FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 10, 2001
www.indiantrust.com


NORTON CONTEMPT TRIAL OPENS WITH TESTIMONY
THAT QUARTERLY REPORTS TO JUDGE
 PAINTED FALSE PICTURE ON TRUST REFORM


WASHINGTON, D.C. - Indian plaintiffs told a federal judge today that 
Interior Secretary Gale Norton's failure to clean up the deeply troubled 
individual Indian trust and her submission of false and incomplete reports 
to the judge about trust reform progress add up to "clearly contemptuous 
conduct" that should be punished by the court.

After five and a half years of litigation, said lead plaintiffs' attorney 
Dennis M.Gingold, "The [government] defendants still maintain they don't 
understand what terms like 'individual Indian trust data' mean. Bad faith 
has clearly been demonstrated by this Administration. They have abused this 
court and have abused the judicial process..This is a disgraceful situation 
taking up your honor's time."

Much of the first day was taken up with detailed questioning by Gingold of 
the plaintiffs' first witness, Thomas M. Thompson, principal deputy in the 
Office of Special Trustee, which has often been at odds with Norton and her 
aides over the truthfulness of quarterly reports Norton was submitting to 
U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth.

In his testimony, Thompson acknowledged that Norton's quarterly reports 
left large gaps in information about the true status of trust reform and 
that a statistical sampling plan embraced by Norton shortly after she took 
office had no chance of complying with the court's orders to provide Indian 
trust beneficiaries with a complete historical accounting.

Two years after Lamberth ordered the accounting, Thompson testified, not a 
single individual Indian trust account has been reconciled.

Thompson also agreed that a series of highly critical reports to the judge 
by Court Monitor Joseph S. Kieffer III were substantially accurate. The 
Kieffer reports document a series of failures by Interior to move forward 
on important components of trust reform, and undercut the claims by Norton 
in her quarterly reports that data clean-up and a new trust accounting data 
system were progressing.

"The Indians' legacy is being wasted every day this trust is not fixed or 
is left in the hands of a failed trustee," said Gingold 

Thompson's testimony continues Tuesday, Dec. 11.

#####