Plaintiffs seek further contempt sanctions against Interior Secretary
The Associated Press
By: Robert Gehrke
Associated Press Writer
March 22, 2002
A federal judge has been asked to hold Interior Secretary Gale Norton in contempt for allowing the destruction of electronic documents in a lawsuit over mismanaged American Indian money. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth already is considering whether to find Norton in contempt for failing to comply with a court order to fix a system that manages $500 million annually in royalties from Indian land and for concealing her department's failures.
Plaintiffs in a class-action suit over the department's mismanagement of the Indian money claim the electronic documents and e-mails were purged as a further cover-up.
An Interior Department spokesman had not seen the motion, filed late Wednesday, and could not comment Thursday. The motion claims Norton and other Justice and Interior officials and lawyers failed to prevent the document destruction.
"It was willful, it was systemic and it was done to cover up," said attorney Dennis Gingold, who is representing the Indians in their claims that the government squandered more than $10 billion in royalties from their land.
Last July, court-appointed investigator Alan Balaran found that the Interior Department routinely erased e-mails despite Lamberth's orders that they be retained as evidence.
Lamberth heard 29 days of testimony earlier this year on the plaintiffs' previous contempt requests. A ruling could come in a few weeks. In 1999, Lamberth held President Clinton's Interior secretary, Bruce Babbitt, and his Treasury secretary, Robert Rubin, in contempt, fining them $600,000 for concealing the destruction of documents.
The Interior Department is responsible for managing royalties from grazing, logging, mining and oil drilling on Indian land, but the plaintiffs allege the money was mismanaged for more than a century. Norton has announced efforts to overhaul the management of the system.
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