Interior Dept. Accounting System Faulted
by Neely Tucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
The Washington Post
A court-appointed special master urged a federal judge to take over
management of a $500 million per year trust fund for Native Americans
yesterday, saying the government’s attempts to manage the 114-year-old
program are in shambles, despite years of federal efforts to solve the
problem.
In a stinging 154-page report, the special master, Alan Balaran, wrote that
the computer security of the Individual Indian Monies account is so poorly
managed by the Department of the Interior that a firm secretly hired by the
court easily hacked into the system and set up a phony account that would be
eligible to receive funds.
“It is the recommendation of the Special Master that the Court intervene and
assume direct oversight of those systems housing Indian trust data,” Balaran
wrote. “Without such direct oversight, the threat to records crucial to the
welfare of hundreds of thousands of IIM beneficiaries will continue
unchecked.”
Attorneys representing Indians in a class action suit plan today to ask U.S.
District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, who has been overseeing the six-year-old
case, to immediately shut down the massive accounting program. They contend,
following a line from the report citing the “sheer enormity of the dangers
to which this trust information is being exposed,” that the system is
dangerously open to exploitation.
“In effect, there is no trust,” said Dennis M. Gingold, lead attorney for
the 500,000 Indians represented in the class action suit. “It means the
accounts are open. Nobody has any idea of where the money is, if it’s going
to the right people. It involves hundreds of millions of dollars for which
there is almost no audit trail.”An Interior Department spokesman declined to
comment on the report yesterday.
The lawsuit was filed by Indians who say they are owed up to $10 billion
because of widespread accounting failures. Two years ago, Lamberth ruled
that the program was beset by incompetence, neglect and mismanagement. He
ordered the department to clean up the accounting problems.
Norton took office in January, portraying herself as an energetic reformer
of a system she inherited from Clinton administration officials. In
November, she said she would appoint an assistant Interior Department
secretary who would directly oversee the trust fund. The new office, called
the Bureau of Indian Trust Assets Management, would overhaul the accounting
system.
But Lamberth has shown impatience with her attempts to find a solution.
Norton is facing a contempt-of-court trial next week, at which she will
defend herself against charges that her department has lied to Lamberth
about progress in overhauling the trust fund.
Especially grating to the court is the fact that the government’s new
computer accounting system, which has cost millions of dollars, is almost
completely useless in monitoring the trust fund.
The trust, established in 1887, is built from proceeds derived from 11
million acres held in trust by the U.S. government. Concessions or rights to
oil, gas, timber and mining ventures on those lands are channeled into
accounts managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
But government records have been destroyed or lost through the years, and
there is now little accurate accounting of where the money has gone, or is
now going.The Interior Department’s basic computer accounting program — and
the new system which began to be deployed in 1999 — are both unable to provide
even a modicum of computer security, the report said, citing 30 previous
government or private audits that showed similar results.
“It is disgusting and shameful that Secretary Norton and her predecessors
have allowed this situation to exist,” said Elouise Cobell, lead plaintiff
in the litigation. “They’re treating money that belongs to individual
Indians — some of the poorest people in this nation like it’s a candy
store.”
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