Administration hangs tough on Indian suit
Barron’s
By: Jim McTague
November 27, 2000
Clinton Administration lawyers are ignoring admonitions from Congress to settle a $60-$100 billion class action brought in 1997 against the Secretaries of the Interior and Treasury on behalf of 500,000 American Indians and their heirs. The Indians claim their tribal trust fund money has been lost or stolen because of government mismanagement since the 1870s. So their lawyers have decided to wage war by raising Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers’ stake in the suit. They argued in a motion filed last Wednesday that he has personal responsibility for the latest “frivolous” filing by his department’s lawyers, which the plaintiffs claim is part of an effort to stall the case indefinitely.
“This is the Indians’ Thanksgiving gift to Summers,” said plaintiff’s attorney Dennis Gingold, who asked U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth in Washington to impose sanctions on Summers. Last year Lambert cited former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt for civil contempt of court because their lawyers had destroyed 162 boxes of key records in the case and had engaged in what the judge termed a coverup and a travesty of justice. The government had to pay $500,000 to cover the plaintiffs’ legal costs.
Summers this month asked the court to seal a report on an in-house investigation into the destruction of the 162 boxes. The report is said to discuss any disciplinary actions that were taken against the lawyers as well as steps to ensure that no further destruction of evidence occurs. Dow Jones & Co., which publishes Barron’s, has filed a motion requesting the unsealing of the document.
Gingold says he suspects the sealed document is a “whitewash.” He also asserts that there has been additional destruction of documents by Treasury. The Indians need the records to reconstruct the mismanaged accounts so that they can estimate the actual level of losses.
Money in the trust consists of royalties paid through the government to the Indians for oil, timber and minerals extracted from their reservations. The plaintiffs argue they have been grievously shortchanged. The government has admitted using some of the money over the years to pay down the national debt. Trust money may also have been used to bail out New York City and Chrysler Corp., the Indians contend. Gingold says Lois Schiffer, the Justice Department lawyer handling the case, is personally responsible for derailing settlement talks. Schiffer, who is a friend of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, declined to return our phone calls. With settlement talks in abeyance, Gingold plans to press on with the suit against the cabinet secretaries. Says he: “Captain Reno and his men couldn’t save Custer at Little Big Horn. Janet Reno and all of her troops won’t be able to save Babbitt and Summers.”
| 
