posted on July 13, 2002 07:02:13 AM new
Despite his call for criminal culpability in cases of mismanagement of corporate funds and reporting the bush administration is quietly trying to keep actions against it's own at bay.
"In stark contrast to President Bush's urgent call for "corporate
responsibility," and to stop the scandals rocking Wall Street, The
White House along with Secretary of the Interior and the Attorney
General are seeking legislation to obstruct the ability of the United
States District Court in the landmark Indian trust lawsuit, Cobell v.
Norton, to uncover the full scope of malfeasance in the
government's mismanagement of billions of dollars of assets held in
trust for 500,000 individual Indian trust beneficiaries.
Specifically, the White House has asked Congress to appropriate
millions of dollars in tax revenue to hire private attorneys to protect
government officials who have breached their fiduciary
responsibilities and have covered-up their misconduct by
destroying tens of thousands of boxes of documents and electronic
trust records throughout the six-year case. Worse still, the
government deliberately has failed to provide adequate information
technology (IT) security for individual Indian trust funds, exposing
billions of dollars of trust monies to theft, loss, and
misappropriation.
At the same time, the White House has requested that Congress
cut off funds for judicial officers who have begun to expose the
nature and scope of this massive government financial scandal and
has asked Congress to cut off funds for the full accounting ordered
by United States District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth and the
United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
The malfeasance committed by the government exceeds in
aggregate the financial losses and document destruction that have
been reported for Enron, Global Crossing and MCI-WorldCom. "
"It is very strange that the President acts aggressively to prosecute
chief executive officers of public companies for their corrupt
activities at the same time the President attempts to protect
government officials who engage in precisely the same misconduct.
If the President is correct that this behavior is criminal and must be
stopped now, and he is, why is cooking the books and cover-up
acceptable when done by officials in his Administration? Congress
should send a clear message to the White House that this will not
be tolerated. And, the public should be outraged by this naked
abuse of power."
This is the first I'd heard that indian funds were still controlled by federal agencies so directly.
In another unrelated situation the bush administration is again quietly taking steps to try to protect it's own concerning in the wrongful death lawsuits brought by family members of victims of 9/11 against both airlines and the government.
