-Caveat Lector-
Trust benefits ex-BIA official
By Sean P. Murphy
Boston Globe Staff
8/13/2001
FALLON, Nevada - Five months after overruling staff genealogists to grant
the Chinook Indians status as a gambling tribe, Kevin Gover, former head of
the Bureau of Indian Affairs, became the co-beneficiary of a $50,000 trust
with the help of the husband of one of the Chinook's earliest casino
advocates.
The exact purpose of the trust, established by a different tribe, the
Fallon Paiute Shoshone of Nevada, was unclear. Gover said he was unaware of
it, but his legal associates said it was a reserve for future work they and
Gover may do.
Gover is a subject of congressional inquiries into decisions in the last
weeks of the Clinton administration that expanded the number of tribes with
the power to open casinos. Now a lawyer-lobbyist for tribes, Gover has
steadfastly maintained that he received nothing from tribes that benefitted
from his official decisions. Indeed, Gover has received no legal fees or
other payments from the Chinooks.
But he and Dennis G. Chappabitty, a longtime friend and law school
classmate, are listed in Nevada as co-beneficiaries of the $50,000 Paiute
trust. Chappabitty's wife, Linda C. Amelia, is a Chinook who was a leader
in the tribe's fight for federal recognition.
The fund, according to Chappabitty, is tied to work he and Gover are doing
on behalf of the Fallon Paiute Shoshone.
Gover, in an interview, said he knew nothing about it. ''I have not asked
for a $50,000 fee and would not accept one,'' said Gover. ''My bill is not
close to that.''
Chappabitty said in an interview that he arranged to have Gover hired by
the Fallon tribe. He said that he assumed the trust account, which was
established by the tribe's lawyer, is intended to cover his and Gover's
future fees, but that he did not know any more details.
The lawyer, Todd Plimpton, said the trust account he controls is
''primarily'' for Gover and Chappabitty, but he later added that his own
fees could also be paid with those funds. The $50,000 was turned over to
Plimpton to hold in trust for Gover and Chappabitty by vote of the Fallon
tribe's council, he said.
''This $50,000 is nothing more than a retainer, and it will be drawn down
only upon work performed,'' Plimpton said. ''We will review the bills and
make sure everything is copacetic.''
The roughly 2,000 Chinooks of Washington state have long contemplated
construction of a casino near their ancestral lands along the Columbia
River, but investigators for the Bureau of Indian Affairs determined that
they ceased to function as an organized tribe in the 1880s, and therefore
did not merit federal recognition.
Gover, on Jan. 3, his last day as head of the bureau, personally rewrote
the findings of his research staff to grant the Chinooks the recognition
they sought.
The Boston Globe first raised questions about that decision in March,
noting that Gover's top deputy, Michael J. Anderson, then waited until his
last day in office, Jan. 19, to give preliminary recognition to two other
tribes whose authenticity had been firmly rejected by the Bureau of Indian
Affairs' staff historians, anthropologists, and genealogists.
One of those tribes is the Nipmucs, who are based in Central Massachusetts
and who have plans to open a casino and resort similar to the behemoth
Indian-owned Mohegan Sun and Foxwood casinos in Connecticut. The other is
the Duwarmish of Washington state.
In the Chinook case, the chief of research took the extraordinary step of
filing an angry memo after learning Gover intended to recognize the tribe
despite the staff's repeated and strenuous opposition.
Gover's ''edits to [our] recommendation made changes in the evaluation of
the evidence,'' wrote Lee Fleming. ''In our view, the finding is not
consistent with the requirements of the acknowledgment regulations.''
At a Senate hearing on the rapidly growing $10 billion Indian gaming
industry on July 25, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, angrily
denounced the last-minute Gover and Anderson recognition decisions.
''A lot of interesting things happened in the last days of the Clinton
administration,'' said McCain, apparently also referring to Clinton's
controversial pardons to financier Marc Rich and others. ''And we intend to
get some answers on this.''
The inspector general's office of the Department of Interior, which
oversees the Bureau of Indian Affairs, is also investigating Gover, a
Pawnee Indian, and Anderson, a Muskogee (Creek).
Since leaving the agency, Gover has been a lawyer and lobbyist on Indian
issues for the firm of Steptoe & Johnson.
The Fallon Paiute Shoshone is a small and poor tribe, situated on a dusty
reservation in the desert about 60 miles east of Reno. What little money
the tribe has comes from interest on a $43 million settlement fund
established for the tribe by Congress in 1991 as payment for diverting
water away from the tribe by damming the Truckee River.
Chappabitty, a Comanche Indian, became involved with the tribe in 1997,
first as a board member and later as chief officer of the tribal economic
development corporation. He sought and gained Gover's official help when
the tribe had a dispute with the Fallon city government.
Recently, two rival factions of the tribe have fought bitterly over control
of the governing council and its treasury.
Chappabitty, based in Sacramento, allied himself with the faction that took
control of the Fallon tribal government in August 2000.
Both factions, however, continued to proclaim themselves to be the rightful
government.
Gover said he was hired when the Bureau of Indian Affairs, worried that the
dispute might turn violent, moved to take over the heavily armed police
force on the reservation.
Gover declined to detail his fee arrangement, but Plimpton said he asked
for and received $10,000. A check for that amount was written to Plimpton
and marked for Gover on June 6, according to records. Chappabitty received
a check for $3,400 on that same day. Chappabitty had also received $5,000
on May 31.
But an additional $50,000 check was dated June 8 and used to set up the
trust account. Plimpton said he asked the tribal council to vote that
amount in anticipation of additional fees that might be owed to Gover and
Chappabitty. He said he told Gover about the trust account only after it
was authorized.
Plimpton himself received $42,757 in legal fees from the tribe for May and
June. In all, the tribe spent $111,157 for Plimpton, Gover, and Chappabitty
in May and June.
Gover, who appeared in Reno for a three-day hearing on the Bureau of Indian
Affairs' takeover of the police, said he did not expect to do any further
work for the tribe.
Plimpton was unable to supply minutes from the council meeting detailing
the reason for the $50,000 trust account for Gover and Chappabitty. One
council member also declined to provide minutes but said the money was
intended as a legal retainer.
In recent years, Chappabitty and Amelia, a paralegal, have attempted to
broker deals between tribes and non-Indian casino investors, according to
court documents. In 1996, they took steps to bring a casino investor to the
Chinook, according to documents.
Amelia is one of about 2,000 Chinook members, each of whom would stand to
reap considerable profits were a sizable casino to be built on tribal land
near the large population center of Portland, Ore.
Publicly, tribal members have said little about their casino plans. But in
a 1997 letter, Amelia confided to investor Al Salazar of Spirit Gaming Inc.
that ''we are definitely looking at Oregon for gaming.''
Sean P. Murphy c an be reached by email at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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