As trustee, the BIA is supposed to send out regular statements telling allottees exactly how much oil is being produced from their land and how much money is in their account. The government is also supposed to appraise Indian lands to make sure they get fair market value for leases, such as rights of way for pipelines.

Gambrell noticed that wasn't always done. As director of the FIMO office, it was his job to make sure Navajo allottees were paid for their oil and gas leases. He was appointed to the job just months after the Cobell lawsuit was filed in 1996.

He suspected Navajos were not being paid properly and reported it to the Interior Department. But, he said, nothing was ever done.

Last year, court-appointed investigator Alan Balaran found that companies paid private landowners near the Navajo reservation nearly 20 times what Navajos got for the right to build pipelines across their land. The government is challenging some of Balaran's findings.

Gambrell was fired last September because, he believes, he asked too many questions. He said the Interior Department told him it was because he destroyed records. The department would not comment on the case. Gambrell said he and the department have reached a confidential settlement.

"The Department of Interior," Gambrell said, "instead of fixing the system, they just keep putting it off and putting it off."

Paperwork nightmare

The lawsuit calls for a historical accounting, and the government believes it has the records to do that.

"The challenge is putting those records into usable form," said Ross Swimmer, the Interior Department's special trustee for American Indians.

Robert Anderson, director of the University of Washington's Native American Law Center, said there is no way the government could ever do that type of accounting, but the government won't admit that.

"They never had an adequate record-keeping system in place," Anderson said. "I think they thought it was going to go away, so they didn't pay any attention to it."

Both sides agree $13 billion has passed through the system, but Keith Harper, attorney for the plaintiffs, said the government needs to prove how much of that reached the Indians.

"These people, they should be millionaires," he said, "and they're living in abject poverty. . . , cycles of poverty created because of the mismanagement."