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IIM Account Holders Looking for Answers on Secretary’s Malfeasance

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Interior Secretary Gale Norton will take the witness stand at 10 a.m. Wednesday in federal court here, facing serious questions by lawyers for individual Indian trust account holders about mismanagement of their funds and her failure to live up to her fiduciary obligations as trustee for the Individual Indian Monies (IIM) trust.

U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth said in a hearing today that attorneys for the Indian account holders may question Norton on all five contempt charges she faces. Four of the counts deal with her failure to provide IIM beneficiaries with an historical accounting of their money and filing false and misleading reports with the court about supposed progress toward trust reform.

A fifth count accuses Norton of failing to provide computer security for IIM trust funds and accounting data. Lamberth has said that a court-appointed Special Master’s investigative report about Interior’s “deplorable and inexcusable” lack of IT security makes a prima facie case for contempt.

Government lawyers who had vigorously opposed Norton being called to testify said today they were dropping their objections.

Lamberth agreed to Norton’s request that she be allowed to depart the courtroom no later than 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday to conduct other business.

Much of the testimony in the two-month contempt trial has focused on a series of seven reports by Court Monitor Joseph S. Kieffer III, who was assigned by Lamberth in May 2001 to start investigating Interior’s progress toward trust reform. Kieffer’s reports have provided a scathing critique of Norton’s failure to comply with court orders to overhaul the deeply troubled IIM trust and her false reports to the court on the status of trust reform.

Philip Smith can be contacted by phone, 202-661-6350.