Posted on 10/16/2001 9:32:25 PM PDT by gcruse
October 17, 2001
Interior Department Accused of Duplicity
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
ASHINGTON, Oct. 16 — The Interior Department continues to
mislead a judge overseeing the government's effort to reform a
system that has mismanaged royalties from Indian lands, a court-appointed
watchdog said today.
The watchdog, Joseph S. Kieffer III, wrote in a report to Judge Royce
Lamberth of Federal District Court that Secretary Gale A. Norton "carries
the ultimate responsibility for the repeated untruthful and knowingly
inaccurate and incomplete submissions" to the court.
Mr. Kieffer said that under Ms. Norton, efforts to reform the trust, which
manages roughly $500 million a year in royalties, have been stymied by the
same lack of leadership and candor that plagued her predecessor, Bruce
Babbitt.
The pattern of deceit calls into question whether the Interior Department is
capable of ever fixing the trust fund, Mr. Kieffer wrote.
Judge Lamberth is presiding over a lawsuit filed on behalf of more than
300,000 Indian trust fund account holders who claim the government
squandered at least $10 billion and possibly many times that amount.
The trust funds were established in 1887 to manage royalties from grazing,
mining, logging and oil drilling on Indian lands.
The government has acknowledged mismanaging the money and Judge
Lamberth has ordered the Interior and Treasury departments and the Bureau
of Indian Affairs to piece together how much money was lost. The judge is
also closely watching efforts by the two departments to overhaul their
management practices.
More than $614 million has been spent by the Interior Department on the
trust fund overhaul.
Mr. Kieffer's latest report focuses largely on the way the Interior Department
handled its latest quarterly progress report for the court.
After Special Trustee Thomas Slonaker, the top trust official, refused to
vouch for the accuracy of the report, the Interior solicitor, Bill Meyers, made
repeated requests to other senior Interior officials to sign off on it.
Several resisted, and Mr. Kieffer said others believed they were subjected to
"overt intimidation by the solicitor," casting doubts about the accuracy of the
entire report.
The report was submitted despite the objections.
"The secretary of the interior has verified an untruthful, inaccurate, and
incomplete" quarterly report, Mr. Kieffer wrote.
It is the fourth time he has sharply criticized the Interior Department for
submitting misleading reports.
Dennis Gingold, a lawyer for the American Indian plaintiffs, said the
department cannot be trusted.
"The secretary and her appointees and senior management and her counsel
have acted in concert to perpetrate a fraud on this court," Mr. Gingold said.
"They don't care about doing their job. They just care about making it
appear to the court that they are doing their job."
Mr. Gingold said that by the end of the week he would ask the court to take
the management of the trust away from the Interior Department and appoint
a receiver to manage the assets and reform efforts.
A spokeswoman for the Interior Department, Nedra Darling, said Mr.
Kieffer's report was being reviewed and the department would respond
within 10 days.
"It is a priority of the department to move the Indian trust accounting system
into the 21st century," Ms. Darlin
This is an American disgrace that has continued unabated by BIA lawyers and other officials for years but I believe Bruce Babbitt is the most arrogant crook of them all!
Anyone know where forester has been hiding lately??
That money was spent buying votes like welfare/health care for illegal aliens.
Blaming Norton for this is like blaming GW for the CIA after it was deballed, affirmative actioned and diversity quilted to drive out the good agents. Then Torch, the mafia senator from Jersey, made it against the law to use agents who weren't boy scouts.
I wished conservatives would grow up and cast their hate bombs on the heads of X42's civil service thugs who are still in all levels of our government!
This constant hate GW and blaming Norton and others for 8 years of inherited bs really gets old!
So you're saying that no matter who we elect,
the executive branch answers only to itself.
Why should we blame Clinton, either?
yes, one must dig deep to get to the root of cancer, however one must START to dig at some point to get it. Noton has not started and has proven she is not any diffrent than those she has followed into the job. Look at Klamath for crying out loud.
The Clinton appointees are still working hard in the Interior Dept. to continue the cover up of all the misdeeds and stolen money and Norton has done NOTHING to change that.
What will people like you say in 1,2,3,4 years and still nothing has changed? Will the excuses be then 'They tried', 'they did the best they could, you cant clean it all up in 1,2,3, 4 years, 'Congress would not let them' and all the other excuses people make for them.
Well at this point in time I will and do say 'New boss, same as the old boss' and untill I do see a change I will continue to say it.
Looks like they are running State, too. Let's skip the next presidential
election, save all that money, and just turn government de facto over
to the mandarins. As long as the choices are limited to Democrat
and Republican, it doesn't make a damn bit of difference who we
put in elective office.
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