IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 
ELOUISE PEPION COBELL, et al., ) 
Plaintiffs, 
v. Case No. 1:96CV01285 
(Judge Lamberth) 
)
)
)
)
) 
GALE NORTON, Secretary of the Interior, et al., ) 
Defendants. 
)
) 
__________________________________________) 
NOTICE OF FILING OF THE TWENTIETH QUARTERLY REPORT 
FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY 
The Department of the Treasury has prepared its Twentieth Quarterly Report on Actions 
Taken By the Department of the Treasury to Retain IIM-Related Documents Necessary For an 
Accounting and submits it to the Court in accordance with this Court’s Order of December 21, 
1999. 
A copy of the report is attached hereto. 
Respectfully submitted, Dated: December 1, 2004 
ROBERT D. McCALLUM, JR. 
Associate Attorney General 
PETER D. KEISLER 
Assistant Attorney General 
STUART E. SCHIFFER 
Deputy Assistant Attorney General 
J. CHRISTOPHER KOHN 
Director 
/s/ Sandra P. Spooner 
SANDRA P. SPOONER 
D.C. Bar No. 261495 
Deputy Director
JOHN T. STEMPLEWICZ 
Senior Trial Counsel 
Commercial Litigation Branch 
Civil Division 
P.O. Box 875 
Ben Franklin Station 
Washington, D.C. 20044-0875 
(202) 514-7194 (phone) 
(202) 514-9163 (fax) 
2
CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE 
I hereby certify that, on December 1, 2004 the foregoing Notice of Filing of the Twentieth 
Quarterly Report For the Department of the Treasury was served by Electronic Case Filing, and 
on the following who is not registered for Electronic Case Filing, by facsimile: 
Earl Old Person (Pro se) 
Blackfeet Tribe 
P.O. Box 850 
Browning, MT 59417 
Fax (406) 338-7530 
/s/ Kevin P. Kingston 
Kevin P. Kingston
TWENTIETH QUARTERLY REPORT ON ACTIONS TAKEN 
BY THE DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY TO RETAIN 
IIM-RELATED DOCUMENTS NECESSARY FOR AN ACCOUNTING 
Cobell, et al. v. Norton, et al. 
D.D.C. CV No. 96-1285 
December 1, 2004 
This is the Department of the Treasury’s (“Treasury”) Twentieth Quarterly Report, filed 
pursuant to the Court’s December 21, 1999 Order (“Order”) in the above-captioned case. It 
covers activities occurring over a three-month period from September 1, 2004 through 
November 30, 2004. The Order requires Treasury to report on the steps it has taken since the last 
quarterly report to rectify a single breach of its trust responsibilities, namely the destruction of 
IIM trust materials after their age exceeded six years and seven months. Cobell, et al. v. Babbitt, 
et al., 91 F. Supp. 2d 1, 50, 59 (D.D.C. 1999). 
Treasury continues to preserve IIM-related documentation pursuant to the Court’s August 
12, 1999 Order, which defines the trust records that Treasury must retain. 
The “Check 21” legislation that was enacted October 28, 2003, allowing banks to clear 
checks electronically, became effective October 28, 2004. As a result, increasingly, Treasury 
will only receive an electronic image of a cleared Treasury check rather than the original check. 
The “Check 21” Act is described in more detail in Attachment C to Treasury’s Fourteenth 
Quarterly Report filed June 2, 2003 and Attachment A to Treasury’s Sixteenth Quarterly Report 
filed December 1, 2003. 
Beginning approximately mid-January 2005, Financial Management Service (FMS) will 
implement new electronic deposit processes by which agencies’ paper check deposits will be 
either truncated and processed electronically or converted into ACH transactions and processed 
electronically. These new processes, known by the system name ECP Lockbox (ECP stands for 
“electronic check processing”), will be phased in agency-by-agency during 2005. ECP Lockbox 
will use an Internet-based General Lockbox Network. By letter dated September 17, 2004, FMS 
informed Interior’s Office of Special Trustee (OST) that Interior’s disconnection from the 
Internet makes its participation in the General Lockbox Network impossible. If Interior 
procures, on its own, the lockbox and remittance processing services it requires directly from a 
commercial bank, then Interior, not Treasury, will have possession, custody or control of the 
records maintained by the bank for that lockbox account, other than data the bank enters into 
FMS’ CA$HLINK II system. 
During the past quarter, FMS and the Bureau of the Public Debt (BPD) responded to 
records-related questions from the Federal Reserve (FRB). In a letter dated November 5, 2004 
from FMS to the FRB concerning retention requirements for two tribal trust lawsuits, FMS 
reiterated the requirement that “no Treasury fiscal agency records be destroyed without 
Treasury’s prior written authorization.”