"One of the biggest problems covering civil litigation that has lasted for nearly a decade is simply remembering who said what.

That's an issue I have encountered in assisting a group that filed a lawsuit in 1996 over the federal government's long-troubled Indian Trust program. I covered the filing of the suit when I was a Washington Post reporter. None of the other reporters from those days are still around and, as a result, government officials are getting away with misstatements about the lawsuit, titled Cobell versus Norton. The tempo of their misstatements has increased as Congress has begun to explore ways of settling the suit by legislation.

What is happening now is that Interior officials are attempting nothing short of trying to rewrite the history of the trust, contending that there are, in reality, few problems with the trust's current accounts.

One example of a rewrite is a comment by Ross Swimmer, the senior Interior official in charge of the Indian trust programs, who says the Cobell lawsuit is not about mismanagement at all. That�s not the way others see it. As the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said in 2001 in ordering the government to make an accounting of the Indian trust accounts: 'These trusts were created over 100 years ago through an Act of Congress and have been mismanaged nearly as long.'"

Get the Story:
Bill McAllister: Needed: A better memory in coverage of the Indian Trust Program (Nieman Watchdog 9/6)

Relevant Links:
Indian Trust: Cobell v. Norton - http://www.indiantrust.com
Cobell v. Norton, Department of Justice - http://www.usdoj.gov/civil/cases/cobell/index.htm

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