How agency intends to fill in account gaps

WASHINGTON — The Department of Interior has a plan to provide all American Indians who have individual trust accounts with an accurate historical record of their account activity and balances, a government attorney told a federal judge on Wednesday.

On the first day of a new trial in a long-running Indian trust case, Justice Department attorney Robert Kirschman said the Interior Department should be allowed to continue conducting the historical accounting of individual Indian trust accounts that has cost taxpayers more than $127 million in the past four years.

"An historical accounting can be and is being accomplished,” Kirschman said. "There is no unreasonable delay.”

But an attorney for the Indians who sued the government in 1996 said the government's plan was devised not to provide accurate historical records but to limit its own liability.

"We are dealing with data that has been distorted over the years and is being used to protect the U.S. government,” Dennis Gingold said.

What is the trial's focus?

•The new trial will focus on the Interior Department's plan to provide an estimated 500,000 Indians — about 53,000 of them in Oklahoma — with reliable information that goes back, in some cases, to 1938.

•The government has made a plan that would rely on millions of available records and on statistical sampling to fill in gaps where records might be missing. The government has estimated the accounting could be completed by 2011.

What is alleged?

•The Indians, led by Elouise Cobell, a member of the Blackfeet Tribe of Montana, claim too many documents have been lost or destroyed to perform a reliable historical accounting.