FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 12, 2001
www.indiantrust.com


COURT MONITOR SAYS INTERIOR IN VIOLATION
OF ORDER FOR FULL TRUST ACCOUNTING

Department's Progress Is at "Ground Zero,"Despite Promises to Judge

WASHINGTON, D.C. - A federal monitor, appointed to evaluate the truthfulness 
of Interior Department statements to a U.S. District Court judge, says the 
department has made no progress on its highly touted "statistical sampling" 
plan for individual Indian trust beneficiaries, and instead used the project 
as an intentionally misleading ploy in an unsuccessful attempt to reverse 
the unfavorable Cobell court decision on appeal.

In a 50-page report made public July 11 by the federal judge in the Cobell 
case, federal monitor Joseph S. Kieffer III criticized both former Interior 
Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who first proposed the statistical sampling plan, 
and current Secretary Gale Norton, who he said endorsed the plan after only 
limited briefings and conducted "little or no research" on whether the plan 
complied with the court's orders in Cobell.

Despite a year and a half of promises to the court that the statistical 
sampling project was progressing, Kieffer said, "the status of the actual 
accounting, with few exceptions, was, for lack of a better term, at ground 
zero."

"This report proves exactly what the plaintiffs have been saying for years 
- that officials at Justice and Interior have been flat-out lying to the 
court, the Congress and all individual Indian trust beneficiaries," said 
Elouise Cobell, the lead plaintiff in Cobell v. Norton. 

U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth ordered Interior in December 1999 to 
provide a complete accounting to the individual trust beneficiaries for 
every dollar deposited in and disbursed from the trust since the late 19th 
century, as well as all interest earned on the trust funds. Interior has 
admitted that it has lost or destroyed many of the trust records.

Kieffer said that Babbitt and other senior Interior officials hatched the 
statistical sampling plan and scheduled a series of meetings - advertised 
with official notices in the Federal Register - supposedly to seek the 
views of Indian trust beneficiaries across the country. But in fact, Kieffer 
said, Babbitt already had decided how to proceed on the plan. Kieffer said 
the Federal Register notices and the meetings actually were intended to 
show the court, and the federal appeals court in Washington, that Interior 
was hard at work on an accounting and should be freed of court supervision.

"The hard truth is that the Federal Register notice was never meant to be a 
means for determining how to conduct the accounting based on the IIM account 
holders' opinions," Kieffer said. "One thousand Indians traveled countless 
miles to register their opinions in the consultative or information-gathering 
process commenced by the Federal Register notice for no reason."        

Interior under Babbitt was motivated by "a combination of desire to win the 
Cobell case coupled with a belief in the rectitude of their position on 
their obligations under the law to the IIM account holders," Kieffer said. 
That led to a "lemming-like obedience to the defense of the litigation" by 
Interior, rather than a good-faith effort to comply with the court's order, 
he added.

The appeals court upheld Judge Lamberth's ruling last February. As part of 
Lamberth's decision, the judge kept jurisdiction over trust reform at 
Interior for at least five years.

To read the Kieffer report, go to www.indiantrust.com.

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