by Brian Stockes
Indian Country Today
WASHINGTON – False reports to the judge in the Indian trust account case so
alarmed the staff at Interior’s Office of the Special Trustee that they
refused to “verify” them.
This startling statement came to light in the second week of testimony in
the contempt trial spin-off from the trust reform case of Cobell v. Norton.
Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Assistant Secretary Neal McCaleb faced
hours of testimony supporting the claims of Indian plaintiffs that the
officials were in contempt of court and that efforts at trust reform were
failing.
Thomas M. Thompson, Deputy Special Trustee in the Office of the Special
Trustee, told the court that Norton and McCaleb filed false reports without
the support of the Office of Special Trustee and ignored the court’s orders
to provide a full historical accounting of trust funds. Thompson told the
court that he and Thomas Slonaker, the Special Trustee, stopped verifying
the accuracy of quarterly reports that Norton submitted to the judge.
“I learned that the term ‘verify’ had legal significance, representing that
certain actions had been taken,” said Thompson. “Mr. Slonaker and I knew
that that was not the case.”
Thompson has taken the stand for the first two weeks of the trial. He also
said that the Trust Asset Accounting Management System, or TAAMS, the $33
million trust data computer system that Interior said was working, never ran
properly as far as he knew. Thompson said that senior Interior officials
agreed in 1999 that they must inform Judge Royce Lamberth that the system
was not working. He said he was shocked to find out that, according to a
court report, the judge had never been informed.
The contents of five reports by Court Monitor Joseph Kieffer III have become
the focus of testimony and the contempt charges against Norton and McCaleb.
Kieffer’s reports provide evidence that TAAMS has not worked and that
quarterly reports filed by Interior and Norton with the court were false and
misleading.
(News arrived just before press time that the government has dropped its
objection to introducing the Kieffer reports as evidence, a move that would
sharply speed up the trial.)
Thompson said that he was not sure why the court was never informed about
the problems with TAAMS or who had decided to keep the information from the
judge.
“It may have been inadvertent or a bureaucratic blunder,” Thompson said.
Following Thompson’s revelations, Judge Lamberth demanded that government
attorneys inform him whether Norton had reported problems with TAAMS in her
Seventh Quarterly Report to the court. Thompson said his office, the Office
of Special Trustee, refused to verify the accuracy of that report. In a
court order just issued by Lamberth, Norton was directed to personally sign
on to any future quarterly reports.
Norton had testified that trust reform and the new TAAMS system were a
success. As recently as February of this year, Norton testified before the
Senate Committee on Indian Affairs that TAAMS was a much needed automated
system and that “much progress has been made.”
Indian plaintiffs want Kieffer’s reports entered as official evidence of
contempt. Accepting the reports as evidence would speed up the trial, which
has been slowed by a number of government challenges to Kieffer’s findings
and Thompson’s testimony. Government attorneys are opposed to such an idea.
Kieffer’s reports form the foundation for the five contempt charges against
Norton and McCaleb.
“They see that the reports make the case for contempt and a receivership,”
said Keith Harper, an attorney for the plaintiffs. “They don’t want that as
evidence.”
With only one witness on the stand so far, Lamberth has indicated that he
would like to speed up the pace of the trial. He said that he may supplement
trial testimony with depositions supervised by Special Master Alan Balaran.
The court will be in recess until Jan. 3, 2002.
Elouise Cobell, a member of the Blackfeet Tribe, along with a group of other
Indian plaintiffs, initiated a class-action lawsuit in 1996 to force the
federal government to account for billions of dollars in unreconciled
Individual Indian Monies under the government’s supervision since 1887.
Attorneys for the government argue that the law is unclear before 1994 and
that the government should be able to move forward with reforms without
judicial oversight.
for more information: click here
|
