FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 19, 2001
www.indiantrust.com


SENIOR TRUST OFFICIAL VOUCHES FOR REPORT'S ACCURACY
ON FAILURE OF $33 MILLION IIM COMPUTER SYSTEM

Judge Wasn't Told by Interior That TAAMS Was Flunking Tests


WASHINGTON, D.C. - A senior trust official, testifying on the eighth day of 
a contempt trial for Interior Secretary Gale Norton, said today that "with 
few exceptions" he found a court investigator's report to be an accurate 
rendition of Interior's failure to carry out a key element of court-ordered 
reform of the Individual Indian Monies (IIM) trust.

The official, Thomas M. Thompson, testified that a report by Court Monitor 
Joseph S. Kieffer III on the severe problems of a prototype, $33 million 
trust data system and Interior's failure to inform U.S. District Judge Royce 
C. Lamberth that the system was flunking field tests "largely supports the 
facts as I understood them."

Thompson also said that senior Interior aides agreed at a Sept. 8, 1999 
meeting that it was imperative Lamberth be informed that the system, the 
Trust Asset Accounting Management System (TAAMS), was a flop. He said he was 
shocked to learn a year and a half later, when he read Kieffer's report, that 
the judge had never been notified.

The accuracy of Kieffer's five reports - which document Interior's evasion of 
Lamberth's Dec. 21, 1999 order to reform the IIM trust and provide 500,000 
IIM trust beneficiaries with an accounting of their money - underscore the 
seriousness of contempt charges against Norton and Assistant Secretary for 
Indian Affairs Neal McCaleb. Kieffer's reports show that TAAMS still does 
not work and may never work, and that quarterly reports by Norton to the 
judge on TAAMS and other trust topics have been highly misleading.

Thompson testified that he did not know why Lamberth was never informed that 
TAAMS was flunking user tests, and could not say who might have countermanded 
the recommendation by top Interior aides. "It may have been inadvertent or a 
bureaucratic blunder," he said.

"Could it have been incompetence?" asked lead plaintiffs' attorney Dennis M. 
Gingold. "Yes," Thompson said. Asked by Gingold if it could have been a 
"snafu," Thompson replied, "It would have to have been extraordinary."

The true state of TAAMS was important because it sharply contradicted trial 
testimony in the summer of 1999 by the TAAMS project manager, Dominic Nessi, 
that TAAMS was well on its way to success. One of Kieffer's conclusions is 
that Interior gave false testimony at the trial.

Interior's inability to make TAAMS work, and its unwillingness to submit 
candid reports to the judge, continue to haunt the department. Thompson 
revealed today that title data for Indian-owned lands had been "corrupted" 
in field tests of the TAAMS system in Billings, Montana during May and June 
of this year.

Lamberth immediately demanded that government attorneys inform him whether 
Norton had reported the incident in her 7th Quarterly Report to the court. 
Thompson's boss, Special Trustee Thomas Slonaker, refused to verify the 
accuracy of the 7th Quarterly Report when it was submitted to Lamberth on 
July 31.

With Thompson still the only witness to appear in the contempt proceedings, 
Lamberth has made it clear he is looking for ways to speed up the trial, 
which have been slowed to a crawl by 200 pages of government objections to 
Kieffer's findings.

Lamberth suggested today he might supplement trial testimony with depositions 
supervised by Special Master Alan Balaran, who would oversee deposition 
testimony regarding not only Norton and McCaleb but 37 other Interior and 
Justice Department officials and attorneys who the Indian plaintiffs want 
found in contempt. "If the government wants a complete record, we can give 
them a complete record," Lamberth said.

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