Mr. Mark J. Langer 
Clerk, United States Court of Appeals 
for the District of Columbia Circuit 
United States Courthouse 
Room 5423 
Third & Constitution Avenue, N.W. 
Washington, D.C. 20001 
Re: Cobell v. Norton, Nos. 03-5262, 04-5084 
(Argued September 14, 2004, before Chief Judge Ginsburg and Circuit Judges 
Randolph and Rogers) 
Dear Mr. Langer: 
The government hereby responds to plaintiffs' October 27 letter submitted under Rule 28(j). 
Plaintiffs call the Court's attention to a November 2003 Department of Interior publication 
entitled "Independent Auditors' Report on the U.S. Department of the Interior's Fiscal Year 2003 
Annual Report on Performance and Accountability." They assert that this publication was 
"withheld" by Interior and "recently discovered by the Plaintiffs-Appellees." Letter at 1. 
The cited report has not been "withheld" (ibid.). It is available to the public on Interior's 
website at Part 4 of http://www.doi.gov/pfm/par2003. See http://www.doi.gov/pfm/new03.html. 
Plaintiffs wrongly suggest that the report newly reveals that Interior has not yet completed 
the "certification and accreditation" (C&A) process for all of its information technology (IT) systems 
under OMB Circular A-130. See Letter at 1. The government has never intimated otherwise. As 
noted in our August 25 submission, the record makes clear that, as of March 2004, Interior "ha[d] 
fully certified and accredited 30 of its systems and issued interim approval to operate for [an 
additional] 108 systems." JA1820. See also, e.g., Interior's Seventeenth Quarterly Report (May 
U.S. Department of Justice 
Civil Division, Appellate Staff 
950 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Rm: 7531 
Washington, D.C. 20530 
Tel: (202) 514-5089 
Fax: (202) 514-8151 
November 8, 2004
2004) at p.6 ("Most major applications and general support systems have received an Interim 
Approval to Operate (IATO). Approximately 20% of Interior's major applications and general 
support systems have completed the C&A process."). 
As in their previous filings, plaintiffs fail to distinguish between IT security in general and 
security of individual Indian trust data in particular. The report submitted by plaintiffs explicitly 
states that Interior "has established security processes and documentation for its Indian Trust systems 
that place the trust systems in a better information-security posture than the majority of other DOI 
information systems." Attachment 2, p.1. 
cc: Elliott H. Levitas 
G. William Austin, III 
Dennis Marc Gingold 
Keith M. Harper 
Earl Old Person 
2 
Respectfully submitted, 
PETER D. KEISLER 
Assistant Attorney General 
GREGORY G. KATSAS 
Deputy Assistant Attorney General 
ROBERT E. KOPP 
MARK B. STERN 
THOMAS M. BONDY 
CHARLES W. SCARBOROUGH 
ALISA B. KLEIN 
Attorneys, Appellate Staff