Inspector General Says Turf War Hinders Interior Dept.
by Neely Tucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
The Washington Post
The Interior Department’s effort to reform its Indian trust fund accounts has become a volatile internal turf war, the department’s inspector general wrote in a report released yesterday.
Six years after a group of Native American plaintiffs sued the department for losing or mishandling billions of dollars held in trust funds, Interior has committed so many errors and employees are so distrustful of one another that trust reform has been derailed, the report concludes.
“The . . . litigation has so embroiled and angered those involved that they cannot see or think clearly in order to make a correct decision,” read the report, signed by Earl E. Devaney, the inspector general. “Every effort is thwarted by internal discord, distrust and a dysfunctional reluctance to assume ownership.”
The class action, led by Elouise Cobell, treasurer of the Blackfeet Indians in Montana, is seeking a full accounting of 300,000 trust funds managed by the government in the name of individual Indians for more than a century. The plaintiffs are claiming at least $10 billion in lost funds and damages. They also want a receivership to overhaul the current system.
U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth has already found the government has breached its fiduciary responsibility to the Indians. He also held three Clinton-era officials in contempt for failing to provide accurate accounting information, and he is considering similar contempt charges against Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton and 40 deputies.
Norton has rejected calls for a receivership, instead proposing a new agency within the department — the Bureau of Indian Trust Asset Management — to oversee reform.
The new report was the result of a nine-month investigation into alleged misconduct of Interior officials in the case. The review found that no one set out to lie to or mislead Lamberth. However, the report says that so few people in the department work together that “a singular sinister or conspiratorial plan is impossible to construct.”
The review “concludes that there are areas in which we can improve management of the individual Indian trust funds, and we will continue our efforts to improve that,” said John Wright, a spokesman for Interior, declining to address any specific finding.
Keith M. Harper, an attorney for the Native American Rights Fund, one of the groups that filed the suit, said the report clarified their call for Interior to be stripped of trust fund oversight.
“The report says that because of warring between individual groups, there is no ability to operate the trust. Given that, the only possibility is to fix it through some outside entity — a receivership,” Harper said.
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