Paper clips and lip service for trust records

FROM THE ARCHIVE

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FRIDAY, APRIL 12, 2002

A court official hurled another salvo against the Department of Interior on Thursday as part of a particularly acrimonious investigation that has lasted more than a year.

Shortly after Secretary Gale Norton took control of the department, special master Alan Balaran announced he would probe a high-level trust reform office. He has since encountered resistance, delays and attacks on his work.

In the process, a department employee was reassigned to a top Washington, D.C., post after Balaran revealed he couldn't document progress reported to a federal court. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth eventually scolded the manager, Ken Rossman, for trying to hamstring the investigation.

It's all part of the ongoing war between the government and Balaran, whose penultimate work remains a scathing description of how easy it is to break into computer systems housing the trust assets of 300,000 American Indians.

According to Balaran, the paper records aren't faring much better. In his latest report, he charges that the Office of the Special Trustee, under the direction of a Clinton administration appointee, has conducted "useless" training sessions, given "lip service" to the protection of Indian assets and ignored recommendations by their own experts -- all part of a string of "broken promises" to the people whose funds are at the heart of the Cobell class action.

"In the final analysis," he wrote, "[the failures] add to the grievous perception that trust records deserve no more special care than an agency personnel file, a payroll record or a requisition for paper clips."

If it sounds harsh, it probably is. Throughout a year of work into the Office of Trust Records, which Rossman directed before being removed last December, Balaran has been accused of bias and overstepping his boundaries by government and private attorneys.

Balaran has fired back, twice rejecting the Bush administration's attempts to limit his probe. Government attorneys wanted to prevent him from interviewing Rossman and others in person and they sought advance approval of his reports.

They also tried to hold back documents and other information while Rossman waged his own personal battle. Fees might be awarded as Lamberth rules on pending court motions in order to appease Deputy Secretary J. Steven Griles, who said lamented that top officials and senior managers like Rossman are being held captive by the lawsuit.

Balaran has proposed his own solution. He recommended last October that action be taken on Norton "on all fronts" for a "deliberate attempt to conceal relevant information" about the case.

Whether that will happen remains to be seen. Lamberth is still deliberating on the Bush administration's contempt trial, which ended in February.

Meanwhile, contempt citations are still in the air for dozens of past and present government officials, employees and attorneys. In response to Balaran's report implicating the Interior and Justice Department for erased e-mails, Norton's lawyers said no one could be punished for the transgression.