WASHINGTON – Someone in the Department of Interior may have intentionally
discarded records pertinent to Indian Trust accountability, according to a
letter from the Office of General Counsel.

The National Archives and Records Administration filed a report to
Interior, which eventually was filed with the U.S. District Court of
Washington, D.C., indicating permanent federal records were found in a
dumpster. The trashed files were allegedly genealogical records, which are
used to determine ownership of land and assets.

Interior is forbidden by court order to shred or discard any records that
may be involved in trust assets for American Indians.

NARA is investigating one or more incidents to determine if the BIA was
intentionally destroying records.

According to a letter to Interior from Jason Baron, director of litigation
for the Office of General Counsel, there were “one or more incidents at the
National Archives involving what may be [an] intentional act aimed at
unlawfully removing or disposing of permanent records from the Interior
Department.”

The dumpster was located at the main office of the National Archives. Some
of the BIA records that were part of the permanent holdings of the National
Archives dated back to the 1950s.

Additional records were discovered in a wastebasket in the stack areas of
the main archives, according to Baron. It is not known if the records found
in the trash container and the ones in the wastebasket are related.

The Office of Inspector General is conducting an investigation, Baron wrote
in the letter.

Plaintiffs in the Cobell v. Norton case wasted no time in responding to the
allegations and referred to the incidents as “the same repugnant, desperate
actions we’ve come to expect from Interior Secretary Gale Norton and her
unethical managers.

“Despite numerous court orders to preserve records related to the
individual Indian Trust, the Secretary and the Interior Department continue
to destroy irreplaceable Trust documents three blocks from the federal
courthouse where they were held in contempt for destroying Trust records,”
said Dennis Gingold, lead attorney for the plaintiffs.

“When a sitting cabinet-level official feels that they can destroy
protected trust records 60 yards from where the Constitution is displayed,
we have a government that is out of control,” Gingold said in a prepared
statement.

The letter regarding the destroyed records was dated Sept. 13; the records
were found on Sept. 1. Bill MacAllister, spokesman for the Cobell
plaintiffs, said the plaintiffs were puzzled why the court was not notified
in a more prompt manner.

The lack of records preservation by Interior was the basis for some of the
contempt charges leveled against Norton and her staff.

“We would never have known about the records if someone hadn’t walked by
that dumpster. It would suggest somebody is going through there and pulling
things out,” MacAllister said. “It shows the government is not taking care
of the records the way it should to preserve Indian records.”

He added that government records from other agencies were also found in the
same dumpster.

“We hope that both the Inspector General at the National Archives and the
people from the Department of Justice can get into this and see what went
on,” MacAllister said.

The missing records will most likely be discussed with Judge Royce Lamberth
at a future time. There are currently no hearings scheduled.

Gingold implied that until that discussion takes place, Norton would
continue to undermine the 10-year-old lawsuit by destroying trust documents
until she is arrested and jailed.

Recently DOJ filed a motion for Lamberth’s dismissal based on
unconventional rulings from the bench. A panel of appellate judges deferred
the dismissal motion to a different panel of judges, to be heard at a later
date.

An injunction issued by Lamberth that ordered Interior to begin immediate
work on an accounting plan was heard at the appellate level on Sept. 15.
The DOJ and the plaintiffs both have problems with the order and wanted
more clarification from Lamberth. But the appeals court does not send
orders back for clarification: they either uphold the order or give
instructions.

The government argues that it will take nearly $14 billion to create an
accounting of the historical records; the plaintiffs argue that because of
lost and destroyed records, it is impossible to produce an accurate
historical accounting.

The government continues the argument of cutting back on the number of
American Indians involved in the accounting procedure. As it stands now,
the accounting will have to go back to 1887. Plaintiffs argue that it is
because of the expense, not the workload, that the government wants the
change.

Baron’s letter was attached to the August activity report filed with the
District Court that details work on active and inactive records and their
disposition.

The report stated that through August 2005, more than 120,000 boxes had
been reviewed and processed. Also, 2,740 boxes of inactive records from a
variety of locations were moved to NARA for storage.

The Office of Trust Review is holding 31 boxes, as ordered by the federal
court. The contents will be verified when the hold is lifted, the report
stated.