From: Indian Trust ListServ Date: Friday, February 15, 2002 05:30:49 PM To: Indian Trust ListServ Subject: COBELL v. NORTON February 15, 2002 WEB ALERT The Cobell plaintiffs have filed a new motion with the court asking that the Secretaries of Interior and Treasury be found in contempt for suppressing evidence and advancing legal arguments that they knew to be false. The plaintiffs’ motion is posted at www.indiantrust.com. The motion charges that government attorneys sought a favorable ruling from Judge Lamberth, claiming that the General Accounting Office had performed an accounting of IIM trust accounts. Government lawyers did not reveal an Aug. 27, 1999 letter from GAO stating that our records do not establish that GAO conducted a ‘final’ GAO comprehensive audit of IIM accounts, nor do they establish any regular practice of auditing IIM accounts. A senior Interior Department official, John Berry, distributed the GAO letter to the department’s Cobell litigation team, but said nothing to the Indian plaintiffs or the judge. It was not until December 4, 2001.15 months after the GAO Letter was transmitted to Mr. Berry, that the Special Master and plaintiffs were made aware of the existence of the GAO letter. The plaintiffs’ motion filed today contains a fascinating historical account (on p. 13) of the true state of IIM accounting: On February 8, 1933, Senator William King of Utah delivered a fierce condemnation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs...King also addressed flaws in individual Indian moneys. As he had traveled to Indian reservations with a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, the subcommittee had ‘become accustomed to endless queries and complaints by individual Indians and by tribes of Indians having to do with their stated inability to obtain from the Indian Bureau an accounting for their money, individual and tribal, which is held and administered under trust. ###### To subscribe to the Indian Trust mailing list, please paste the following link into your browser: http://www.indiantrust.com/ .