Indian trust-fund trial opens

WASHINGTON — After seven years of motions, hearings and contempt citations against Cabinet officers, trial opened Thursday on a $137 billion suit by American Indians saying the Interior Department has mismanaged their trust funds for more than a century.

U.S. District Judge Royce B. Lamberth immediately expressed skepticism at the government's claim that within five years it will be able to account for billions of dollars that should have been held in trust but weren't.

"Every time estimate I've been given by Interior has slipped, so I assume that one will, too," Lamberth told government lawyers at the opening of what is expected to be a five-week trial.

Attorneys for the more than 300,000 Indian plaintiffs in what is the largest class-action suit ever against the government said their clients shouldn't have to wait another five years.

The Bush administration and the Clinton administration before it each admitted they couldn't account for all of the money that is supposed to be in the 116-year-old trust, funded primarily by royalties from oil, gas, timber and mining on Indian land.

Both the government and the Indian plaintiffs have submitted proposals to Lamberth for calculating what the fund's revenues should have been and assuring its accounting accuracy in the future.

The first day ended after opening arguments and testimony from the plaintiffs' first witness.

The government proposes a historical accounting based on limited statistical sampling and transaction-by-transaction analysis. The plaintiffs' plan would identify all money generated over the years from individual Indian trust lands by using independent databases such as those relied upon by the oil and gas industries — a process they claim could take only a matter of weeks.

Department officials have said it will take at least five years and cost $335 million to account for the money, though that is less than their 10-year, $2.4 billion estimate from last year that was opposed by key members of Congress.

Lamberth, who is deciding which plan to accept, held Interior Secretary Gale Norton in contempt last September for failing to fix management problems with the trust. He also ordered her to submit the detailed accounting plan and fix the long-standing management problems. The department has appealed that ruling.

In addition, the judge sanctioned government attorneys for what he said were attempts to cover up misrepresentations to him. He also had held Norton's predecessor, Bruce Babbitt, and Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin in contempt in the case.