Treasury report on Indian trusts sought
The Denver Post
By: Bill McAllister
Denver Post Washington Bureau Chief
November 14, 2000
WASHINGTON – Lawyers for the Colorado-based Native American Rights Fund asked a federal judge Monday to make public an internal report on six Treasury Department lawyers accused of improper conduct in the handling of Indian trust records.
Treasury officials are attempting to keep the report secret, saying it deals with personnel issues.
U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth has not indicated when he might rule on a request from Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers to seal the report on the lawyers’ conduct. Dow Jones Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal, has asked Lamberth for the right to intervene in the case so it can argue for releasing the report.
The maneuvering is the latest example of tensions over the admitted mishandling of trust accounts that the Interior Department maintains for more than 300,000 Native Americans. Lamberth has held that the government has breached its trust responsibility to the Indians and has ordered a trial on how much the Indians should be paid for damages.
Congress recently urged the Interior Department to settle, but the parties remain at odds in the 4-year-old lawsuit.
The latest confrontation results from Lamberth’s order for a special master to investigate the conduct of the six Treasury Department lawyers. The master held that the lawyers violated the rules of professional conduct and that their statements to the judge constituted a potential fraud.
A key issue in the Treasury Department’s involvement is the destruction of 162 boxes of documents discovered in a Maryland warehouse between November 1998 and January 1999.
Treasury lawyers did not tell Lamberth of the documents’ destruction until May 1999, after top officials had been found in contempt of court for failing to safeguard and produce key documents.
The class-action suit was filed by the Boulder-based Native American Rights Fund and others.
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