by Matt Kelly
Associated Press Writer
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) A former federal official says he was ordered to retaliate against a subordinate who told a judge about improper handling of records in a lawsuit over billions of dollars of American Indians’ money.
In a sworn statement filed late Tuesday in U.S. District Court, Donald Whitener said his boss at the Bureau of Indian Affairs told him in March last year to take away the job duties of the whistleblower, Mona Infield.
Whitener said the order came after Infield gave sworn testimony in the Indian money suit that records were mishandled during preparations for moving a BIA computer center from Albuquerque, N.M., to suburban Washington.
Whitener’s statement came in support of a request from lawyers for some 300,000 Indians for court sanctions against former Interior Department officials and their Justice Department lawyers for taking action against Infield.
Interior and Justice officials have denied in court documents that Infield was treated improperly. They contend she refused a transfer to the Washington area and the offer of another job in Albuquerque.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ruled in 1999 that the government had mismanaged the accounts of more than 300,000 Indians and ordered federal officials to take steps to clean up the system.
The ruling, which is being appealed by the government, came in a lawsuit in which the Indians are seeking more than $10 billion in compensation for what they contend has been government mismanagement of the proceeds from oil drilling, logging, grazing and other uses of Indian land.
The government acknowledges that the accounts were badly mismanaged for more than a century and that much of the Indians’ money was lost, stolen or misappropriated for other federal programs.
Lamberth held former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin in contempt of court in 1999 for earlier misconduct with documents in the case. The judge has warned officials that he could fine or imprison them if they are held in contempt again.
Infield, a supervisor at the computer center, said that after she made her sworn statement about the mishandling of records, BIA officials rescinded a job offer and told her to stay home in a job with a paycheck but no duties.
”I did the right thing and I’d do it again, even knowing that it would drag on for this long,” Infield said in a telephone interview Wednesday. ”This lawsuit’s never going to be solved until people start telling the truth to the court.”
Whitener, who was deputy director of the BIA’s Southwest Regional Office in Albuquerque before retiring in June, had given that final job order to Infield. He said that Debra Maddox, the BIA’s acting director of management and administration, ordered him to do so.
”I and many other BIA managers understood that Ms. Infield was being punished … because she provided the court with detailed testimony that contradicted representations made by senior Interior Department officials and their lawyers,” Whitener’s affidavit said.
BIA spokeswoman Nedra Darling declined Wednesday to comment on Whitener’s statement because of the ongoing court action.
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