FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 21, 2001 www.indiantrust.com QUARTERLY REPORTS FROM MARCH 2000 TO THE PRESENT HAVE MISLED JUDGE ON TRUST REFORM PROGRESS Lamberth: "They Report Testing. They Just Don't Say It Failed Every Test" WASHINGTON, D.C. - Quarterly reports required by a federal judge to keep him informed of the Interior Department's progress on individual Indian trust reform were so misleading that senior trust officials finally refused to verify their contents, despite pressure by key aides to Secretary Gale Norton to do so, a top trust official testified today. In day-long testimony on the 10th day of Norton's contempt trial, Thomas M. Thompson, the No. 2 official in Interior's Office of the Special Trustee, gave a guided tour through the seven reports filed with U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth since March 2000, describing how worries grew among some officials that the reports were highly misleading about supposed trust improvements. "They report testing" of a prototype trust accounting data system, said Lamberth of the first quarterly report in March 2000. "They just don't say it failed every test." At another point, Lamberth interjected, "They did a successful test. They [the tests] showed it failed. Yet they reported to me it was 'successful.' That really says it all, doesn't it?" "Yes, your honor," said Thompson. False information in the reports is a key element of contempt charges against Norton and Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Neal McCaleb. Thompson's testimony traced how, he said, concern mounted among some top Interior officials that the reports were seriously misstating the department's progress on court-ordered trust reform. After the 3rd Quarterly Report, he said, his boss, Special Trustee Thomas Slonaker, began submitting his own, independent comments for inclusion in the reports. The issue came to a head with the 7th Quarterly Report, due September 31 of this year, when Slonaker refused to sign it. Thompson said he and other trust reform project managers also were pressured "inappropriately" by Interior Solicitor William Myers to verify the report's contents as accurate and complete. In a Sept. 27, 2001 memo, Thompson and others refused to verify the information, saying to do so "would border on the foolhardy." Thompson also testified that assorted attorneys from the Justice Department, the Solicitor's Office and Norton's "immediate office" played roles in drafting the reports. The high points of Thompson's testimony, which began December 10, have already been revealed in detailed reports by Court Monitor Joseph S. Kieffer III, which form the basis for the contempt charges against Norton and McCaleb. But Thompson's confirmation of the accuracy of Kieffer's reports adds up to a highly damaging case against the two. The contempt trial resumes January 4. #####