Interior Dept. Hid Accounting Flaws From Court, Official Says

WASHINGTON — A judge was kept in the dark about failures in a computer system created to help track royalty payments owed to American Indians, a court-appointed investigator reported Monday.

In September, U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth said Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton had defrauded the court by making misleading statements about the department’s efforts to fix management problems of oil, gas, mining, timber and other royalties from Indian lands. That included covering up failures of the Trust Asset and Accounting Management System.

On Monday, Alan Balaran, a court-appointed special master in the case, said the Interior Department made a concerted effort to sanitize its report on the computer system to make it appear to be working well. He said the department ignored advice from its own experts, who said the report as presented to the court was inaccurate.

The department’s reports “were contrived to present a gilded portrait of the [computer] system and avoid adverse consequences arising from contempt proceedings pending at the time,” Balaran wrote.

Interior Department spokesman Dan DuBray said he had not read Balaran’s report and could not comment.

“They wasted three months of a judge’s time by putting on a false defense,” said Dennis Gingold, attorney for a group of Indians suing the government. “It really is a disgusting finding.”

The department has appealed Lamberth’s contempt ruling, and oral arguments on the appeal are scheduled Thursday.

The suit stems from the department’s management of a trust fund established by Congress in 1887 that now handles royalty payments from 11 million acres held by about 300,000 American Indians.