FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 15, 2002 www.indiantrust.com JUDGE CHASTISES INTERIOR FOR FOOT-DRAGGING ON IIM CHECKS; COURT READY TO MOVE FORWARD ON CONTEMPT FOR 39 MORE Plaintiffs Will Ask for Special Prosecutor WASHINGTON, D.C. - The federal judge hearing the individual Indian trust case today sharpened his criticism of the Interior Department's ongoing failure to pay tens of thousands of Indian trust beneficiaries, telling Interior it should get help from more competent officials at the Treasury Department to speed up the process. "Frankly, I've been dumbfounded that it has taken this amount of time to get things rolling again," said U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth in an hour-long hearing on Interior's lack of progress in paying royalties and leasing fees to IIM trust account holders. Lamberth ordered Interior on Dec. 5 to disconnect trust-related systems and individual computers from the Internet because the systems have no security software to protect trust funds and accounting data. Citing Hill testimony yesterday by Interior Deputy Secretary J. Steven Griles, Lamberth also told lawyers for the Cobell plaintiffs to begin preparing specific contempt allegations against 39 senior officials and attorneys at Interior and the Justice Department. Griles complained to a House subcommittee on March 14 that the Cobell lawsuit and the threat of contempt for senior officials are holding back progress on trust reform. "The time has come to lay out the specific charges they'd have to defend against," Lamberth told lead plaintiffs' attorney Dennis M. Gingold. "I'll accommodate Mr. Griles's desire that I move quickly" on contempt. Gingold told Lamberth the plaintiffs will ask him to refer the allegations to the Attorney General for appointment of a special prosecutor, to determine whether destruction of evidence by Interior and Justice officials is a criminal violation. Lamberth had deferred action on contempt charges for the 39 while he conducted a three-month contempt trial for Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Neal McCaleb. A decision is pending in that trial, which ended on Feb. 22. Justice Department attorney John Stemplewicz told Lamberth today that Interior has issued checks totaling approximately $24 million to individual Indians in recent weeks. Stemplewicz did not say, however, that the total includes $4.6 million in general assistance checks, which are not related to the Individual Indian Monies (IIM) trust. Stemplewicz also did not say that checks have gone to fewer than 10 percent of all IIM account holders. "We have the same serious concerns we've always had," Gingold told the judge. "The numbers in and of themselves make little sense to us. The question is how much money should have gone out. What we've been hearing for months is that they're violating the law." The Cobell plaintiffs asked Lamberth on Dec. 16 to issue a preliminary injunction that would force Interior to re-start the computer systems needed to issue checks to all IIM account holders. Until then, Gingold said, "We're not going to see these people [individual Indians] get what they deserve and what they're entitled to." Lamberth ordered Interior yesterday to submit a status report to him by March 22 with more information about their failure to re-start check-issuing systems. Thousands of individual Indian trust beneficiaries depend on the leasing fees and royalties from Indian-owned lands for basic necessities of life. ##### To subscribe to the Indian Trust mailing list, please paste the following link into your browser: http://www.indiantrust.com/