based in part upon invoices submitted by the Special Master on May 6, 2003, that the Special Master secretly hired one of the principal witnesses to the events described in the Interim Report to assist with his investigation and with the drafting of the Interim Report." Mot. to Supplement its Objections to the Interim Report of the Special Master Regarding the Filing of Interior's Eighth Quarterly Report at 1 (May 13, 2003). This assertion is contradicted by the record.
As detailed above, the Special Master, on April 1, 2003, filed the March 2003 Report of Special Master, attached to which were time sheets revealing no fewer than 65 entries for work performed by "MSS" during the months of February and March 2003. These entries indicate that in March MSSreviewed documents comprising the administrative record of the Eighth Quarterly Report  documents Interior had not yet provided to the Special Master. These entries also reveal that, on February 27, 2003, MSS "Reviewed files in DOI regarding 8QR"  the same day the Special Master recorded his time entry: "Meeting at Interior to review NAID documents." Again, this was the very meeting arranged by Interior. Both entries record the identical time and both obviously correspond to the meeting convened by Interior between the Master and Mr. Smith. And if those entries were insufficiently detailed to place the agency on notice that Mr. Smith was conferring with the Special Master, EKV's "[m]eeting with Mike Smith regarding work objectives" on March 4, 2003, certainly was.
The Court finds that these invoices