The Dakotan has been on the ground floor of a breaking story - the Dunseith Debacle. Other media have called it Dunseith-Gate or Dunseith Declassified. The Dunseith Debacle has been a story which apparently ties into potential national security issues, commercial aviation supply chain compromises, public flight safety risks, possible State and federal agent cover-up, possible murder, and public corruption.
In recent months, Governor Kelly Armstrong told The Dakotan that he is waiting on a lawsuit from the businessman Charles Hoefer, who is a whistleblower central to this ordeal, and then he'll let the lawyers speak. Attorney General Drew Wrigley has cautioned in interviews to let "the facts play themselves out." Senator Kevin Cramer, who grew up near Dunseith, says he doesn't know what's behind the curtain there. Senator John Hoeven says a former staffer attended a Dunseith meeting or two. We are unable to verify the meetings that Hoeven was referencing, but do have documentation showing someone from Hoeven's staff on email threads for meetings where meeting minutes show that Packet Digital and Chiptronics were discussed.
To briefly recap: in 2022, businessman Charles Hoefer, who was recruited by Governor Burgum's administration to turn the old Dunseith Benchmark Electronics factory into a new RV manufacturing plant, came forward to state and federal authorities with some shocking allegations. He said he had found guided missile electronics circuitry, a paper trail of military and commercial aviation parts fraud, and what appear to be nuclear records. He also says he discovered evidence of an extremely disturbing incident involving a prior tenant and that an official from North Dakota Commerce allegedly misled him about the facility’s situation.
Mr. Hoefer alleges that a former sales company at the Dunseith factory, Chiptronics, was involved in aircraft parts work that placed a large international ring laser gyroscope supply chain at risk. Recently, congressional Boeing and FAA whistleblowers Ed Pierson and Joe Jacobsen, respectively, have written to the head of the NTSB claiming Mr. Hoefer's allegations are credible. Mr. Hoefer has provided extensive records to The Dakotan which show that federal investigators descended on his facility and discretely cleaned up much of the evidence.
A New Link: ND Industrial Commission, Packet Digital, and Chiptronics
In 2017 and 2019, Packet Digital, run by Terri Zimmerman, was awarded grants with the Industrial Commission. The Industrial Commission is the oversight agency of the Bank of North Dakota and is comprised of a three-person board: the Governor, the Attorney General, and the Agriculture Commissioner. Zimmerman is a former top executive of Great Plains Software when U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum was its CEO. Zimmerman was also serving on the board of the ND Development Fund when applying for some of these grants.
On May 18, 2017, the Industrial Commission announced that Zimmerman's company, Packet Digital, was awarded two grants, each for $500,000, which other records show were bolstered by U.S. military dollars. The media release states that Chiptronics is a partner with each of these Packet Digital projects, and one of the grants indicates that Chiptronics was partnering with Packet Digital as a manufacturer to research drone materials for the Naval Research Lab.
Previously, in 2023, the North Dakota News Cooperative reported that ND Development Fund board chairman Jim Albrecht was in 2017 benefiting with Chiptronics through Albrecht's company ComDel for a state grant involving aerospace drone sensors.
Some Background on Chiptronics:
Chiptronics, Inc. or Chiptronics was a former DBA (doing business as) of TMC, Inc. They operated out of Dunseith, ND since the late 1970's. TMC, Inc., according to the Secretary of State website, was involuntarily dissolved by the State on March 9, 2020. Chiptronics' federal SAM registry for government contracting expired in July 2018. Chiptronics' federal defense CAGE code, 0STV1, reveals the company filed with the U.S. Defense Logistics Agency as a "non-manufacturer" and shows obsolescence in 2022.
Benchmark Electronics' attorney sent a letter to Mr. Hoefer's company attorney in 2023 and seemed to acknowledged that Benchmark had been doing business with Chiptronics in Dunseith involving gyroscope work after 2016. Mr. Hoefer claims that this work continued into 2023 and used his address fraudulently on rerouted parcels. You can find some odd parcel photos on our Dunseith Debacle podcast series.
Evidence segments from the Dunseith Debacle include recorded phone calls between Benchmark’s attorney and counsel for Mr. Hoefer’s company, in which Benchmark’s attorney appears to acknowledge that parcels were being sent into 2023 to Chiptronics’ vice president in Dunseith, using Mr. Hoefer’s business address. Mr. Hoefer alleges this activity was part of a coordinated effort that could be effecting the federal government and commercial airlines, posing serious risks to public flight safety due to the involvement of laser gyroscopes, which are critical aviation components.
Direct Chiptronics Connections to State Officials?
In addition to the previously discussed state grants and DoD contracts from 2017, another key funding source was a USDA-backed grant that directly involved Chiptronics and its operations in Dunseith, announced that August. As chairman of the U.S. Senate Agriculture Appropriations Committee, Senator John Hoeven announced and supported more than $680,000 in USDA Rural Development grants across North Dakota, including a $253,506 award to the North Central Planning Council specifically earmarked to expand manufacturing lines and create 13 new jobs at Chiptronics, Inc.’s Dunseith facility. Hoeven’s office publicly listed the grant and its purpose, seemingly indicating the senator’s knowledge of Chiptronics’ active role at the site at that time.
When asked about the grant, Senator Hoeven’s office replied, “As we do with many federal grants, we announced the grant along with a number of other competitive grants being awarded by USDA. The notification we received from USDA only included general information on the award.”
While Hoeven now describes the 2017 Chiptronics announcement as routine, the level of detail in his office’s press release, specifically highlighting job creation and the Dunseith facility, raises questions about how much was actually known at the time. Internal correspondence, regional staff participation in Dunseith meetings, and what is now known about post-Benchmark aerospace activity at the site show there needs to be a greater level of transparency. It also raises broader concerns about federal oversight and accountability, especially as troubling information about apparent unauthorized military and aviation parts rework at the facility has since emerged.
On July 17, 2019, then-Commerce Commissioner Michelle Kommer told former Governor Burgum and the Industrial Commission, including late Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem, that another $500,000 grant to Zimmerman's Packet Digital should expect to create 93 jobs at Chiptronics in Dunseith. Zimmerman, on behalf of Packet Digital, wrote a "binding commitment" to the Industrial Commission in April 2019 to motivate this grant, which was ultimately awarded, with Zimmerman claiming that Chiptronics boasted extensive electronics capabilities and a Class 100,000 clean room, something that is essential to electronics manufacturing, and was, according to a former Benchmark employee, out of the facility prior to 2017.
The August 2019 Progress Report from Chiptronics shows no temp jobs added and that they were beginning other work. At this same time the city of Dunseith was pursuing payment for a delinquent equipment lease to Chiptronics that, according to the city, saw no use in any production.
A review of available records suggests inconsistencies between official state accounts and the documented activity at the Dunseith facility. According to Rolette County court records, the entire facility was leased to an armored vehicle company, Safeguard Armor Solutions, Inc, in March 2019, running through the end of that year. Apparently, according to a lawsuit filed against the Safeguard Armor Solutions, the Dunseith factory was mysteriously abandoned by that tenant in mid-2019, but the tenant was not evicted from the site, according to those same records, until mid-2020.
This contrasts claims by then-Commerce Commissioner Michelle Kommer and Packet Digital CEO Terri Zimmerman about Chiptronics’ active presence there during that period. Zimmerman reported to the Industrial Commission that a 2019 grant project involving Chiptronics was completed in September 2020, and Packet Digital continued to describe Chiptronics as a certified manufacturing partner in Dunseith up until that point. However, by 2020, the facility was reportedly abandoned and in serious disrepair, with no evidence of an active electronics operation. Mr. Hoefer first saw the facility in 2021 and described it as "vacant and rotting."
Images of Chiptronics Offices from 2022 showing disrepair
It raises questions about why, if the state knew there were sensitive materials on site, they weren't more accommodating to Mr. Hoefer during the cleanup process.
Adding to the confusion, a January 2021 email from a North Dakota Commerce official to Charles Hoefer, who was then being recruited to repurpose the site for RV manufacturing, included an attached document describing Benchmark Electronics as the last known tenant, omitting both Chiptronics and the armored vehicle company. This document, provided by Mr. Hoefer, shows discrepancies suggesting that the state's Dunseith factory narrative was either outdated or selectively framed, leaving major gaps in the official narrative of who occupied the factory and when.
Response from Hoefer's Team and State Officials
Beginning in September 2023, State Senator Kent Weston became the first elected official to independently investigate Charles Hoefer’s claims, ultimately supporting SB 2396, a bill calling for a multi-year audit of the Development Fund. Weston, who testified extensively during the hearings, has since described the emerging details involving former Governor Burgum, the late Attorney General Stenehjem, Zimmerman, Packet Digital, and Chiptronics as deeply unsettling. He released the following statement:
"I discovered early on from records that Commerce officials had misled me on multiple occasions about Mr. Hoefer. But now, I can see that they were covering up much more than just officials' associations with Chiptronics' activities that may pose national security risks and risks to commercial airline safety. Chiptronics was just a gutted shell company by 2019, no longer legally in existence by 2020, and yet money was given to a state insider at the Development Fund board, who was promoting Chiptronics partnership. At the very least, this shows irresponsibility or incompetence in how our hard earned State taxpayers dollars were put to use. I've known Terri [Zimmerman] through the years, and I'm going to reach out to her to give her an opportunity to share with me the full story of how she got connected with Chiptronics, who introduced her, what she knew and when, and whether she felt that she was misled by Chiptronics as well."
"As to Mr. Hoefer's situation with Commerce officials, this just leads me to believe that they have more to hide, and more to conceal. These officials aren't volunteering anything, and they have always just attacked Mr. Hoefer. If I thought Commerce officials' actions were fishy before, now it's smelling of rotting sewage. We needed to get to the bottom of the Dunseith Debacle yesterday. It's time for someone from the inside to step forward and explain - credibly - how all this happened, and why they used the State's business recruitment agency to publicly single out and try to destroy the best manufacturing opportunity we've had in years in the Turtle Mountains."
Mr. Hoefer is preparing to sue multiple current and former Commerce officials for retaliating against him. The Dakotan asked Mr. Hoefer to comment on the new links between Packet Digital, the Industrial Commission, the Governor and Attorney General offices, Commerce, and Chiptronics. His attorney Tom James of Sanders & Associates LPA issued the following statement:
"My client has been convinced for some time that illicit Dunseith factory activities probably had the blessing of certain North Dakota officials, and there had to be a money trail between Chiptronics, Tuttle, and state officials (which now looks to be partly found). Past activities at his site were apparently part of a government grant gravy train, fueled by taxpayers, which spread money around to benefit those with power, influence, or the right connections. Mr. Hoefer’s efforts to reveal and clean up the federal criminal evidence he’d found at the site seems to have derailed that scheme and put him at odds with the people who’d been profiting from it."
"Mr. Hoefer’s disruption of that money trail may explain why certain state officials have led an assault on his civil rights. He was in their way. And so, they personally and maliciously misused their state authority, put him in fear for his life and his family’s safety, squelched his free speech rights, and tried to put him out of business, apparently desperate to chase him away from North Dakota by any means necessary before the full scope of what had been happening in Dunseith, and where all the money was going, became public knowledge."
The Dakotan also sought comment from Packet Digital CEO Terri Zimmerman, Attorney General Drew Wrigley, and now-Interior Secretary Doug Burgum regarding the situation and potential conflicts of interest involving Chiptronics and Packet Digital. Despite multiple attempts by email and voicemail, none have responded directly. Instead, The Dakotan was referred to current NDIC Executive Director Karen Tyler, who issued the following statement after being briefed on the matter:
"Thank you for that clarification and the additional information. Jordan Kannianen, our Deputy Director and manager of our grant programs will research the records related to this particular grant and get back to you with answers to your questions. With the Industrial Commission meeting tomorrow and the holiday weekend, it will likely be toward the end of next week."
The Dakotan will provide a follow-up article with this information as well as any other statements gained in that time.
