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Wednesday September 18, 2002
Indian trust liars should be sent to jail
The Seattle Times Interior Secretary Gale Norton and an assistant secretary were enshrined yesterday in the Hall of Shame over the epic debacle of Indian trust case.
A federal district judge concluded the pair committed four counts of fraud and held them in contempt of court. Judge Royce Lamberth also said they engaged in litigation misconduct.
No amount of patience or badgering has moved the government to account for billions of dollars of lease and royalty receipts collected on reservation land.
Maybe putting someone behind bars would get the attention of the Interior and Justice departments. How can the legal system tolerate dozens of government lawyers lying to the court?
Maybe jail time is coming. Lamberth, a Reagan appointee from Texas, is scathing in a 267-page court paper that lays out failed attempts to gather the facts, and a wholesale lack of progress:
“The Department of Interior and its subagencies have utterly failed to manage the Individual Indian Money trust in a manner consistent with the fiduciary obligations of a trustee-delegate.”
The secretaries of Interior and Treasury during the Clinton years also were held in contempt for failure to comply with a 1994 congressional directive to clean up their performance.
No one disputes the obligation and debt owed the Native Americans. No one disputes the abject failure to properly account for and distribute those funds.
Yet, each successive administration stalled, lied and obfuscated on every point that would lead to a resolution.
“I may have life tenure,” the judge wrote, “but at the rate the Department of Interior is progressing, that is not a long enough appointment.”
Given the willful destruction of records and evidence over the past 100 years, let alone the life of this lawsuit, individual accountings may be impossible.
The government could hardly be worse off if it simply wrote substantial checks. This case begs to be settled.
In the meantime, sending a high government official to jail for contempt of court might well have a salutary effect on the bureaucracy and be a powerful motivator.
