Judge asked to hold Norton in contempt in Indian trust lawsuit 
By Robert Gehrke, Associated Press, 5/18/2001 14:46 

WASHINGTON (AP) American Indians who contend they were bilked of $10 
billion
in trust funds are asking a judge to stop the government from shredding
documents relating to the case and to hold Interior Secretary Gale 
Norton in contempt of court. 

The same judge ruled two Clinton Cabinet officials in contempt in 
connection with the trust funds two years ago. 

The Indians hope to use documents in the case to reconstruct how much 
money is missing from the trust fund accounts, which were created to 
manage royalties paid for the use of Indian lands. 

Attorneys for the 300,000 plaintiffs in the class-action case have 
asked that the government pay the money back. 

"The (Bureau of Indian Affairs) Office of Information Resource Management
and its contractors have been destroying trust documents on a daily basis 
in  violation of court orders," said Dennis Gingold, representing the 
Indian plaintiffs. 

Earlier this year, Alan Balaran, a court-appointed investigator, paid a
surprise visit to the document warehouse and pulled from a shredder a 
record of money paid out of the trust fund. BIA officials told Balaran 
similar documents were being shredded every day, Gingold said. 

Interior spokeswoman Stephanie Hanna criticized the plaintiffs' latest
motion, calling it the "contempt du jour." It is the third time U.S.
District Judge Royce Lamberth has been asked by the plaintiffs to hold
Norton in contempt since she was confirmed as interior secretary. 
"I think it's ridiculous and people are just using it to generate
publicity," the spokeswoman said. 

Hanna said the document Balaran found was a printout used to test the
computer system that stores the records and, since it included a Social
Security number, it was shredded for security purposes. 
"That's a flat-out lie," said Gingold. Even if the document was a
duplicate, the BIA would have had to get the court's permission to 
destroy it, and it did not, he said. 

A hearing on the motion has not been scheduled. 

In 1999 Lamberth held then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and former
Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin in contempt and fined them more than
$600,000 for failing to turn over documents related to the case. 
At a hearing in April, Lamberth said he was willing to take the same 
steps if the government doesn't cooperate with the court.
 
"I don't want it to come to that again, but I am prepared to do what is
necessary to get trust reform accomplished," said Lamberth. 
The Indian trust accounts came from an 1887 federal law that divided 
some reservation land into smaller plots for individual Indians. The 
federal government holds that land in trust for the Indians, meaning it 
cannot be taxed or sold. 

Many of the tracts are leased for grazing, logging, mining or oil 
drilling.  Proceeds are supposed to be deposited in government accounts 
and then paid to Indian landholders. 

Since the beginning, however, those accounts have been mismanaged, the
government acknowledges. Records for many were never kept, and 
documentation for others was lost or destroyed. 

Some of the money was stolen or used for other federal programs. Some 
lease proceeds were never collected. Thousands of the accounts have 
money but no names attached.