-Caveat Lector- Indian Case Punishment Criticized Training Prescribed for 4 at Treasury Who Destroyed Papers By Ellen Nakashima Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, August 15, 2001; Page A17 Their crimes were destroying potential evidence in a class action brought by Native Americans and covering it up for three months. Their punishment? Mentoring and communication skills training. That was the discipline meted out to four Treasury Department lawyers who a court-appointed special master said were involved in destroying 162 boxes of documents as part of routine housekeeping at a department facility in Hyattsville in 1998 and 1999. Two other lawyers deemed to have lesser involvement received no punishment. The news was contained in a Treasury report made public yesterday after U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth denied a government request to keep it under seal. "This report is a whitewash," said Dennis Gingold, a lawyer for the Native Americans, who in 1996 sued the government for mismanaging trust funds that the Indians claim should yield them at least $10 billion in compensation for use of their land. "It ignored what the special master found in 1999," Gingold said, referring to Alan L. Balaran's report on the Hyattsville document destruction, "that there was a pattern and practice of deception, and that these guys went behind closed doors and decided not to tell the truth." Gingold said the Indian plaintiffs will file a contempt motion against "all responsible Treasury Department officials," which would include the former general counsel, Neal Wolin, and other attorneys, and against former treasury secretaries Robert E. Rubin and Lawrence H. Summers. Their goal is to hold accountable those who failed to report the document destruction to the court in a timely fashion. Rubin and Summers were responsible for their attorneys' actions, Gingold said. Lamberth left open the possibility that he would have to judge the appropriateness of Treasury's discipline of its attorneys. But he praised t he department for taking some remedial action while, he wrote, other agencies involved in the Indian trust fund debacle have not. "Treasury has taken a step in the right direction, a step that the Interior and Justice Departments have not demonstrated," he wrote. In the wake of Balaran's report on the document destruction, Treasury set up a training session that most of its 2,000 lawyers completed. In it, they reviewed model rules of professional conduct, federal rules of civil procedure and the Treasury general counsel's directive on litigation. Senior officials were also trained on records management. Attorneys were reminded of their obligation to ensure communication of significant information in litigation. These steps were taken by the previous and the current administrations, Treasury Department spokeswoman Michele Davis said in a statement, "to ensure that the incident of 1999 does not recur." The report, written by a panel of Treasury Department lawyers, concluded that a "failure to effectively communicate" was at the root of the document destruction and three-month delay in reporting. On critical occasions, attorneys provided incomplete or misleading information. But the panel found no "intentional wrongdoing." The four who had significant or extensive involvement and received mentoring or communication training were James Regan and Eleni Constantine and former employees Daniel Mazella and Ingrid Falanga. Two others, Roberta McInerney and Randall Lewis, were minimally involved, the panel said, and were not disciplined. ================================================================ Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT FROM THE DESK OF: *Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends ================================================================ <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. 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