a Red Cross critic, said Everson was "in well over his head" because he did not have direct experience in disaster relief before taking over the organization.

"I just think it may turn out to be a cloud with a silver lining for the Red Cross," Light said of Everson's departure. "The next president has got to know the business intimately before arriving on his or her first day."

Everson, a resident of Arlington County, received a bachelor's degree from Yale University and a master's degree from New York University's Stern School of Business.

Active in Republican circles, he has cycled in and out of government and the private sector.

While living in Turkey during the 1990s as an executive at a French aluminum packaging products company, Everson adopted a boy and girl from an orphanage there. He and his wife also cared for a foster daughter.