Copyright © 2002 NLThomas
All Rights Reserved

Lamberth: "A way to pressure plaintiffs or get thousands more to call me."

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The federal judge presiding over a contempt trial for Interior Secretary Gale Norton suggested today that Interior officials are using his Dec. 5 order to disconnect unprotected trust accounting systems from the Internet as a political bludgeon in Indian Country.

The comments came after Keith Harper, a member of the Cobell plaintiffs legal team, complained to U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth that Interior officials have still not issued Individual Indian Monies (IIM) trust checks to 43,000 trust beneficiaries, despite a court order that would allow trust systems to be reactivated under court supervision.

"They have with great success been able to get [Interior] paychecks out. The Secretary, I'm sure, got her check", said Harper. "A cynical person would think they’re playing politics."

"Or pressuring the plaintiffs", interjected Lamberth. "Or get thousands more people to call me."

Lamberth issued a temporary restraining order on Dec. 5 forcing Interior to disconnect trust-related systems from the Internet after an investigative report showed that the trust accounting data is vulnerable to hackers. Interior responded by shutting down its entire Internet connection, blaming the judge and the Cobell plaintiffs. Interior later agreed to a consent order that would allow them to reactivate the systems needed to issue the IIM checks, but has not done so, saying it cannot meet the standards imposed by a court supervisor.

Harper today introduced an affidavit from Richard P. Ebbert, a lawyer who telephoned the Denver office of Interior’s Minerals Management Service on Jan. 3 and was told the office’s computers are down for “at least two months” because of Lamberth’s order. Ebbert said he was told by an MMS employee that “they had been told by their legal people, until further notice, to turn off all of their computers, and not to research – even manually – any information in their non-computerized, hard copy files.”

In a letter today to the Justice Department, Special Master Alan Balaran blamed the Interior Department for the failure to cut the IIM checks. "I would respectfully suggest that any harm which has inadvertently befallen trust beneficiaries and others is the direct consequence of years of malaise on those Interior officials charged with ensuring the security of trust data", Balaran wrote.

In his final day of direct questioning by lead plaintiffs’ attorney Dennis M. Gingold, senior Interior trust official Thomas M. Thompson again agreed that reform of the IIM trust, including an historical accounting, is “not even at the starting gate,” more than two years after Lamberth ordered it done.

"There is no overall system you can rely on today", Thompson said. "We use business rules that are no longer current practice [in the private sector]. We rely on legacy [trust] data that is not reliable. There is no audit trail."

"You know any banker would be in jail for handling funds like this, don't you?" said Lamberth. "Yes, your honor", Thompson replied.

Under Gingold's questioning, Thompson acknowledged that a series of internal Interior risk assessment and risk management reports and memos chronicled the disastrous development of a new, $30 million trust data accounting system that still does not work, but that none of the failures were reported to Lamberth.

"He knows this wasn't reported", said Lamberth at one point. "This is bad news. Bad news wasn’t reported."

Lying to the court is the basis for several contempt charges against Norton and Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Neal McCaleb.

The government's cross-examination of Thompson is scheduled to begin Monday, Jan. 7.