Here’s a list of government grants and contracts for Sioux Manufacturing (SMC), the company that just paid $2 million to settle a lawsuit over faulty helmets, many of them secured by Senators Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad as well as Representative Earl Pomeroy.

• $4,000,000 for CAV Transition from Byron Dorgan in September of 2005
• $3,500,000 manufacturing contract from Byron Dorgan for vehicle armor in July 2004
• A contract to provide armor for 1,000 military vehicles a month in November of 2007.
• $2,000,000 to “demonstrate how newly developed technology can improve the quality and reduce the cost of composite parts the Army buys” secured by Byron Dorgan in December of 2001
• Another $2,000,000 to “demonstrate how newly developed, cutting-edge technologies and processes can improve the quality and reduce the cost of composite parts procured by the Army” secured by Earl Pomeroy in September of 2003.

By my count, that’s $11.5 million in grants and contracts from the federal government, plus the unspecified contract for vehicle armor and the $72 million contract for helmets Sioux Manufacturing just got after to replace the faulty helmets the company had already sold the government.

According to this 2003 article from KXMC out of Minot Sioux Manufacturing gets all but 3% of its business from government contracts.  In September of last year it was reported that SMC had $32 million in revenue the previous year.

What we have here is a tribal business that is entirely dependent on government contracts secured for it by Senator Byron Dorgan (among others) and not only managed to keep one of its government contracts despite knowingly manufacturing faulty products to fill it but actually managed to get that contract renewed for tens of millions of dollars.

Something here stinks.

I called Senator Dorgan’s office yesterday to get his reaction to this situation...and was directed to voicemail.