by Bill McAllister
Denver Post Washington Bureau Chief
The Denver Post
WASHINGTON – A former Bureau of Indian Affairs supervisor
was directed to retaliate against a so-called whistle-blower who was casting
doubt on the government’s efforts to revamp its long-troubled Indian trust
program, according to an affidavit.
The statement by Donald E. Whitener, a 35-year BIA employee and former
deputy director of the agency’s Southwest office in Albuquerque, could spell
trouble for former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and other senior
Interior officials.
Lawyers pressing a multimillion-dollar lawsuit over the BIA’s admittedly
mangled trust accounts said they will use Whitener’s statement to seek
criminal contempt proceedings against Babbitt and others for violating court
orders calling for cooperation with their suit.
In papers filed in U.S. District Court here, lawyers for a group of Indians
alleged that actions against Mona Infield, a BIA branch chief, were part of
a “pattern and practice of intimidation and witness tampering” by Interior
Department officials.
Infield was removed from work on the trust accounts and allowed to remain at
home on full pay after she filed an affidavit in the lawsuit, both sides in
the dispute agree.
Interior lawyers have denied Infield’s allegations. They have said that no
effort was made to retaliate against her. Babbitt and other senior Interior
officials took actions to ensure that all BIA employees were allowed to talk
to lawyers in the trust case, the lawyers have said.
As for Infield’s claim she was not given suitable work, an Interior
spokeswoman said that the department had made numerous efforts to find
Infield, who worked in Albuquerque, a job in New Mexico.
Whitener said in an affidavit, however, that shortly after Infield filed her
statement, he received a call from Debra Maddox, the BIA’s acting director
of management and administration. Maddox told him to remove Infield from the
trust program and give her “diminished responsibilities,” he said,
“I understood Ms. Maddox’s instructions to mean that the deputy (BIA)
commissioner Hilda Manual and senior management had decided to block Ms.
Infield from gaining access to any more information that could be presented
to the court,” he said.
The charges are among the most serious leveled at top Interior officials in
the 4-year-old lawsuit that challenges the government handling of about
300,000 individual trust accounts established for Indians by the BIA. The
government has conceded that the accounts are a mess, but it has contended
that it has programs in place that may reconcile the accounts.
Infield questioned those efforts in her statement, and Whitener’s four-page
affidavit dated Feb. 6 and filed in the court this week reinforces her claim
of harassment.
Whitener, a member of the Squaxin Island Tribe who retired from the BIA on
June 30, said he believed the order to keep Infield off the case came from
Manual. She was the BIA’s No. 2 official and one “who managed the BIA with
an iron fist,” he said. Officials said Manual is no longer with the agency.
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