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Politics : The Donkey's Inn -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mephisto who wrote (1436)	12/12/2001 1:54:35 PM
From: Mephisto	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15516

Interior Officials Go on Trial Contempt Charges Stem From Handling of Indian Funds By Neely Tucker Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, December 11, 2001; Page A31 Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton and an assistant secretary for Indian affairs went on trial for contempt of court yesterday, the second time in two years that senior government officials have faced charges that they lied to a U.S. District Court judge about a poorly managed trust fund for Native Americans. Norton, who did not attend the trial's opening before Judge Royce C. Lamberth, and Neal McCaleb, the assistant secretary, are challenging the court's assertion that they knowingly misrepresented failures in the department's efforts to overhaul the Individual Indian Monies trust. That account, which accrues some $500 million each year, is funded by oil, gas, timber and other leases granted by Indians on their properties. Accounting for the trust has been riddled with problems since the program began more than a century ago, and has been the subject of a lawsuit from the Native American Rights Fund since 1996. Repeated studies have shown serious management failures, including not taking the most basic of accounting steps. The Indians contend that there are some 500,000 people owed a total of more than $10 billion. "There is a 1932 Department [of Interior)]document that says there is no good reason to provide Indians an accounting of their funds because they are illiterate,they're stupid, and they won't understand it anyway," Dennis M. Gingold, an attorney representing the Indians, told Lamberth in his opening statement. "The personnel has changed . . . but the secretary's attitude hasn't changed one bit. . . . Your honor ordered them to clean up and fix this system and they have refused to do it." Mark Nagle, an assistant U.S. attorney representing Norton, was part of a team of lawyers who filed a lengthy series of challenges to the contempt charges late Friday. "We're confident the contempt sanctions are not warranted," he told Lamberth. Norton and McCaleb are the first two of as many as 38 Interior Department officials who face contempt sanctions. They must convince Lamberth that, after he ordered in 1999 that the system be overhauled, they told him the truth about failures in their efforts to do so. The contempt charges center on five key areas of the trust fund -- two of them relating to why a historical accounting project wasn't performed under a court order, two more relating to computer failures, and a final count that charges the department filed false quarterly reports about its progress. In February 1999, Lamberth held three Clinton administration officials in contempt on the same case -- then-Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin, InteriorSecretary Bruce Babbitt and Assistant Interior Secretary Kevin Gover. Lamberth held that they had not ensured that records were turned over to lawyers representing the Indians. The government was ordered to pay $625,000 of the Indians' legal fees as a penalty. © 2001 The Washington Post Company