U.S. agency admits errors in Indian case; Records destroyed on cash payouts
Chicago Tribune
By: James Warren
Washington Bureau
August 15, 2001
WASHINGTON — Ineptitude, ignorance and bureaucratic gamesmanship led Treasury Department lawyers to conceal the existence and destruction of 162 boxes of records potentially relevant to a big Indian-rights case, according to an internal report disclosed Tuesday.
After fighting disclosure of the report for 10 months, the Treasury Department was forced to go public by a federal judge overseeing a historic case involving potentially billions of dollars owed to Native Americans after their lands were taken more than 100 years ago.
In muted fashion, the report concedes errors in “the unfortunate documents destruction episode,” which, it reveals, prompted minor punishments of several lawyers.
Plaintiffs in the case immediately tagged the report a whitewash that effectively absolves top department officials of any responsibility.
Other embarrassments
The report’s disclosure follows several recent reports and court rulings that have embarrassed the federal government over its handling of what it admits is a historic wrong. They include the revelation that the Interior Department outright misled the same judge by failing to disclose the rampant failings of a new record-keeping system meant to speed reform in the payments to Indians.
At issue is a subject that has become a priority for new Interior Secretary Gale Norton: how the government has handled accounts to compensate Indians for use of their land.
In what U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth has characterized as moves “driven by a greed for the land holdings of the tribe” and a quest to eradicate Indian culture, the government broke up reservations and leased the land to oil, timber and other businesses for a fee.
Individual Indians were given 80 to 160 acres apiece but were not trusted by the government to supervise their own finances. So the government decreed it would serve as trustee. Funds from the leases on 11 million acres of land are held by Treasury, but the money is managed by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Affairs.
At any given moment, there is about $450 million in the trust fund accounts, with roughly $300 million paid annually to 450,000 beneficiaries in recent years. Typical checks range from $2,000 to $20,000.
But government accounts are a mess, with no one knowing if those amounts are accurate and what the individuals are owed. During the Clinton administration, Lamberth held Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin in civil contempt for not producing documents in a timely fashion.
As Lamberth tries to devise an effective accounting, as many as 50,000 beneficiaries are victimized because records of their identities and addresses have been lost.
Doubt allayed
Discovery of the document destruction alluded to in the Treasury Department report came on Jan. 28, 1999. The documents were in a warehouse in Hyattsville, Md., and their destruction came to the attention of an official of the financial processing division of Treasury’s financial management services branch.
That official ordered an end to what appears to have been normal housecleaning. Lawyers in both the financial management branch and at Treasury headquarters were apprised of the destruction, but Lamberth was not informed until May.
A special master, appointed by Lamberth to investigate specific issues, later not only pilloried the government but urged that the relevant agencies file reports on measures to avoid incidents such as the document destruction and its delayed disclosure.
Treasury conducted an internal review, cited a “failure to effectively communicate” and issued mild criticism of some of the six attorneys most closely involved in the matter. But it asked the judge to keep the report under wraps, citing sensitive personnel matters.
Dow Jones & Co. sought access to the report and on Tuesday Lamberth agreed with its position. In part, the judge was moved by his belief that “the underlying litigation has not only brought to light the federal government’s continued breach of its substantial trust responsibilities toward Native Americans but, in a historic proceeding, the contumacious conduct of two former Cabinet members.
“Significantly, during this very time period, it was revealed that attorneys for the Department of Treasury were actively concealing from the court the fact that documents had been destroyed in Hyattsville, Maryland,” he wrote.
Lamberth concluded by noting that the Treasury report “stands in marked contrast to the dearth of corrective action taken by the Interior Department and the Justice Department. Neither of those agencies has provided any report whatsoever–under seal or otherwise–demonstrating that they have held any attorney accountable in any way whatsoever for any misconduct in this litigation.”
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