Petition to Demand Hearings on Substandard Helmet Procurement



We the undersigned call upon the United States Congress to investigate how Sioux Manufacturing received a contract from the Bush Administration’s Pentagon to produce Kevlar helmets for our troops, after the company was found to have previously produced substandard helmets in the past.



As detailed by the New York Times:

“A North Dakota manufacturer has agreed to pay $2 million to settle a suit saying it had repeatedly shortchanged the armor in up to 2.2 million helmets for the military, including those for the first troops sent to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Twelve days before the settlement with the Justice Department was announced, the company, Sioux Manufacturing of Fort Totten, was given a new contract of up to $74 million to make more armor for helmets to replace the old ones, which were made from the late 1980s to last year.”

For years, Sioux Manufacturing had produced helmets that were far weaker than required by the U.S. Military and covered it up. Again, the New York Times reports:

In a conversation Mr. Kenner secretly taped, Rhea Crane, quality assurance officer, worried "if we ever had someone get killed, and they decided to investigate because they thought maybe the helmet wasn't any good."

"If we ever got audited," she said, "you know what they would do to us. Shut us down and fine us big time. Probably never see another government contract."

Additionally, on November 12, 2007, the Bismarck Tribune reported that Sioux, also while being sued, received one of three contracts to produce MRAPs for the troops.

Sioux should have never gotten another contract, and yet they got two, even as the company was being sued by the government. Congress must immediately investigate how this was allowed to happen.