iN THE TJNTTED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA ELOUISE PEPION COBELL, et a1!, ) ) Plaintiffs, ) ) v. ) CaseNo. 1:96CV01285 ) (Judge Lamberth) DIRK KEIVIPTHORNE, Secretary of the Interior, ) ) ) Defendants. ) NOTICE OF FILING OF THE TWENTY-EIGHTH OUARTERLY REPORT FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF TIlE TREASURY The Department of the Treasury has prepared its Twenty-Eighth Quarterly Report on Actions Taken By the Department of the Treasury to Retain JIM-Related Documents Necessary For an Accounting and submits it to the Court in accordance with this Court's Order of December21, 1999. A copy of the report is attached hereto. Dated: December 1, 2006 Respectfully submitted, PETERD. KEISLER Assistant Attorney General STUART E. SCHIFFER Deputy Assistant Attorney General J. CHRISTOPHER KOHN Director /5/ John J. Siemietkowski ROBERT E. KIRSCHMAN, Jr. (D.C. Bar No. 406635) Assistant Director JOHN J. SIEMIETKOWSKI Trial Attorney Commercial Litigation Branch Civil Division P.O. Box 875 Ben Franklin Station Washington, D.C. 20044-0875 Phone (202) 514-3368 Fax (202) 514-9163 2 CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE I hereby certify that, on December 1, 2006 the foregoing Notice of Filing of the Twenty-Eighth Quarterly Report for the Department of the Treasury was served by Electronic Case Filing, and on the following who is not registered for Electronic Case Filing, by facsimile: Earl Old Person (Pro Se) Blackfeet Tribe P.O. Box 850 Browning, MT 59417 Fax (406) 338-7530 /5/ Kevin P. Kingston Kevin P. Kingston DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY BUREAU OF THE PUBLIC OEBT WASHINGTON. DC Z0239-0001 December 1, 2006 MEMORANDUM FOR: PETER D. KEISLER ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL CIVIL DIVISION U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE FROM: PAUL 0. WOLFTEICIa!) CHIEF COUNSEL / £'t BUREAU OF THE PUBLIC DEBT DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY SUBJECT: TWENTY-EIGHTH QUARTERLY REPORT COBELL v+ KEMP THORNE Included with this cover memorandum is the "Twenty-Eighth Quarterly Report on Actions Taken by the Department of the Treasury to Retain IIM-Related Documents Necessary for an Accounting" (the Report). The Report has been prepared by the Department of the Treasury pursuant to the Court Order and Opinion in Cobell v. Babbitt (D.D.C. CV No, 96-1285), flIed December 21, 1999. The Report includes information concerning the Financial Management Service ("FMS"), the Bureau of the Public Debt ("BPD"), and certain Departmental Offices ("DO"). The Report was prepared based on information provided by a number of program offices from the above-described organizations. The preparation of the Report included circulation of drafts of the Report to program offices that are responsible for the actions described in the Report. Comments were received from those offices and incorporated in the Report. Senior officials of FMS, BPD and DO reviewed the Report before it was submitted to the Department of Justice. The Department of the Treasury stands ready to respond to any questions or concerns the Court may have after reviewing the Report. www.treasurydirect.gov TWENTY-EIGHTH QUARTERLY REPORT ON ACTIONS TAKEN BY THE DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY TO RETAIN IIM-RELATED DOCUMENTS NECESSARY FOR AN ACCOUNTING Cobell, et al. v. Kempthorne December 1, 2006 This is the Department of the Treasury's ("Treasury") Twenty-Eighth Quarterly Report, pursuant to the Court's December 21, 1999 Order ("Order") in the above- captioned case. It covers activities occurring over a three-month period from September 1, 2006 through November 30, 2006. The Order requires Treasury to report on the steps it has taken since the last quarterly report to rectify a single breach of its trust responsibilities, namely the destruction of TIM trust materials after their age exceeded six years and seven months. Cobell, et al. v. Babbitt, 91 F.Supp. 2d 1, 50, 59 (D.D.C. 1999). Treasury continues to preserve TIM-related documentation pursuant to the Court's August 12, 1999 Order, which defines the trust records that Treasury must retain. The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRB) notified Treasury that 37 boxes of records dating from 2003, 2004 and 2005 were not located during an inventory. Thirty- four of these boxes contain only "tracing" information used in sorting and processing Treasury checks, which (if needed) could be recreated from the endorsement stamps on the checks themselves, assuming the endorsements are legible. The remaining three boxes contain "control" information used in balancing Treasury checks and adjusting out- of-balance Treasury checks. Some of the information in the three "control" boxes may not be available from other sources, but the information should no longer be needed for any adjustment purposes because of the passage of time. As reported in Treasury's Twenty-Seventh Quarterly Report filed September 1, 2006, several boxes of FMS and Bureau of the Public Debt (B PD) records were affected by a water sprinkler incident at the Washington National Records Center (WNRC) in July 2006, and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) sent the boxes to a contractor to be freeze-dried. As of the date of this report, some of the records have been dried and returned in good condition to the WNRC. NARA has informed FMS and BPD that it may take several more months for the contractor to dry the remaining records and return them to WNRC. As also reported in Treasury's Twenty-Seventh Quarterly Report, a portion of FMS' working copy set of microfilm copies of negotiated Treasury checks was exposed to water when the basement of FMS' Hyattsville, Maryland office flooded on June 25, 2006. The water exposure is believed to have affected the quality of the check images on at least portions of some of the water-exposed microfilm cartridges. FMS packed the water-exposed cartridges into boxes (numbering approximately 200 boxes) and moved them to a secure area on the first floor of FMS' Hyattsville, Maryland office. FMS sent sample cartridges to a contractor for assessment, and expects to receive the contractor's written assessment report before the end of this year. Throughout the reporting period, FMS packed all of the non-water-exposed cartridges into boxes at FMS' Ardmore, Maryland warehouse and began processing those boxes (numbering approximately 1,000 boxes) for shipment to the WNRC for storage. As of the date of this report, one-third of the non-water-exposed microfilm cartridges have been shipped to the WNRC. As previously reported in Treasury's Twenty-Third Quarterly Report, filed September 1, 2005, all digital check images and associated index data were successfully archived (moved) from the predecessor National Archive System (NAS) library at the Boston FRB to the new Image Services System (ISS) library at the Minneapolis FRB, in August 2005. The FRB has confirmed that the images and data on NAS storage media (consisting of approximately 3,000 tapes) are now merely redundant of the images and data moved to the newer storage media utilized by ISS (disks and magnetic tapes). In particular, the FRB confirmed that, of the 1.97 billion digital check images moved to ISS, 99.99% of the images are retrievable in ISS (i.e., are not defective). Further, the FRB confirmed that any images that are defective in ISS were likewise defective in NAS. The images in ISS are of Treasury checks negotiated in April 1997 or later, for which time period both original negotiated Treasury checks and electronic check data are generally available. FMS will authorize the FRB to destroy the 3,000 NAS tapes at the end of this year. 2