indian trust

[ado]

WASHINGTON, July 3 -- Interior Department workers are continuing to destroy
Indian trust records, a top Interior official has conceded in court
testimony.
Ross Swimmer, the department's special trustee, acknowledged
Wednesday that a massive destruction of individual and tribal trust records
had been uncovered in Farmington, N.M., earlier this year despite repeated
orders and warnings from U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth to preserve all
trust records.
Preserving the trust records is critical to resolving the claims of
Indians that they have been cheated out of billions of dollars from the
government-arranged leases of their lands in the West. That claim is the
subject of a seven-year lawsuit in which a group of Western Indians have won
court orders for a full accounting of funds that should be in their
individual trust accounts.
But the latest disclosure that Interior employees are still throwing
away trust records troubled Lamberth, who five years ago issued his first
warnings about trust record destruction.
"I don't understand why five years later I'm still getting reports
like this," the judge said after Swimmer's testimony.
Swimmer, who was the government final witness in a trial to
determine how to reform the much-trouble trust system, also admitted
bafflement at how workers at the Farmington Indian Minerals Office could
have destroyed what a report described as "a large volume" of trust records.
"This obviously is a very egregious action," an obviously
embarrassed Swimmer told the judge.
Under questioning by Keith Harper, a lawyer representing the Native
American Rights Fund, Swimmer attempted to minimize the losses, saying that
the records could be reconstructed, but only at "enormous expense" and time.
After discovering massive document destruction five years ago,
Lamberth issued strict orders to Interior and Treasury Department officials
to preserve all trust records. He ultimately held two Clinton administration
cabinet officers, Interior secretary Bruce Babbitt and Treasury secretary
Robert Rubin, in contempt over the document destruction.
The latest disclosure of trust record destruction came as the
government was concluding its case for a reform of the trust system, a
reform plant that lawyers for the Indians said falls far short of the full
accounting Congress and the courts have ordered.
Swimmer said some workers at Farmington believed the documents they
were destroying were duplicates or unnecessary, but under questioning
Swimmer said some Interior workers there appear confused over what a trust
record is. "I can't understand why anyone would say that that copy of a
document is not a record," he told Harper.
At that, Lamberth said the problems Interior is facing "may be
beyond [the] training" of government workers.
"It's just beyond me," Swimmer said, admitting he was baffled at the
destruction at Farmington.
The latest trail in the seven-year-old trust case continued Thursday
with a statistical expert who challenged the government's way of calculating
errors in the trust records. The trial will conclude with final arguments
early next week.

For additional information:

Bill McAllister

703-385-6996
202-257-5385 (cell)

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