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WASHINGTON, D.C. - Indian plaintiffs told a federal judge today that Interior Secretary Gale Norton’s failure to clean up the deeply troubled individual Indian trust and her submission of false and incomplete reports to the judge about trust reform progress add up to "clearly contemptuous conduct" that should be punished by the court.

After five and a half years of litigation, said lead plaintiffs' attorney Dennis M.Gingold, "The [government] defendants still maintain they don't understand what terms like 'individual Indian trust data' mean. Bad faith has clearly been demonstrated by this Administration. They have abused this court and have abused the judicial process...This is a disgraceful situation taking up your honor's time."

Much of the first day was taken up with detailed questioning by Gingold of the plaintiffs' first witness, Thomas M. Thompson, principal deputy in the Office of Special Trustee, which has often been at odds with Norton and her aides over the truthfulness of quarterly reports Norton was submitting to U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth.

In his testimony, Thompson acknowledged that Norton's quarterly reports left large gaps in information about the true status of trust reform and that a statistical sampling plan embraced by Norton shortly after she took office had no chance of complying with the court's orders to provide Indian trust beneficiaries with a complete historical accounting.

Two years after Lamberth ordered the accounting, Thompson testified, not a single individual Indian trust account has been reconciled.

Thompson also agreed that a series of highly critical reports to the judge by Court Monitor Joseph S. Kieffer III were substantially accurate. The Kieffer reports document a series of failures by Interior to move forward on important components of trust reform, and undercut the claims by Norton in her quarterly reports that data clean-up and a new trust accounting data system were progressing.

"The Indians' legacy is being wasted every day this trust is not fixed or is left in the hands of a failed trustee", said Gingold

Thompson's testimony continues Tuesday, December 11.

For media inquiries contact Philip Smith, by phone: 202-661-6350, or send e-mail to: psmith@policyimpact.com.