by John McCaslin
Inside the Beltway
The Washington Times
The odds of Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton becoming the first Bush
Cabinet member held in contempt of court increased considerably this week.
U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, who is presiding over Mrs. Norton’s
contempt trial, found that a court investigator’s report on the serious
lack of computer security for Indian trust data handled by Interior makes
a prima facie case for contempt.
The judge told U.S. Attorney’s Office lawyers defending Mrs. Norton that
it’s now up to them to prove the report is “clearly erroneous” – not
likely, since Interior had two months to challenge the report’s contents
and didn’t do so. Maybe they were too embarrassed.
With the court’s permission, the investigator hired computer-security
experts who hacked, with ease, into the trust system and created a fake
account without being detected. This is the same issue that led Judge
Lamberth, an appointee to the bench of President George H.W. Bush, to
order Interior on Dec. 5 to pull the plug on its Internet connection for
trust-related systems.
The contempt charges are an offshoot of a lawsuit filed almost six years
ago by Blackfeet banker Elouise Cobell, who wants the court to force
Interior to clean up the disastrously mismanaged trust. (Judge Lamberth in
1999 found President Clinton’s Treasury secretary, Robert E. Rubin, and
his Cabinet colleague, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, in contempt of
court after they repeatedly violated a court order to stop destroying
Indian trust documents).
The trust receives $500 million a year in revenues from Indian-owned lands
throughout the West – about $100 billion in all since 1887, including
interest. The Cobell plaintiffs have asked Judge Lamberth to strip away
the trust from Interior and put it in the hands of a receiver. The mystery
is why Mrs. Norton, or the folks in the West Wing, don’t just settle the
case once and for all.
Meanwhile, after warning Mrs. Norton that a contempt finding is likely,
Judge Lamberth left the next day for a two-week vacation. He’ll pick up
again on Jan. 31.
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