<DOC>
[107 Senate Hearings]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access]
[DOCID: f:81450.wais]
S. Hrg. 107-633
INDIVIDUAL INDIAN MONEY ACCOUNTS
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON INDIAN AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
ON
THE JULY 2, 2002 REPORT OF THE DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR TO THE
CONGRESS ON THE HISTORICAL ACCOUNTING OF INDIVIDUAL INDIAN MONEY
ACCOUNTS
__________
JULY 25, 2002
WASHINGTON, DC
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
81-450 WASHINGTON : 2003
____________________________________________________________________________
For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512-1800
Fax: (202) 512-2250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402-0001
COMMITTEE ON INDIAN AFFAIRS
DANIEL K. INOUYE, Hawaii, Chairman
BEN NIGHTHORSE CAMPBELL, Colorado, Vice Chairman
KENT CONRAD, North Dakota FRANK MURKOWSKI, Alaska
HARRY REID, Nevada JOHN McCAIN, Arizona,
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico
PAUL WELLSTONE, Minnesota CRAIG THOMAS, Wyoming
BYRON L. DORGAN, North Dakota ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah
TIM JOHNSON, South Dakota JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma
MARIA CANTWELL, Washington
Patricia M. Zell, Majority Staff Director/Chief Counsel
Paul Moorehead, Minority Staff Director/Chief Counsel
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Statements:
Cason, James, associate deputy secretary, Office of the
Secretary of the Interior.................................. 7
Causey, William F., esquire, Nixon Peabody, LLP.............. 19
Edwards, Bert, executive director, Office of Historical Trust
Accounting, Department of the Interior..................... 7
Inouye, Hon. Daniel K., U.S. Senator from Hawaii, chairman,
Committee on Indian Affairs................................ 1
Slonaker, Tom, special trustee for American Indians,
Department of the Interior................................. 7
Williams, McCoy, director, Financial Management and
Assurance, General Accounting Office, Washington, DC....... 3
Appendix
Prepared statements:
Cason, James................................................. 30
Causey, William F............................................ 37
Williams, McCoy.............................................. 27
Additional material submitted for the record:
Report to Congress on the Historical Accounting of Individual
Indian Money Accounts, Department of the Interior.......... 42
INDIVIDUAL INDIAN MONEY ACCOUNTS
----------
THURSDAY, JULY 25, 2002
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Indian Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:06 a.m. in
room 485, Senate Russell Building, Hon. Daniel K. Inouye
(chairman of the committee) presiding.
Present: Senators Inouye and Campbell.
STATEMENT OF HON. DANIEL K. INOUYE, U.S. SENATOR FROM HAWAII,
CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON INDIAN AFFAIRS
The Chairman. I have just been informed that the cochair is
involved in a very important conference meeting on energy, so I
will proceed.
The Committee on Indian Affairs will meet this morning to
receive testimony on the report of the Department of the
Interior submitted to the Congress on July 2, 2002, on the
historical accounting of Individual Indian Money Accounts
pursuant to conference report 107-234 of the Interior
Appropriations Act of fiscal year 2002.
One of the fundamental duties of a trustee is the duty to
the beneficiary to ``keep and render clear and accurate
accounts with respect to the administration of the trust.'' The
United States' duty as trustee for the funds held in trust for
individual Indians and Indian tribes requires that the United
States provide an accounting to the beneficiaries.
This duty has been the subject of several House-Senate
conference reports on Interior Appropriations acts, the 1994
American Indian Trust Fund Management Reform Act and currently,
in class action litigation brought on behalf of Individual
Indian Money Account holders, asserting as one of several
claims against the United States that the United States must
provide the beneficiary account holders with an accounting.
As a function of treaties and the course of dealings
between the United States and Indian tribes, the United States
holds legal title to lands held in trust for individual Indians
as well as individual Indian tribal governments. The revenues
derived from trust lands are also held in trust by the United
States for the benefit of individual Indians and tribal
governments. Over the last 20 years, at the request of this
committee, the General Accounting Office has monitored the
efforts of the Department to address the management of funds
held in trust for individual Indians and Indian tribes.
In August 2001, the General Accounting Office reported to
the committee that an independent public accounting firm audit
of Indian trust funds for fiscal year 2000 showed that the
Department of the Interior was maintaining approximately 1,400
accounts for 315 Indian tribes with assets in excess of $2.6
billion, and over 260,000 Individual Indian Money trust fund
accounts with a balance of $400 million as of September 30,
2000. Receipts are deposited to these accounts primarily from
land use agreements, royalties on natural resource depletion,
enterprises related to trust resources, judgment awards,
settlement of Indian claims and investment income.
However, the audit report noted that reliance cannot be
placed on the balances reflected in the trust fund accounts
until tribal accounts are reconciled and/or resolved through
negotiation and settlement and class action litigation on
behalf of Indian Money Account holders is resolved.
Today we find ourselves at a critical crossroads as we
consider the Department's report and the information it
provides to the Congress on the uncertainties associated with
the conduct of an historical accounting. First, there is the
uncertainty associated with gaps in the records and documents
upon which an historical accounting would necessarily rely.
Second, there is the uncertainty associated with the time that
would be involved in conducting a complete historical
accounting.
Third, there is the uncertainty associated with the
projected costs of an historical accounting. The Department's
report projects that the total cost of an accounting would be
$2.4 billion with an error rate in the projected cost of minus
5 percent or as high as plus 25 percent.
The Department's report sets forth the methodology that the
Department anticipates employing in conducting the historical
accounting of Individual Indian Money Accounts. What the
Department's report does not address is whether there are other
methodologies that might be applied and whether alternative
methodologies might entail less time, less uncertainty and less
cost. Some have suggested that with all the gaps in
information, the lost and destroyed documents, it is not even
possible to conduct a complete historical accounting.
Beginning in 1995 and in subsequent testimony before this
committee, the GAO suggested that the Congress consider a
settlement of claims against the United States for an
accounting. We have called upon the General Accounting Office
and our third panelist today to assist the committee in
developing an understanding of whether these matters lend
themselves to a resolution through a legislative settlement.
However, even if the Congress and the interested parties were
to agree that the path to settlement of claims against the
United States is the preferable path to pursue, the duty on the
part of the trustee to provide an accounting to the beneficiary
remains.
These are the challenging issues that are the impetus for
the Committee's hearing this morning. And we look forward to
the testimony that will be presented.
May I at this time call upon the Director of the Financial
Management and Assurance, General Accounting Office, of
Washington, DC, McCoy Williams. Mr. Williams, welcome, sir.
STATEMENT OF McCOY WILLIAMS, DIRECTOR, FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT AND
ASSURANCE, GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Williams. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to be here today to summarize
previous GAO work that identified gaps in information needed to
reconcile Individual Indian Moneys trust accounts and the
rationale that led us to suggest, based upon our earlier work,
that Interior seek alternatives to reconciliation such as a
negotiated agreement. I am accompanied today by Mr. Koury and
Mr. Jacobsen.
Before discussing our prior work, let me point out that we
have not yet had time to analyze Interior's July 2, 2002 Report
to Congress on the Historical Accounting of Individual Indian
Money Accounts, evaluate its proposed methodology or discuss
the report or its proposed methodology with Interior officials.
Also, we have not done recent work to evaluate the current
state of Interior's Individual Indian Moneys records.
Nevertheless, it is clear that a reconciliation of IIM
accounts is a daunting endeavor, both in terms of the magnitude
of the project's scope and the obstacles that are likely to be
encountered. We reported to this committee in June 1996 that
based on our work, we concluded at that time that records were
not available to support a reconciliation of the IIM accounts.
In addition to missing records, we pointed out obstacles that
Interior would encounter in pursuing an IIM account
reconciliation, such as the lack of an audit trail through
Interior's integrated records management system, which was used
to maintain IIM account information and the differences in the
way the system operates at various Interior locations, which
affect the consistency of the IRMS information.
Much of our previous work in the area of trust fund
reconciliations relates to an earlier account reconciliation
requirement and a related Interior effort to reconstruct both
tribal and IIM trust accounts. From 1992 through 1997, we
monitored and reported on various aspects of Interior's
planning, execution and reporting of results for the
reconciliation project. In our June 1992 report on Interior's
efforts to reconcile Indian Trust Accounts, we noted that
efforts originally consisted of two phases. The first phase was
to cover, in addition to 500 tribal accounts, 17,000 Individual
Indian Monies accounts maintained at three agency offices.
However, after an initial assessment by Interior's
contractor of the level of effort and cost needed to complete
the various segments of reconciliation work, a decision was
made not to reconcile IIM accounts as part of the project. In
reporting this status, we noted that Interior and its
contractor had determined that a full reconciliation of all
tribal and IIM accounts was neither possible nor cost effective
due to missing records, commingled tribal and Individual Indian
accounting records, poorly documented accounting transactions
and the volume of data to be reviewed.
At that time, we recommended that Interior seek
alternatives to the reconciliation project and develop a
proposal for reaching a satisfactory resolution of the trust
fund account balances with account holders. Among alternatives
that we recommended for Interior's consideration were that
Interior consider negotiating agreements with Individual
Indians on balances reported on their account statements and
request legislated settlements on all selected or accounts.
In a number of testimonies and reports over the next
several years, we supported the idea of Interior and tribal and
Individual Indian money account holders negotiating a
resolution of their issues. Interior's July 2, 2002 report
relates directly to the American Indian Trust Fund Management
Reform Act of 1994, which required Interior to reconcile tribal
and IIM accounts and the ongoing class action lawsuit commonly
referred to as the Cobell litigation, which is presently before
the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
In this regard, my comments today are not intended to
address, nor is GAO taking any position on what level of
accounting the 1994 Act or the courts have required of Interior
thus far, whether Interior's plan satisfies those requirements
or if so, whether Interior's plan is the only or best approach
for Interior to satisfy the requirements imposed on it. Those
issues will ultimately be decided by the court.
Having said that, we note that Interior's report recognizes
that a number of obstacles, similar to those we have previously
reported on, will complicate its ability to document for IIM
account holders the amount and source of funds deposited to,
managed in and disbursed from their IIM accounts. The Interior
report enumerates among those obstacles known discrepancies in
the balances at the trust fund level report by Treasury and
Interior as well as the potential for errors in the electronic
accounting system data, missing paper transaction records and
missing land ownership information and revenue instruments.
Interior's enumerations of obstacles is consistent with what
our prior work has shown.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my statement. I would be glad
to answer any questions that you may have.
[Prepared statement of Mr. Williams appears in appendix.]
The Chairman. In the scholarship or vocabulary of
accounting, in which GAO has considerable expertise, what do
the terms complete historical accounting and historical
accounting mean?
Mr. Williams. Mr. Chairman, those two terms are not terms
that you would regularly see in the accounting profession. From
the standpoint of various terms that we use, these are not two.
What this would boil down to is this is a situation where this
term has been coined in this particular litigation case as far
as what the parties are looking for. And to that end, what it
would mean in that situation is basically what all of the
parties to the litigation would agree to as far as, are we
satisfied that we have a complete accounting. But as far as the
accounting profession itself is concerned, this is not a term
that is used extensively throughout the industry, to my
knowledge.
The Chairman. Since you have been following and monitoring
the case, how do you interpret those terms? How does GAO
interpret those terms?
Mr. Williams. From a general accounting standpoint, it's a
process in which the agency is capable of identifying all of
the account holders and being able to produce or prepare
records that would show amounts of funds that are owed to all
of the individuals, any activity that's taken place in the
account, any disbursements that have taken place as well as the
ending balance.
The Chairman. Well, over the years, GAO has issued a whole
series of reports on the Interior Department's efforts to
reconcile these accounts. You issued one in June 1992, and in
March 1995, the report was entitled Indian Trust Fund Accounts
Cannot Be Fully Reconciled. Based on these and other reports,
and as you know, we rely upon the GAO as experts in this area.
Mr. Williams. Yes, sir.
The Chairman. So my question is, is GAO still of the view
that these accounts cannot be reconciled, or put another way,
that a complete historical accounting cannot be rendered?
Mr. Williams. Based on our previous work, and the
information that we were able to review and analyze at that
particular point in time, that was our position. As far as the
current plan that the agency's putting forward, as I said in my
statement, we have not had a chance to review that. I am not
sure if there are any additional procedures or steps that would
be in that plan that would make it possible. But GAO's position
was that these accounts would not, could not be reconciled
based on some of the gaps that had been identified and some of
the problems that had been encountered in trying to do previous
reconciliations.
The Chairman. How long will GAO take to fully analyze the
July 2, 2002 report of the Department of the Interior?
Mr. Williams. We would put the two together and it would
take us 1 month or so to do an analysis of it. This process
would require from looking at the report, just giving it an
initial read, where we got access to it last week, I received a
copy of it last week, there were several players involved in
putting together the document. There were cost experts, there
were accounting experts, there were trust experts. So we would
have to talk to those various individuals to get some input as
far as what was the thinking in going in to put together the
plan. Then we went through the analysis. So 1 month or 2 months
to do a good analysis of the plan.
The Chairman. Would it be possible for your agency to
provide this committee with a report before the end of
September?
Mr. Williams. Let me provide for the record a statement on
that. I'm not sure at this particular point in time. I need to
discuss it. We would make every effort to put together a
document that would lay out our initial assessments of the
report. If it's okay with you, Mr. Chairman, we'll work with
the staff to come up with a time that would work out as far as
providing it possibly within that time frame.
The Chairman. It would be most helpful, sir.
Mr. Williams. Thank you.
The Chairman. In prior testimony before this committee, GAO
suggested that the Congress consider the settlement of
beneficiaries' claims against the United States for an
accounting. What is it, in your assessment of the process
involved in the reconciliation of trust fund accounts, that led
GAO to this suggestion?
Mr. Williams. It was a combination of things that we had
reported on. One, missing documentation, problems with the
accounting system, just the vast number of transactions in the
length of time that you're talking about as far as doing the
reconciliation that goes back to the beginning of the first
allotment. So it's a combination of those points.
The Chairman. In your investigation and study, did you come
to any conclusions as to the cause of the missing documents,
how they became missing?
Mr. Williams. No; we did not. In our review, we basically
looked at the process of the reconciliation, we didn't get
behind some of the root causes as far as why the documents were
missing, et cetera. It's just that it was identified as one of
the barriers, I guess you could call it, to completing the
process.
The Chairman. And at this moment, do you still believe that
a settlement is a process the parties should explore?
Mr. Williams. That is still GAO's position that that is one
of the options the committee should consider.
The Chairman. Would you envision that one fundamental
component of a settlement is that the Department and the
Individual Indian Money account holders would agree on a
balance in each account that would eliminate the need for an
historical accounting of each account?
Mr. Williams. In our previous testimony, that was one of
the options that we recommended. As I said, that was one of
several options that we suggested should be given
consideration.
The Chairman. We have heard many suggest that there should
be alternative methodologies. In fact, the GAO has suggested
that. May I call upon the GAO to identify other ways to
approach the duty of conducting an accounting or any other
methodology that might be applied to an accounting, and tell us
about it?
Mr. Williams. In our previous reports, we talked about
various options. Some of the options, well, one of the options
I just mentioned, and that would be a process in which a letter
would be mailed to the individual Indian stating that this is
the balance that we're showing, do you agree or disagree.
That's one option. The option that the agency is putting
forward now as far as looking at all of the accounts that's
been identified, that's another option.
So there were several that we've identified, and those were
just two of many ways that a reconciliation could be performed.
And let me let Mr. Jacobson add a little bit to that.
Mr. Jacobson. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the question. One
of the difficulties with answering that question is that the
methodology you would employ is affected by what your duty is
and what your objective is. One of the challenges Interior
faces is characterized in their own proposal. They've offered a
methodology which they've characterized as the broadest reading
of the court's opinions of the 1994 act.
The issue of what alternative methodologies might be out
there depends on whether one accepts that broad reading of the
1994 act or if there is some alternative reading of what their
duty is. And that's not really a call for us to make, that is a
legitimate question for Interior as to why they took the
broadest reading and what alternative readings of their
obligations might be available. In some respects, that would
dictate what the alternative methodologies may be.
The Chairman. If you cannot recommend alternative
methodologies, who can?
Mr. Jacobson. Well, I think we can talk, in responding to
the request that you and Mr. Williams discussed earlier, we can
certainly talk to those experts and look at and find out what
alternatives they considered. There is some suggestion in some
of Interior's documents that they considered other
methodologies, but we haven't done the work to find out what
those are. That may shed some light on the question that you've
posed.
The Chairman. Can GAO do the work?
Mr. Jacobson. Do the work meaning do the reconciliation?
The Chairman. No; identify other methodologies.
Mr. Jacobson. We can talk with the people who worked with
Interior and find out what else they considered. That process
may lead us to identifying other methodologies that parties
could consider. But until we go in and start doing some work,
we wouldn't know at this point until we went and saw what was
out there.
Obviously, there are different methodologies for doing
different forms of accounting, whether it's accounting by
trustees or accounting of other natures. But the specific
methodology that would be reasonable depends on what the
objectives are. And we may, we will certainly as part of the
effort that Mr. Williams described to you, we will talk to the
people who have been involved in this process to see if in fact
there are other methodologies that we'd consider.
The Chairman. I realize that the staff in the GAO are
foremost in the field of accounting. But would you be able to
identify whether there are other experts in this field that we
could consult with?
Mr. Jacobson. We could do that.
Mr. Williams. Yes, Mr. Chairman; we can do that.
The Chairman. That would be most helpful to us, sir.
And I thank you very much for your assistance.
Mr. Williams. Thank you.
The Chairman. And now may I call upon the second panel, the
associate deputy secretary of the Interior, office of the
secretary, James Cason, accompanied by Bert Edwards, executive
director, office of historical trust accounting, of the
Department of the Interior; and the special trustee for
American Indians, from the Department of the Interior, Tom
Slonaker.
Mr. Cason.
STATEMENT OF JAMES CASON, ASSOCIATE DEPUTY SECRETARY, OFFICE OF
THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR, ACCOMPANIED BY BERT EDWARDS,
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF HISTORICAL TRUST ACCOUNTING,
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR; AND TOM SLONAKER, SPECIAL TRUSTEE
FOR AMERICAN INDIANS, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
Mr. Cason. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Jim Cason,
I'm the associate deputy secretary for the Department of the
Interior. The Department has prepared one testimony for the
panel, which I'd like to submit in its entirety for the record.
The Chairman. Without objection, it will be made part of
the record.
Mr. Cason. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
We just have a few brief comments, and then we will take
questions. We're pleased to be here to discuss the Government's
trust accounting activities, in particular, those that are
oriented towards historical accounting. The Government has
collected and disbursed funds to Indians for over 100 years.
Historically there has been no standard practice to provide
regular, detailed accounting statements to Indian
beneficiaries. That's the reason we're here.
With the passage of the American Indian Trust Fund
Management Reform Act of 1994, Congress required the Secretary
to account for daily and annual balances of all funds held in
trust by the United States for the benefit of Indian tribes or
Indian individuals which were deposited or invested pursuant to
the act of June 24, 1938. Subsequently, the District Court here
in the District of Columbia required the Secretary to provide
an accurate accounting of all money in IIM accounts, that's
Individual Indian Money accounts, held in trust for the benefit
of the individual Indians without regard to when the funds were
deposited. And that gives us an historical element to our
accounting.
Subsequently, Congress required the Department to prepare
and submit a report describing how the Department would proceed
to undertake a historical accounting. And the Department's plan
was provided to Congress in early July 2002. The report details
an enormous and challenging undertaking. The report details a
historical accounting for Indian beneficiaries, both for
current and former account holders. The report delineates an
anticipated workload management approach, and an anticipated
cost for the accounting process.
The report required further discussion and possible
refinement with Congress and the Court. Congress needs to
determine if the plan is appropriate for meeting the
Government's trust accounting responsibilities. Congressional
appropriations will be needed to undertake the historical
accounting and the appropriations rate will influence the time
schedule for completing any accounting that we undertake. The
Department believes that the Court may provide additional
guidance on this subject as well.
Right now, all three branches of Government are interested
and involved in this historical accounting effort. We need to
work together to define and implement an approach that meets
our trustee responsibilities to individual Indian
beneficiaries. The report provides Congress a positive step
forward. This hearing is another positive step forward. And Mr.
Slonaker, Mr. Edwards and I are happy to be here to answer
questions. Thank you.
[Prepared statement of Mr. Cason appears in appendix.]
The Chairman. Before we proceed, may I call upon the Vice
Chairman.
Senator Campbell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I have no formal opening statement. I apologize for being
late. We were in conference on the energy bill. As you know,
there is a section there dealing with Indian energy that I'm
trying to have expanded. So I had an opportunity to offer that
amendment this morning. So I'm sorry I'm late, and I'm just
very happy to sit and listen. Thank you.
The Chairman. May I proceed by asking the Special Trustee
questions? In the most recent report of the Court Monitor for
the District Court in which the Cobell-Norton litigation is
pending, the text of several memoranda that you have
transmitted to Mr. Edwards was printed. In your memo of April
30, 2002, you stated:
I do not believe an accounting as that term is generally
understood in the established trust scholarship acceptable to
either the beneficiaries or the Special Trustee can be
constructed. Short of a settlement, the best that might be able
to be accomplished is the identification of the gaps of
information. With that, the Department could perhaps seek some
instruction from the judge on how to proceed. I remain
concerned, however, that I have not heard anyone in the
Department define the characteristics of an accounting to
include anything more than the funds actually collected by the
Department. That of course is inadequate.
And in your memo of May 22, 2002, you stated:
It is evident that the long term record of the Department's
administration of the Indian trust accounts is incomplete to
some degree. In addition, during the past year, the Special
Master has been able to breach the Department's electronic
systems that house the trust data, thereby demonstrating that
the data may not be accurate. Because it is the duty of the
Trustee to know all the facts about the administration of the
trusts, these flaws cause me to doubt the ability of the
Department to show either itself or the beneficiaries in
sufficient detail the nature and amount of the trust property
and its administration.
Mr. Slonaker, in your official capacity and from what you
know of the gaps in information, do you believe that a complete
historical accounting of the Individual Indian Money accounts
can be achieved?
Mr. Slonaker. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Senator Campbell.
No; not completely. It may be possible to reconstruct a
good many accounts completely. Even identifying the assets and
the flow of income from the assets, which by the way is
something that's incumbent upon the trustee to do.
I believe that the Office of Historical Trust Accounting,
however, can go quite a way toward identifying what the gaps
are in the information. As the trustee, it's crucial that every
effort be made by the trustee to make certain that we have
exhausted every means to identify the assets and the incomes
that belong to the beneficiaries, and bring that accounting
right up to date.
The Chairman. You spoke of obstacles. In your view, what
are the obstacles, legal or practical, that would be presented
if the Congress were to pursue a path of settlement of claims?
Mr. Slonaker. The obstacles to the actual accounting itself
I think are fairly well known in terms of their type. There are
records that we believe are probably either destroyed or lost.
There is, as the GAO panel already has indicated, there are
situations where the accounting was not done properly, we
believe, in the initial instance. So there are obstacles to
getting a full and complete accounting.
What those obstacles are, which you termed as a gap, have
to be further determined. They can only be estimated at this
point in time.
The Chairman. Everyone seems to speak of missing or
destroyed documents. Could you tell us as to when these
documents began to be missing or when the Government learned
that they were destroyed?
Mr. Slonaker. I cannot, sir. We only have, at least I only
have anecdotal evidence of missing documents at this point. I
think that's the point of the historical trust accounting
report in part, and that is that these gaps have to be
identified as to what point they started and where those gaps
are and what the nature of the gap is.
The Chairman. So there is no proof or data to tell us when
the gaps began to come into existence?
Mr. Slonaker. Not that I'm aware of, sir.
The Chairman. So these gaps or obstacles are such that
settlement would be extremely difficult?
Mr. Slonaker. I think my response to that, Mr. Chairman,
has to be that the Trustee needs to do everything in his power
to establish what the liability of the Trustee may be. The size
of the gaps, the nature of the gaps has yet to be discovered.
Whether that lends itself to identifying a figure which in turn
might lend itself to some sort of a settlement is not clear to
me.
Mr. Cason. Mr. Chairman, would it be okay if I make an
addition on this? I think one of the things that we need to
just try to keep in perspective is what the target is that
we're after or what the job is. And there's been lots of
speculation about whether or not the Department can do an
accounting, cannot do an accounting, whether it's a complete
accounting, etc. Lots of terms, lots of commentary on what we
can do.
I think we need to take a look at the issue from two
perspectives. One perspective is that the job that we have to
do, as we perceive it in the Department, is to conduct a
historical accounting on an account by account basis. So each
individual person, their individual account is a task for us to
do as part of an historical accounting. And within that
boundary, our expectation is that we do have sufficient
information to be able to do a complete accounting on a number
of those individual accounts. And our expectation is it's a
significant number, we don't know exactly how many, but a
significant number of them.
So we think that we can move forward with the information
we do have available to do a good, reasonable accounting for a
large number of individual accounts. There's the other
perspective that says, can you ensure that we have a complete
accounting for all of the accounts. And from that perspective,
I think everybody is in agreement that the answer is probably
no, that we cannot, for all of the accounts, balance them
historically from whenever funds were deposited. So I think we
have agreement on that. And I think the issue that we need to
have consideration on is, if we can't do the entire thing but
we can do a good job on a lot of it, then should we go ahead
and proceed forward to do the best that we can under the
circumstances to do the accounting for the parts that we can
accomplish.
The Chairman. I think you are right on target, sir.
Mr. Cason. Thank you.
The Chairman. Mr. Slonaker, Section 306 of the 1994 Trust
Management Reform Act establishes an advisory board to advise
you on matters within your jurisdiction. Section 133 of the
Interior Appropriations bill that was recently approved by the
House of Representatives includes language directing you ``in
consultation with the Secretary of the Interior and the
tribes'' to appoint new members to the advisory board. Have you
found the current membership to be unsatisfactory in any way,
or unable or unwilling to provide you with the advice you need
regarding matters within your jurisdiction?
Mr. Slonaker. No; I have not found it unsatisfactory at
all. Quite the contrary. It's a good sounding board for me. I
think that there is a fair amount of frustration on that board
and a fair amount of frustration of my own in the sense that
they are not seeing trust reform proceed at the rapid pace that
they want, that they don't see the stronger direction until
perhaps more recently that they want. And I think quite
candidly, the board is looking for a stronger role, it was
hoping for a stronger role. They are an advisory board and
technically just to me. But it has been helpful, sir.
The Chairman. Do you think you need new members, as the
House bill says?
Mr. Slonaker. I do not.
The Chairman. And finally, if I may ask this, under Section
303 of the 1994 Trust Reform Act, the Special Trustee must
certify in writing the adequacy of each budget request within
its area of jurisdiction:
To discharge effectively and efficiently the Secretary's
trust responsibilities and to implement the comprehensive
strategic plan.
If the July 2002 report to Congress were presented to you
in the form of a budget request, could you certify that
carrying out historical accounting as set forth in the report
would in fact discharge the Secretary's trust responsibilities
effectively and efficiently?
Mr. Slonaker. No, I could not. The plan, while it is, I
think, a good effort, simply can't produce a full accounting as
we've already mentioned, a complete and full accounting which
the Trustee is obligated to provide to the beneficiaries. It
could do, I think, the best possible, assuming it has
sufficient resources. But the resources that would be required,
the funding that would be required is a, I think, more of a
best guess but not much. It's very difficult to assess the cost
of something like this. We've had some experience in the past
in the Department on document production and researching
accounts which we've borrowed on for this report. But it's
still difficult to assess the true cost of something quite this
large.
But beyond that, it can only be an attempt at the best
possible research of what is due the beneficiaries. Since it
can't produce a full accounting, I don't believe it satisfies
the trust responsibilities and the Secretary to effectively and
efficiently provide for that.
The Chairman. I think as Mr. Cason has indicated, this
would be a good step. I appreciate the candor in which all of
you have responded to our questions.
Before I call upon the Vice Chairman, Mr. Cason, can I ask
a question, sir?
Mr. Cason. Obviously.
The Chairman. Does the Administration support the inclusion
of language set forth in the House Interior Appropriations
Bill, sections 131-134 regarding, first, the Ernst & Young
report on IIM accounts of the Cobell plaintiffs, second, the
fees of the Special Master and the Court monitor in that case,
third, the Special Trustee advisory board established in the
1994 Trust Reform Act, and fourth, the payment of attorneys
fees and costs incurred in the Cobell litigation by Department
of the Interior employees?
Mr. Cason. Mr. Chairman, on the E&Y report, the Department
has not taken a position one way or the other. The position
that we're in is we're attempting to be helpful to Congress and
to be responsive to the Court. This issue has come up once
before, where Congress made a request for the release of the
E&Y reports. And the Department forwarded that request to the
Court and the Court rebuked the Department for considering that
as an option.
The Department is willing to continue to work with Congress
and the Court to try to be helpful to both sides, because we
believe that Congress is entitled to an explanation of the
results of the money that it has invested. In this particular
case, we've spent millions of dollars doing the reconciliation.
So we think it's reasonable that the Court gets some sort of
report from us on that. But at the same time, we have to
respect the privacy rights of the individuals that were
involved.
So we have a job to try and find a happy medium that's
mutually beneficial for all. So we'll do what we can to help,
but this is an issue that's somewhat controversial.
Regarding the second issue on the fees, the Department has
not taken a position on this at all, and we don't anticipate
taking a position. This is an issue that was not an initiative
of the Department. We think this is an issue between the
appropriations committees and the courts to solve. We'll do
whatever we're directed to do.
Regarding the advisory commission or advisory panel for the
Special Trustee, the Department has not taken a position on
this issue, either. Mr. Slonaker has taken a position. To the
best of my knowledge, this is not an initiative of the
Department, it's an initiative of the Appropriations Committee.
And it's my understanding that the underlying rationale
supplied by the Appropriations Committee is a concern about
having one of the five named plaintiffs in the Cobell
litigation be on the advisory panel, and it is viewed as a
conflict of interest.
And on the last item, the attorney fees, the Department
would support that. We were asked in a hearing on the House
side by Congressman Dicks to supply some information about how
to provide for paying attorney fees for individuals who were
named as alleged comtamnors in the Cobell litigation.
Congressman Dicks felt that the Department is in a very
difficult position, having a number of its employees named as
potential comtamnors and sought some recommendations on how we
could deal with that, and the Department has tried to respond.
The Chairman. So in one phrase, this is not your
initiative?
Mr. Cason. It is not our initiative.
The Chairman. I thank you very much, sir.
Mr. Cason. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Mr. Vice Chairman.
Senator Campbell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll try to be
brief.
Two hundred and forty million pages of records, your
statement says there are about 240 million pages of records
that need to be analyzed. I'll bet you there's another 240
million pages of testimony, documentation, written things and
so on, and we haven't cut check one. I was interested in the
report's conclusion that it will cost $2.4 billion and at least
10 years to complete the historical accounting. There are a lot
of Indian people out there that are going to die before that,
waiting for that money, if they have to wait 10 years.
Let me ask you, what alternatives to that document intense,
exhaustive kind of proposal, did the Department undertake? Did
you look at anything else?
Mr. Cason. Yes, we did Senator; we did look at some other
alternatives. It was a determination of the Department that any
other alternative that we looked at appeared to us to be short
of the complete job to provide an accounting, account by
account, to all the Indian beneficiaries. We looked at the
possibility of statistical accounting, we looked at a
possibility of buyout programs and others. But we thought that
it would be helpful to the Congress to lay out what the job
would be to do a full accounting, to the extent that we can do
it, and certainly there are some impediments to a complete
accounting. But we thought that it would be helpful position to
start first with doing a full accounting and look at
alternatives as a second matter.
Regarding payments to Indians, I'd like to point out that
the accounting process is to basically go and document the
activity in an account. And as far as I understand, there is
nothing in that process that would hold up making payments to
Indians that are legitimate payments through the process, that
the payments to Indians for income that comes in and out of the
account is an ongoing process, and that the accounting process
we're talking about is just documenting what happened.
Senator Campbell. I see. Well, I appreciate that you want
to do a good job for the Indians. I think from the Indians'
perspective, though, we're doing a job on them, not for them.
Because we just keep going around and around with this.
Of all the people that we owe money to, wouldn't it be
simpler to settle with those owners that would be willing to
settle?
Mr. Cason. Senator, that's certainly a possibility. The
question for us, as far as the Department is concerned, is what
exactly are we settling on. At this point, we don't know
exactly who has a claim. We have a class. So all Individual
Indian money account holders are part of the class. So we have
on the order of 250,000 to 300,000 current account holders who
are part of that class. And as we understand it, there is at
least the possibility that former account holders are part of
the class. So there may be as many as 500,000 accounts. Then,
if you break down the job or the settlement, down to an account
level, to say, okay, you're an individual, how much do I owe
you and why do I owe it to you, we don't have answers for that.
That's part of the conundrum we have right now; in order to
get to that answer, you need to do some accounting to actually
run through the account and the activities of the account to
see if the balance in the account is consistent with the
activity in the account. And if you arrive at the same number,
there's nothing to settle. If you arrive at a different number,
then there's an issue of what you settle.
Mr. Slonaker. Senator Campbell, may I add on to that?
Senator Campbell. Yes, Mr. Slonaker; go ahead.
Mr. Slonaker. I just want to raise a possible issue with
your scenario, and that is the possibility that one beneficiary
could be treated differently than another beneficiary. I think
that's something that would have to be thought through very
carefully.
Senator Campbell. I guess if you reach some kind of a
settlement with individuals, one may settle for a different
amount than the other one. But if they accept it willingly,
then what recourse would they have? That would be what they
want, too. What's the problem?
Mr. Slonaker. Conceivably you could be settling with some
beneficiaries, let's say in the present day, and then
eventually get to some other beneficiaries who you are finally
able to reconstruct or to estimate what they're owed, and the
funding may not be there for that money, and so they may be
treated differently. I just raise it as an issue here.
Senator Campbell. I understand too that your statement
reads, I haven't read it completely, but it does have in there
that there's a high level of uncertainty in cost estimates for
the historical accounting and that the bulk of the costs is for
transactional analysis. I don't know if I asked this clear
enough at first or not, but isn't there a way we can do some
kind of a modeling with greater accuracy and a lot cheaper than
just exhaustive and particularly one that has a high level of
uncertainty?
Mr. Cason. Senator, I would say that you have two criteria
in your question, accuracy and cost. Certainly we could do
modeling. The modeling probably would not improve accuracy over
doing a full accounting, it would be less accurate. However,
modeling probably would be less costly, and you could move more
quickly in a model scenario than you could do in a full
accounting scenario.
Senator Campbell. Mr. Slonaker, regarding your role in the
historical accounting, do you interpret the American Indian
Trust Reform Act of 1994 as requiring the Special Trustee to
approve the methodology use to complete a historical
accounting?
Mr. Slonaker. The words actually in the act are monitor, I
think it's a question of the Special Trustee being satisfied
that the full accounting responsibility has been leached, the
methodology is a part of that decision, yes.
Senator Campbell. And dealing with Congress, do you believe
that the July 22, 2002 report provides enough information for
us to decide whether it should embark on an accounting effort
that may cost $2 billion or more?
Mr. Slonaker. I'm not sure that it does, Senator. I think
there may be additional work that's required to identify the
gaps and to better estimate the time required and the funding
required. But I think it's a full faith effort to get it
started and to do the full accounting that Mr. Cason was
referring to.
Mr. Cason. Senator, we'd be happy to supply additional
information, too, if the committee has any questions.
Senator Campbell. I have some further questions I'd like to
submit in writing, if you would answer them, I would appreciate
it. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Mr. Cason, if I may followup on the vice
chairman's questioning, when we speak of missing or destroyed
documents, no one is suggesting that all of the documents are
missing or all of the documents have been destroyed. Would you
say that the bulk of the necessary documents are still in
existence?
Mr. Cason. Mr. Chairman, that would be my assessment. We
don't really have a number to know exactly how many documents
have been generated over the last 130 years. But the estimate
that we have on the table right now is we have somewhere on the
order of about 500 million pages of documents, and we have an
assortment of computer systems that have information in them as
well.
So we believe that we have a lot of information that could
be brought to bear to do a historical accounting. But we also
realize that we don't have all of the information that may be
needed to do a complete accounting of all accounts. So where we
are is, we believe that we can do a reasonable accounting for a
lot of accounts. At this point it's uncertain as to how many
that would be. But we think that we can do a lot to move the
process forward with what we have, and that there will be some
part that we'll have to work on in this process where we have
incomplete information.
The Chairman. With the existence of relevant documents,
that you have indicated, most of them are still in existence,
plus the electronic equipment that you have had since 1985, do
you not think, as the vice chairman has suggested, that certain
accounts can be easily resolved, because they are backed up
with necessary documentation?
Mr. Cason. Mr. Chairman, we expect that there will be some
accounts that can be easily resolved and addressed, and that
there will be some that will be very difficult or impossible.
So our plan basically envisioned a workload to try and address
all of the accounts, both current and former, and that we would
use best efforts to try and reconcile them to the extent that
we had information that was reliable or we could develop
methodologies based on other information and fill information
gaps.
The Chairman. This question is being asked because your
report of July 2002 suggests that the time span required may be
10 years. And there is a question as to whether 10 years will
be sufficient.
Mr. Cason. That's correct, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. If that is the case, if you do have
individual accounts that are clearly resolvable at this moment,
why have them suffer and wait the 10 plus years?
Mr. Cason. Mr. Chairman, I would say just on the surface
that we tried to develop a workload approach to deal with this
issue. And we've been using the analogy within the Department
that we have an elephant that we have to eat a bite at a time.
And no matter where you start with this, we only have so many
resources available in terms of time and people and money to do
accounting.
What we've tried to do is set some priorities in the report
that we provide to Congress about how we would go about the
job. What we established as priorities first is, there's a
sizeable chunk of money that we think would be relatively easy
to resolve in the form of judgment accounts and per capita
deposit accounts. We've already started the process of
reconciling those accounts. Mr. Edwards has recently completed
about 8,000 of those accounts, and we're on the cusp of sending
out notifications on those that have been reconciled. We have a
few thousand more of those accounts that we already have in
process to reconcile while we go through the debate about other
individual accounts and the complexities that are involved in
this process.
Then after that, we try to set some priorities--simply,
under Jerry Maguire saying, ``go where the money is.'' We
basically took all the accounts to the extent that we have
knowledge of them and tried to array them in a way that we had
highest balance of the account with highest throughput through
the account for the last 15 years, all the way down to the
lowest balance and lowest throughput. And our priorities were
to go to where we had the highest throughput and the highest
balance in accounts, to do those first and progressively work
our way down from most important accounts down to least
important accounts, money as the criteria.
So we laid out a workload process to try and get the
biggest bang for the buck in the shortest period of time to the
most beneficiaries we could. Certainly there's other ways of
approaching it. but we laid it out one way. We'd be happy to
discuss with the committee and others in Congress, if there are
other priorities that we ought to be pursuing, other than ones
we laid out.
The Chairman. The vice chairman and I felt that if there
are accounts that can be easily resolved and closed, why not
close them and come before us 6 months from now and say, we
have a balance of now $1 billion, we have cleaned up 1\1/2\
billion, or something like that? It would make you look good.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Cason. Looking good is a good thing. We'd like to do
that. And actually, Mr. Chairman, we have a similar thought
process, that the thing that is most helpful to us is actually
show results. We've done accounting. And that's why we started
with the judgment accounts, and we have completed a
reconciliation on about 8,000 of those. So we are heading in
the same direction. We want to take the ones that we think we
can get off the ground without a lot of complication and get
those done and off the plate, and then move on to the more
complicated ones.
The Chairman. The grapevine tells me that the Department
may seek another delay.
Mr. Cason. A delay for what, Mr. Chairman?
The Chairman. In the Cobell case.
Mr. Cason. I'm not aware that we're seeking any delay.
The Chairman. Well, whatever it is, it has taken many
years, and pursuant to a report, it will take at least another
10 years. Are you completely satisfied that you can finish this
accounting in 10 years?
Mr. Cason. No; I'm not, Mr. Chairman. This is a big job.
And this is kind of uncharted territory. To the extent that
we've shopped around, I don't think we've found anybody that's
ever tried to take on a job like this. Going back to do a
historical reconciliation of accounts with a long history just
isn't something that's pretty common for accounting firms to do
or the Government to do. So we're in uncharted territory. We
have significant structural issues to have to overcome.
For example, we estimate that there's as many as 500
million pages of documents that we're going to have to sort
through to get the relevant information to do an historical
accounting. We have a variety of accounting systems that have
been employed. Some of those systems have varying degrees of
success. We've had generations of Indian agents involved in the
process and generations of beneficiaries. It's a difficult
process. And there are weaknesses in the system.
Ten years was an estimate for going through the process,
assuming adequate funding to do the job. And if funding is
stretched out, the job will take longer. If we run into
impediments that we don't expect, the job could take longer.
But we gave a best estimate, based on our feeling of how doable
the job is with a reasonable staff size of contractors and
departmental staff.
The Chairman. In your statement, you indicate that the
plaintiffs claim that the Government owes them $137 billion.
And you counter that by saying that there is no evidence at
this moment that would support such a claim. What do you think
the realistic number would be?
Mr. Cason. Mr. Chairman, we have no idea. We don't know how
you would make that determination unless you actually go
through some sort of an accounting process to identify where
errors occurred in the accounting process over the last 100 or
so years. Our best estimate of how much throughput we've had
through these accounts since 1909 is about $13 billion, moneys
that have come in and been disbursed through the process. We
know that there is about $404 million in the individual account
balances right now, and our estimates, as much as we know, is
around $12.6 billion worth of throughput.
We frankly don't know how we get to $137 billion of
misappropriated funds that would be due to Indian recipients.
And short of actually doing some accounting work, and that's
why we've tried to prioritize--go where the money is, go to the
highest value of accounts and work our way down, we don't know
how we would make a determination that says we owe x number of
dollars to this individual, because there is something wrong
with that individual.
To the best of my knowledge, we have little information, if
any, regarding specific accounts in which there is a problem
with the account. That doesn't mean that there isn't that
information out there somewhere. If somebody believes that they
have a problem with their account, given how many accounts
there are in a time period, it would be entirely plausible that
there are problems out there.
But we don't have the specifics to operate on to
substantiate any particular figure. That's part of the reason
that we also went towards this full accounting process, that if
we're going to make these determinations on an account by
account basis, so that we can make appropriate payments, where
the Government has not acted properly, then we need to have the
facts to support it.
The Chairman. In other words, the cost estimate of the
accounting, $2.4 billion, that may also increase?
Mr. Cason. That's entirely possible. That's our best
estimate based on what we know now, and it involves a number of
assumptions regarding how many older accounts there are, how
many transactions were involved, how difficult it will be to
assemble all the paperwork to do the accounting, etc. So there
is a lot of assumptions that are in the process and a lot of
best guesses in the process to derive that figure.
The Chairman. I requested that the GAO review and analyze
your report. Will you help them?
Mr. Cason. We would be happy to do that, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. I think that would be extremely helpful.
Can the case proceed, or does it have to be delayed until
the Department has completed the accounting?
Mr. Cason. You're referring to the Cobell case?
The Chairman. Yes.
Mr. Cason. Mr. Chairman, I think the position that's being
taken by the Department of Justice, and I don't know that it's
a final position, but what's being discussed is that on the
historical accounting portion of the case, the plaintiffs are
interested in proceeding to trial with that portion, and I
believe the Department of Justice is taking a position that,
until the Department actually undertakes an accounting and
produces results, we don't know what we're trying. I leave that
to the lawyers to sort out how we're doing that, that's not
really my call. But as I understand it, there is some dialogue
as to whether this is timely for us to pursue a case or whether
we actually need to do some accounting and base the case on the
accountings that are produced.
The Chairman. So it is going to take a little while longer
possibly?
Mr. Cason. That's my sense, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. How long has the Cobell case taken so far?
Mr. Cason. It's my understanding it's around 6 years.
The Chairman. About 6 years.
Mr. Cason. Around 6 to 6\1/2\ years.
The Chairman. Well, we hope that this matter can be
resolved as soon as possible. But I agree with you that this is
not an easy one.
Mr. Cason. It's not. And we would like to resolve it as
well, Mr. Chairman. It's a difficult situation for all
involved.
The Chairman. So we look forward to the analysis that GAO
will have of your report, and if you can help them I think we
can expedite everything.
Mr. Cason. We'd be pleased to, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, sir.
Mr. Cason. Thank you.
The Chairman. Do you have any questions?
Senator Campbell. Mr. Chairman, I have no further
questions. But I would like to just say something, if I can do
this without hurting anybody's feelings on the panel. In the 6
years that you spoke of, we've had dozens of people here as
witnesses for the Administration. And I have to tell you, I
wish that they could speak with the passion and urgency that
Indians have been waiting for it.
I'm sure that most of the people who have come over from
the Administration in that 6 years never were raised on surplus
Government cheese, as an example, like I know some of the
people sitting in this audience, Tex Hall over there is an
example, knows what that is.
Mr. Cason. So do I, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Campbell. Do you? Well, then, maybe you understand
how most people feel when you tell them, well, it may be 10
more years and some of you may die before you ever get fairness
out of the Federal Government. It's just not right when we know
people are out there without any income, with poor housing,
with not enough food, with all that, and we just keep going
around and going around, and for some reason they can't get
their money that is owed them and is rightfully theirs, because
we have to do more studies, we have to buy more computers, we
have to hear from more people, we have to dot all the I's and
cross all the T's, we've got to do every little thing and it
just keeps going on and on.
I just wanted to leave you with that, that it's just not
right to keep this thing going from one Administration to
another, from one Secretary to another, from one Trust
Administrator to another. We just do no fairness to the Indian
people who have waited so long. I just wanted to leave you with
that.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Cason. Thank you, Senator. I think that's a great
point.
We, too, share some of the frustration that the process
takes so long to seemingly make any material progress. And we
recognize that the situation has been longstanding and that it
needs to be addressed.
We provided a plan for full accounting. Unfortunately,
there's a ton of work that needs to be done in order to provide
a full accounting.
Senator Campbell. We will never have full accounting. There
are so many missing documents, somewhere along the line, we've
got to cut our losses and start signing some checks. It just
seems to me, as I mentioned and the chairman did too, that we
ought to be trying to negotiate with the people that would be
willing to settle. There could be disclaimers so that would be
the only time they would be willing to settle, whatever. But we
ought to do some kind of negotiating where we can actually
start the process moving instead of just keep going around
about what more we have to do within the Administration.
Mr. Cason. Senator, we would be more than pleased to work
with Congress on trying to structure something that would be
fair in this circumstance.
Senator Campbell. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Once again, Mr. Cason, Mr. Slonaker, Mr.
Edwards, I thank you for your forthright responses to our
questions. Thank you very much.
Mr. Cason. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Our final witness is William Causey of Nixon
Peabody of Washington, DC.
Welcome, Mr. Causey.
STATEMENT OF WILLIAM F. CAUSEY, ESQUIRE, NIXON PEABODY, LLP
Mr. Causey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Vice Chairman.
It's a pleasure to be here.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share with you
some views about whether and how the Cobell litigation might be
susceptible of mediation. This morning we heard testimony about
how complicated and involved this matter is and how long this
litigation has been going on, and everybody has expressed a
desire to come to some kind of satisfactory resolution of this
matter. I would like to suggest that everybody think seriously
about some form of mediation to do that.
Just to set the stage for this, I have been litigating in
the U.S. District Court for over 25 years. I have tried cases
in front of the judge that's hearing the Cobell litigation. I
have been specially trained in the mediation of complex cases
involving the Federal Government and private parties. And I
have been serving as a mediator in the U.S. District Court for
12 years. I have mediated cases involving matters that are
pending before the judge that is currently hearing the Cobell
litigation.
As we all know, what I will refer to as the Indian trust
fund problem is an enormous problem. The litigation over this
issue has made the likelihood of a successful and satisfactory
resolution of the problem, in my view, less rather than more
possible. Both of you certainly know the value and efficacy of
compromise, which is the backbone of successful mediation. And
as someone who has mediated many cases, let me share with you
my views on how mediation might be employed to help the parties
in the Cobell litigation resolve that matter and perhaps bring
this entire problem to some quick resolution.
I think everyone will agree, and I heard this morning from
some of the individuals who testified that everybody wants to
see this matter resolved and would like to come to a realistic
resolution of the problem. Certainly the investment of time,
money, and resources and energy is Cobell draining the ability
of the parties in the litigation to bring the matter to some
kind of resolution.
So how can the parties in the Cobell litigation be
encouraged to mediate this matter? And what if anything should
the Congress do to assist the parties in agreeing to mediate
the issue?
Frankly, in reading the various court decisions and all of
the reports from all the various Federal agencies and
departments involved, I am less than optimistic that the
parties will come to the mediation table willingly to try and
get this matter resolved, despite the fact that they all seem
to say they would like to do that. I think that's unfortunate,
but I think there are ways to encourage the parties in this
litigation to come to the mediation table.
When I say that I'm less than optimistic that the parties
might be willing to mediate this matter, that is particularly
true in my view with respect to the Government's position in
the litigation. My experience has been that the Department of
Justice is usually reluctant to mediate cases pending in the
courts. And I think that's an unfortunate position for the
Government to take. There are many in the Department of Justice
today who are encouraging the Department to change this view
and to be more willing to mediate matters that are pending
before the courts. And I certainly hope and believe that this
case is one where the Department of Justice should seriously
think about coming to voluntary mediation.
Even though this matter involves multiple parties, millions
if not billions of dollars, and very complicated matters, I
believe that if the parties are willing to be patient,
creative, flexible and sensitive to the needs and positions of
all concerned in the process, rules for mediation can be
devised that will protect the interests of all the parties,
encourage all parties and interest groups to have a say and
participate in the structuring of a resolution of the problem,
and will substantially reduce the level of confrontation and
acrimony that has flowed from the Cobell litigation.
Here is what I think needs to be done to encourage the
parties to agree to voluntary mediation of this problem. First,
as any basic training in mediation will reflect, there must be
incentives to get the parties to agree to participate in
mediation. From the viewpoint of convincing the Department of
Justice to participate, and the list that I am going to suggest
is certainly by no means complete and inclusive, involves many
complicated issues. But some of the things that might be
suggested would be giving some level of immunity to individual
Government officials, either party or non-party individuals, so
that they would be willing to contribute and participate in a
search for an honest and realistic solution to the problem.
Another thing would be finding some source of money to pay for
existing litigation expenses of party and non-party individual
Government officials, so we can get that part of the litigation
behind us and move to consideration of constructive solutions
to the underlying problems.
Second, we might want to make sure that the parties are
able to participate fully in deciding what the fundamental
preliminary issues would be in any kind of mediation, such as
who should be invited to attend and participate in the
mediation process who may not be existing parties to the
current litigation, such as the Court's Special Master and
Special Monitor, or various Native American groups that have an
interest in this matter. We also should look at to what extent
the media should be involved in this mediation process, what
outside experts and consultants might be necessary to assist
the parties and a mediator or a mediation body to seek a
resolution of the problem, and what Government and independent
accounting records should be released and disseminated to the
parties during the mediation process.
Third, I think a mediator should devise a schedule and a
mechanism for the payment of attorneys fees for the class
represented lawyers that is not dependent on the outcome of the
mediation. I have found that the issue of attorneys fees can
infect and destroy the early good intentions of parties in
mediation. And getting this issue off the table early should
substantially increase the likelihood of getting to the
ultimate core issues in reaching a final resolution of the
problems.
Finally, I think it's important to let all of the parties
participate in the construction of the agenda of how and when
certain more substantive issues, the real underlying issues,
should be addressed, such as what methodology should be
employed to do an accounting, whether certain claims can and
should be paid now, how and to what extent should past and
present Government officials be held accountable for the
problems, and to what extent the Court and the Congress should
participate in the implementation of any final resolution of
the problem.
If the parties are not willing to voluntarily participate
in mediation, and voluntary participation, is the core of
successful mediation, it might be necessary for the Congress to
become more proactive in this matter and in some way compel
some form of resolution of the problem. I might suggest to the
committee, although I haven't looked at this in great detail,
but the committee might want to consider something like the
September 11 Victim Compensation Fund as a model for
legislation to push the parties toward some resolution of the
Indian trust problem.
In short, Mr. Chairman, the time has come for everyone in
this matter to do something to get everybody together and try
and get this matter resolved in a friendly, constructive,
positive way. I think some form of mediation should be
seriously considered by the parties to bring that about.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share these
views with you, and I'll certainly be happy to answer any
questions.
[Prepared statement of Mr. Causey appears in appendix.]
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Mr. Causey.
Have you had occasion to read or study the July 2002
report?
Mr. Causey. Mr. Chairman, I have looked at it, I cannot
honestly say I have studied it. But I have read it, yes.
The Chairman. Have you reached any conclusion?
Mr. Causey. I have not. I have approached this matter, as
my training would suggest, as a lawyer, and I've been looking
at some of the legal issues that arise as a result of that
report. But I have not studied or reached any conclusions as to
what the report intends to suggest in terms of moving along in
the process of getting this issue resolved.
The Chairman. Would you consider resolution time period of
10 years to be appropriate?
Mr. Causey. I would not. I do not think that getting to a
resolution of this problem should take 10 years.
The Chairman. How long do you think it should take?
Mr. Causey. Mr. Chairman, that's difficult to say. If the
parties were willing to sit down and participate in good faith
mediation of this matter, I think this matter could be resolved
within 1 year.
The Chairman. I realize that this is a class action case
and there are thousands involved. But there are many thousands
who have not responded, who are not party to this litigation.
How would you resolve their problems?
Mr. Causey. Well, of course, class action litigation is a
representative process, in that the named plaintiffs in the
litigation represent the identified class. I think we would
have to ascertain how many potential claimants are not
participating or are not members of the class, have the parties
come to some means to try and identify those individuals,
communicate with those individuals, see if there is some way
for them to participate in the resolution process, not
necessarily through the formal process that is employed in
litigation in the court, but to come up with some means to
identify these individuals and have them participate.
That's one of the great values of mediation, is that it is
very flexible. The parties can be very creative, they are not
bound by established rules and procedures that may restrict
parties in seeking satisfactory resolution of problems. I think
that issue could be one of the many issues placed on the table
for the parties to try and voluntarily agree to solve and
figure out some way to identify and reach those individuals who
are not represented in the class.
The Chairman. As one who is an expert in matters of this
nature, such as mediation, would you consider resolving the so-
called easy cases, the cases that have been fully documented
and can be resolved without much conflict, would you do that?
Mr. Causey. Mr. Chairman, as I said, I think there are a
number of preliminary issues that the parties should look at in
structuring a mediation process for this problem. I think one
of the preliminary issues that should be looked at is whether
there are identifiable claimants who can be paid money now. And
if that is possible, let's figure out a way to get them paid
and get that issue off the table, so that we can then get to
what I think is probably the much more complicated issue of
identifying the source of money, the availability of records,
the methodology for doing an accounting for those individual
claims whose claims we cannot precisely identify and pay at the
present time.
I don't know what the numbers would represent, whether
we're talking about 5 or 10 or 20 percent of the potential
claimants. But I think that is an issue that can be looked at
in the early phases of mediation and try and get that resolved
and settled, and then move on to the more complicated issues.
The Chairman. In your opinion, can this matter, this class
action, be resolved with finality by your process, or would it
take involvement of the Congress of the United States?
Mr. Causey. Mr. Chairman, that's a good question, and I'm
not sure I have an answer. I think a lot would depend on how
the mediation progresses, what are the issues that can be
easily resolved, and what are the issues that are more
difficult to resolve. I suspect that there would be some need
for the Congress and the court participate in this process in
some way. I just don't know to what extent and what the nature
of that participation would be.
I certainly believe that there would be some need for the
Congress to help the parties figure out some way to implement
and perhaps pay for the implementation of a resolution, and
there's got to be some mechanism for the court to formally
bring to conclusion the litigation. So I think there would be
need for the court and the Congress to participate. But at what
level and what stage and to what extent is difficult to tell
right now.
The Chairman. May I ask Mr. Williams one more request?
Mr. Williams. Yes.
The Chairman. If you believe that the Congress should
involve itself in the final solution, can you tell us the
nature of that involvement? Not now, but in your report.
Mr. Williams. Yes; we will do that, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. I thank you very much, sir.
Mr. Vice Chairman.
Senator Campbell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
A few years ago, it seems like we were in the same
quandary, and we talked a little bit about, in fact, I remember
we did circulate a bill that had a section in it that required
some mediation being done in the private sector.
Let me ask you just a couple of questions. Can an
individual opt out from a class action lawsuit and settle
individually?
Mr. Causey. There are procedures for individuals to opt out
of the class, but the question of whether that individual who
decides to opt out can settle individually is a far more
complicated question. I think in the structure of mediation,
that could be defined and implemented. I think it would be much
more difficult to do that under the Federal Rules of Civil
Procedure that restrict the parties to what they can do and
can't do in the court litigation.
But that's certainly an issue that I think a mediator
should and could explore in the process.
Senator Campbell. There's a trust fund task force, as you
know, that's been meeting a number of times that hasn't dealt
with this problem, but they've dealt with a number of others,
and we've been trying to frame up a bill based on the
agreements that they made with the Administration. There are
still a lot of places where they don't agree. But it's coming
along, we're going to do a hearing very shortly on that. I am
frankly personally interested in putting something in that bill
that requires some mediation commission to be established.
Would you be willing to work with the committee to give us
some ideas on how that should be structured if we proceed with
that?
Mr. Causey. Certainly. I'd be delighted.
Senator Campbell. The committee has been told that if
Congress refuses to pay for the accounting because it believes
it's just a futility, then Cobell can still proceed. But if
Congress refuses to pay for it because it believes it's too
expensive, then the Unites States may have to move to dismiss
the case. Are you aware of that and could you maybe describe
the difference between the two to a layman like me?
Mr. Causey. Senator, I am aware of the Department of
Justice suggesting that position. Frankly, I'm a little
dismayed by the position that they're suggesting. I'm not sure
what would be the argument that they could put before the court
to say that the litigation which has gone on now for six years
and has gone through numerous opinions and court of appeals
review can come to an end simply because there's no money to
pay a judgment. I don't think the court is going to be very
receptive to that argument, but I certainly don't know. It's a
perplexing position, from my analysis.
Senator Campbell. Thank you. What's the present value of
$2.4 billion over 10 years? If we have settlements like Agent
Orange or September 11 or so on, we knew we couldn't get to an
exact figure. How can we structure a reasonable settlement when
you talk about a 10-year timeframe?
Mr. Causey. There are actuaries who can do the computations
and come up with the number. But you have to have an agreement
on what the numbers are that go into the calculation. Certainly
the present value of $2.4 billion over 10 years would be more
than sufficient to pay for mediation of the Cobell lawsuit.
Senator Campbell. What happens if a person, an account
holder who has a legal right, dies within 2 years? What
recourse do his heirs have?
Mr. Causey. I don't know, Senator. I think that may be a
complicated question. That question likely would be controlled
by estate law in the various States. I just don't know the
answer to that.
Senator Campbell. We don't, either.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for your testimony, and I look forward to your
working with us to help us frame up something for that bill I
was speaking of.
Mr. Causey. I look forward to it.
Thank you
The Chairman. I wish to thank all the witnesses for their
participation. I wish that this could be resolved in the very
near future. If not, the situation could worsen, in light of
what the Supreme Court has said.
With that, I thank you all very much. This hearing is
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:40 a.m., the committee was adjourned, to
reconvene at the call of the Chair.]
=======================================================================
A P P E N D I X
----------
Additional Material Submitted for the Record
=======================================================================
Prepared Statement of McCoy Williams, Director, Financial Management
and Assurance, General Accounting Office, Washington, DC
Mr. Chairman and members of the committee:
I am pleased to be here today to summarize previous General
Accounting Office [GAO] work that identified gaps in information needed
to reconcile Individual Indian Moneys [IIM] trust accounts, and the
rationale that led us to suggest, based upon our earlier work, that
Interior seek alternatives to reconciliation such as a negotiated
agreement.
Before discussing our prior work, let me point out that we have not
yet had time to analyze Interior's July 2, 2002, Report to Congress on
the Historical Accounting of Individual Indian Money Accounts, evaluate
its proposed methodology, or discuss the report or its proposed
methodology with Interior officials. Also, we have not done recent work
to evaluate the current state of Interior's IIM records. Nevertheless
it is clear that a reconciliation of IIM accounts is a daunting
endeavor, both in terms of the magnitude of the project's scope and the
obstacles that are likely to be encountered. As to the scope, certainly
tens of millions, and perhaps over 100 million, of IIM transactions
have occurred in the more than 100 years since the first Indian
allotment act. Further, the supporting documentation that must be
examined to reconstruct the account transactions must first be located
by searching more than 100 offices, warehouses, records centers, and
archives.
Regarding the obstacles that Interior is likely to encounter, we
reported to this committee in June 1996\1\ that, based on our work, we
concluded at that time that records were not available to support a
reconciliation of the IIM accounts. In addition to missing records, we
pointed to the lack of an audit trail through Interior's Integrated
Records Management System [IRMS], which was used to maintain IIM
account information, and differences in the way IRMS operates at
various Interior locations, which affect the consistency of the IRMS
information, as obstacles that Interior would encounter in pursuing an
IIM account reconciliation.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ U.S. General Accounting Office, Indian Trust Fund Testimony Q's
and A's, GAO/AIMD-96-125R (Washington, DC: June 24, 1996).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Much of our previous work in the area of trust fund reconciliations
relates to an earlier account reconciliation requirement and a related
Interior effort to reconstruct both tribal and IIM trust accounts. From
1992 through 1997, we monitored and reported on various aspects of
Interior's planning, execution, and reporting of results for the
reconciliation project. First let me discuss the tribal portion of that
earlier Interior effort.
The Congress established an Indian trust fund account
reconciliation requirement in the Supplemental Appropriations Act of
1987. That requirement was in response to tribes' concerns that (1)
Interior had not consistently provided them with statements on their
account balances, (2) their trust fund accounts had never been
reconciled, and (3) Interior planned to contract with a third party for
management of trust fund accounts.
The 1987 act required that the accounts be audited and reconciled
before the Bureau of Indian Affairs [BIA] transferred funds to a third
party. Interior's fiscal year 1990 appropriations act added a
requirement that the accounts be reconciled to the earliest possible
date and that Interior obtain an independent certification of the
reconciliation work. The American Indian Trust Fund Management Reform
Act of 1994 subsequently required the Secretary of the Interior to
provide tribes with reconciled account statements as of September 30,
1995.
Interior contracted with two major independent public accounting
firms, one to reconcile the trust accounts and the other to do an
independent certification to indicate that the reconciliation resulted
in the most complete reconciliation possible. Following a preliminary
assessment in March 1992 by Interior's reconciliation contractor,
Interior decided to have the contractor reconcile the tribal accounts
for fiscal years 1973 through 1992. Subsequent to this decision,
Interior also had BIA reconcile the tribal accounts for fiscal years
1993 through 1995 to comply with the 1994 act's requirement that
Interior provide tribes with reconciled account statements as of
September 30, 1995.
The tribal portion of Interior's Indian trust fund account
reconciliation project was completed and Interior reported the results
to tribes in January 1996. During the reconciliation project, Interior
spent about $21 million for contract costs over a 5-year period in a
massive effort to locate supporting documentation and reconstruct
historical trust transactions, as well as to perform other
reconciliation procedures, in its attempt to validate tribal account
balances.
During a February 1996 meeting at which Interior officials and the
reconciliation contractor summarized the reconciliation project
results, tribes raised questions about the adequacy and reliability of
the reconciliations results. In May 1996, we reported\2\ on
shortcomings of Interior's reconciliation project. The shortcomings
consisted of procedures that were not completed due to missing records,
systems limitations, or time and cost considerations.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ U.S. General Accounting Office, Financial Management. BIA's
Tribal Trust Fund Account Reconciliation Results, GAO/AIMD-96-63
(Washington, DC: May 3, 1996).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In May 1997, we reported\3\ to this committee that, as of May 6,
1997, Interior had provided reconciliation reports to 310 tribes, of
which 51 tribes had disputed, and 41 had accepted, the reconciliation
results. Of the remaining 218 tribes, 47 had requested more time to
consider the results, and 171 had not responded to the reconciliation
results. In summary, although Interior made a massive attempt to
reconcile tribal accounts during its reconciliation project, missing
records and systems limitations made a full reconciliation impossible.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ U.S. General Accounting Office, Indian Trust Funds: Tribal
Account Holders' Responses to Reconciliation Results, GAO/AIMD-97-102R
(Washington, DC: May 23, 1997).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now, let me turn to the IIM portion of Interior's earlier account
reconciliation effort. In our June 1992 report\4\ on Interior's efforts
to reconcile Indian trust accounts, we noted that the effort originally
consisted of two phases. The first phase was to cover, in addition to
500 tribal accounts, 17,000 IIM accounts maintained at three agency
offices. However, after an initial assessment by Interior's contractor
of the level of effort and cost needed to complete the various segments
of reconciliation work, a decision was made not to reconcile IIM
accounts as part of the project. In reporting this status, we noted
that Interior and its contractor had determined that a full
reconciliation of all tribal and IN accounts was neither possible nor
cost-effective due to missing records, commingled tribal and individual
Indian accounting records, poorly documented accounting transactions,
and the volume of data to be reviewed.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ U.S. General Accounting Office, Financial Management BIA Has
Made Limited Progress in Reconciling Trust Accounts and Developing a
Strategic Plan, GAO/AFMD-92-38 (Washington, DC: June 18, 1992).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
At that time, we recommended that Interior seek alternatives to the
reconciliation project and develop a proposal for reaching a
satisfactory resolution of the trust fund account balances with account
holders. Among alternatives that we recommended for Interior's
consideration were that Interior consider negotiating agreements with
individual Indians on balances reported on their account statements and
request legislated settlements on all, or selected accounts. In a
number of testimonies and reports over the next several years,\5\ we
supported the idea of Interior and tribal and IIM account holders
negotiating a resolution of their issues.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ U.S. General Accounting Office, Financial Management Native
American Trust Fund Management Reform Legislation, GAO/T-AIMD-94-174
(Washington, DC: Aug. 11, 1994). U.S. General Accounting Office,
Financial Management Indian Trust Fund Accounts Cannot Be Fully
Reconciled, GAO/T-AIMD-95-94 (Washington, DC: March 8, 1995). U.S.
General Accounting Office, Indian Trust Fund Settlement Legislation,
GAO/AIMD/OGC-95-237R (Washington, DC: Sept. 29, 1995).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Interior's July 2, 2002 report relates directly to the 1994 act and
the ongoing class action lawsuit commonly referred to as the Cobell
litigation, which is presently before the U.S. District Court for the
District of Columbia. In this regard, my comments today are not
intended to address, nor is GAO taking any position on what level of
accounting the 1994 act or the courts have required of Interior thus
far, whether Interior's plan satisfies those requirements, or, if so,
whether Interior's plan is the only or best approach for Interior to
satisfy the requirements imposed on it. Those issues will ultimately be
decided by the court.
Having said this, we note that Interior's report recognizes that a
number of obstacles, similar to those we have previously reported on,
will complicate its ability to document for IIM account holders the
amount and source of funds deposited to, managed in, and disbursed from
their IIM accounts. The Interior report enumerates among those
obstacles known discrepancies in the balances, at the trust fund level,
reported by Treasury and Interior, as well as the potential for (1)
errors in the electronic accounting system data, (2) missing paper
transaction records, and (3) missing land ownership information and
revenue instruments. The report further states that ``It is certain
that gaps in documentation will be encountered during the historical
accounting. Such gaps may range from a single missing lease to an
entire time period of missing documentation for some or all IN account
holders served by a specific BIA agency.'' Interior's enumeration of
obstacles is consistent with what our prior work has shown.
Mr. Chairmen, this concludes my statement. I would be glad to
answer any questions from you or other members of the committee.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.001
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.002
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.003
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.004
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.005
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.006
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.007
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.008
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.009
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.010
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.011
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.012
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.013
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.014
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.015
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.016
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.017
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.018
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.019
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.020
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.021
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.022
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.023
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.024
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.025
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.026
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.027
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.028
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.029
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.030
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.031
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.032
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.033
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.034
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.035
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.036
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.037
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.038
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.039
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.040
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.041
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.042
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.043
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.044
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.045
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.046
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.047
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.048
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.049
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.050
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.051
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.052
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.053
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.054
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.055
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.056
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.057
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.058
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.059
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.060
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.061
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.062
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.063
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.064
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.065
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.066
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.067
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.068
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.069
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.070
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.071
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.072
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.073
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.074
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.075
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.076
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.077
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 81450.078
<greek-d>