by Matt Kelley
Associated Press Writer
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — A report on Treasury Department lawyers who helped conceal the improper shredding of documents should remain secret, the department told a federal judge Thursday.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth and a court-appointed investigator both had scolded the department last year for its 14-week silence about shredding 162 boxes of documents.
The boxes may have included records Lamberth had ordered the department to turn over to lawyers in a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit over American Indian trust accounts. The department shredded the records as Lamberth was considering whether to hold then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin in contempt of court for withholding other documents. Lamberth finally did cite Rubin for contempt in February 1999.
A Treasury Department panel investigated whether six current or former Treasury lawyers should face discipline for their roles in the cover-up. The Treasury Department gave the panel’ s recommendations to Lamberth on Thursday but asked that he keep them from the Indians’ lawyers and the public.
” The documents contain highly sensitive, confidential personnel information” barred from public disclosure by the Privacy Act, the Treasury Department told Lamberth in a court brief that was made public.
Lawyers for the Indian account holders said they would ask Lamberth to make the reports public.
” I find it ironic that the conduct of attorneys who covered up document destruction … is being entirely covered up, ” said Dennis Gingold, one of the Indians’ lawyers. ” The question is why. This is a public trial, involving public documents, on what might be a fraud on the court.”
The Treasury Department lawyers involved already were named in a report written by Alan Balaran, the court-appointed investigator, who concluded that some likely violated professional ethics rules. The government and four of the lawyers also asked to have Balaran’ s report kept secret, but Lamberth rejected that request.
The lawyers and their titles at the time of the shredding were: Ingrid Falanga, deputy chief counsel of the Financial Management Service; FMS Senior Counsel Randy Lewis; FMS Senior Counsel Daniel Mazella; FMS lawyer James Regan; and Treasury Department Deputy Assistant General Counsels Eleni Constantine and Roberta McInerney.
The Indians are suing the Treasury and Interior departments over long-standing mismanagement of the trust accounts. The Indians’ lawyers say there are about 500, 000 of the accounts, which handle about $500 million per year.
The accounts hold proceeds from oil drilling, timber cutting, grazing and other uses of the Indians’ land. The government acknowledges that the accounts have been mismanaged in nearly every way possible, from losing or destroying account records to having thousands of accounts with no names attached.
Lamberth last year declared the system showed ” fiscal and governmental irresponsibility in its purest form, ” announced he would oversee reform efforts and ordered the government to prepare to show how much money should be in each account. The government appealed, saying Lamberth didn’ t have the authority to do that. A ruling is pending from the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
Lawyers for the Indians have said they believe the government owes their clients more than $10 billion.
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