Legislation LegacySummary of Research FindingsAccording to More (2002), of Indian Country today, the Interior Department has grossly mismanaged Indian Trust Accounts.
ÃÂSecretary of Interior Gail Norton and Assistant Interior Secretary for Indian Affairs Neal McCaleb were convicted of civil contempt in U.S. District Court.
ÃÂBoth men were found to have committed fraud by withholding evidence of gross mismanagement of Indian Trust Accounts.
ÃÂApproximately 10 years ago Eloise Cobell of the Blackfeet Tribe of Montana requested an audit of all Indian Trust accounts managed by the Interior Department. When she did not get the information she requested she brought suit against the department in 1996.
ÃÂThree years later Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Assistant Interior Secretary Kevin Gover were also found in contempt for failing to produce adequate records involving 300,000 individual Indian trust accounts.
ÃÂBabbitt, Rubin and Gover were fined $600,000, which got paid by U.S.
English: Black Bear, nom de Arte of a contemporary...
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Bruce Babbitt, 16th Governor of Arizona, and 47th ...taxpayers and no one served jail time. They were also aloud to complete their terms under the Clinton Administration without any repercussions.
ÃÂPresident Bush seems to be stretching things out even further and also appears unwilling to hold his appointees responsible for their actions or compel them to obey court orders.
ÃÂNorton and McCaleb both face possible fines and jail time for their contempt conviction; however, it is unlikely they will actually be prosecuted.
ÃÂPresently the Interior Department has actually been granted another chance to reveal the extent of the mismanaged accounts that are presumably somewhere in the range of $10 to $40 billion.
The way I see it the Interior Department is definitely involved. However, it appears pretty obvious that there is more than meets the eye. This particular issue has lived through at least two Presidents and is still unresolved which leads me to believe that...