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<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Wide swaths of the Interior Department were taken off the Internet again Tuesday after a federal judge concluded that the agency still has not fixed security holes that threaten payments owed to American Indians.</p> <p>It was the third such shutdown for the Interior Department since 2001, when an investigator found that hackers could easily steal money from a system that allocates energy and mineral royalties to 300,000 Indians for use of their land.</p>

Former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt is blasting as "radical" a Republican proposal to open up more than 50 million acres of public lands to logging and other development.

On the heels of a scathing critique by former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt on Wednesday, President Obama faced pressure from a burgeoning environmental justice coalition demanding stronger action on ozone, a component of smog, in predominantly Latino communities. Fourteen groups sent a letter to Obama expressing dismay at missed opportunities and delays in bringing permissible ozone levels down to between 60 and 70 parts per billion: The EPA estimates that the strongest standard of 60 parts per billion would avoid as many as 12,000 deaths and 58,000 asthma attacks per year. Implementing a weaker standard would mean more lives lost...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpmAs_wCjx8"

WASHINGTON - Federal officials are investigating how National Archives documents of interest to Indians suing the Interior Department were found discarded in a trash bin and a wastebasket. The discovery came to light on Sept. 1, when Archives staff noticed federal records in one of the trash bins behind the National Archives Building near the Capitol. They notified the Archives' inspector general, Paul Brachfeld, whose staff recovered the documents. They found at least a portion of the documents were Bureau of Indian Affairs records dating to the 1950s, according to Jason Baron of the Archives' Office of General Counsel, in...

WASHINGTON - Officials in the federal agency that oversees American Indian trust assets had an improper social relationship with an accounting firm and pressured subordinates to give the firm preferential treatment, a government investigation found. Senior managers in the Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians based in Albuquerque, N.M., golfed, drank and partied with the executives of the New Mexico accounting firm Chavarria, Dunne & Lamey, which won $6.6 million in contract work over eight years, according to the report by the Interior Department's inspector general. The investigation, first reported this week by U.S. News & World Report,...

Investors Business Daily 10/30/97 Editorial E D I T O R I A L Babbitt, Clintonites And Chippewas Date: 10/30/97 Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, due to testify to the Senate today, has seen the sleazy side of White House fund raising. ++++++++++++++++ Babbitt is expected to tell the Governmental Affairs Committee about the case of three Chippewa tribes that sought to build gambling facilities in Hudson, Wis., near the Minnesota border. The tribes needed the OK of the Interior Department, which oversees American Indian matters. But several other tribes opposed the deal. They already had their gambling concerns up and...

The suit charges Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, Assistant Interior Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs Ada Deer and Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin with illegal conduct in regard to the management of Indian money held in trust accounts and managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. If the lawsuit's claims are correct, and there's an overwhelming body of evidence that suggests they are, then the federal government has lost, misappropriated or, in some cases, stolen billions of dollars from some of its poorest citizens.

WASHINGTON - A federal judge has given Interior Secretary Gale Norton an ultimatum: Either appear in his court or face the prospect that he'll rule against her on an accusation that she retaliated against American Indians suing her agency for lost royalties. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth gave Norton the choice in an order he issued late Monday. The judge has frequently battled with the Interior Department since a class-action suit was filed in 1996 on behalf of more than 300,000 Indians seeking an accounting of trust funds set up in their behalf more than a century ago. The government...

Another Attack on the Arctic By BRUCE BABBITT Published: July 8, 2004 ARROW, Alaska — Thwarted by the public in its efforts to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, the Bush administration and the oil companies are now quietly turning their attention to the balance of the Arctic region of Alaska, all the way west to the Chukchi Sea, within sight of Siberia. In advance of its efforts, the administration has jettisoned environmental safeguards and is now threatening the traditional-use rights of the Alaska Natives who have hunted caribou and waterfowl along the Arctic slope for thousands of...

WASHINGTON (SH) - No matter who is running the Interior Department - Republicans, Democrats or a hybrid of both - they can't seem to get it right with Native Americans, leaving one to believe that the nation's integrity got buried at Wounded Knee alongside Crazy Horse's heart. Ever since the U.S. 7th Calvary of Custer fame (or infamy, whichever side one is on) massacred a harmless bunch of Ghost Dancers and their women and children at that now-sacred site, officially ending 30 years of armed hostility toward the Indians, the government has maintained a policy of corruption that even the...

KETCHUM, Idaho - Former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt says the lower Snake River dams are standing in the way of salmon recovery. The Clinton administration Democrat told a Ketchum fund-raiser yesterday that those dams will be breached, despite the Bush administration's anti-environment policies. Babbitt claims there's virtually no long-running economic reason to keep the four dams standing. And, he says Bush wants to trample any opposition, rather than looking for a resolution of the issue. EarthJustice Steve Mashuda says his group plans to sue Idaho Power Company and others to make them realize the cost of keeping dams in place.

Originally published June 15,2001 THE GREAT GOLD HEISTThe Desert Wilderness Protection Act by Karen Lee Bixman Published in: Media ByPass Magazine (1-800-4-bypass) Senator Diane Feinstein: "The Modern Jesse James" Congress should be convening a criminal investigation. On October 8, 1994, the biggest gold heist in history occurred, but this theft lacked the melodrama of a Jesse James' holdup or the excitement of a Brink's truck robbery. Nary a word was reported by the media even though this thievery was committed in the light of day. The citizens that were being robbed tried to cry out for help but the lawmen...

A century of mismanagement, malfeasance and mistrust won't be reversed or rectified quickly or cheaply, according to a new report from the Department of the Interior (DOI) indicating that making sense of badly jumbled Indian trust accounts dating to the late 1800s will take at least a decade and cost $2.4 billion [see "DOI Speaks With Forked Tongue," June 10; "Bureaucrats Circle Their Wagons," Dec. 31, 2001; and "Total Lack of Trust," Sept. 17, 2001]. And even then that probably won't fully account for all the royalties and fees that American Indians were supposed to have paid to them for...