The Pentagon Contractors Tracking Retired Generals’ Appearances

We've noted the TV network's unresponsiveness to the New York Times' story that the Pentagon has been cultivating and cozying up to retired-generals turned TV pundits. Meanwhile another angle on the story has caught our eye. About two-thirds of the way through its 7,500 word dispatch, the Times noted:

As it happened, the analysts' news media appearances were being closely monitored. The Pentagon paid a private contractor, Omnitec Solutions, hundreds of thousands of dollars to scour databases for any trace of the analysts, be it a segment on ''The O'Reilly Factor'' or an interview with The Daily Inter Lake in Montana, circulation 20,000.

Just who is Omnitec Solutions? What exactly was the contract for? Might they have also been contracted to track media appearances of anybody else besides the retired officers? Their Web site is quite extensive--and by all means, scour it yourself--but weren't able to find anything there about the contract or any others like it. So we've taken to the old reporter stand-by: We've just sent the Pentagon a FOIA request. 

[PDF HERE]

We'll keep you up-to-date with the results--or the lack of them.

And by the way, if you'd ever like to file your FOIA requests, it's actually darn easy--all the more so when you use this handy FOIA Letter Generator.

Interested in what Eric Umansky is reading today? Read the articles around the Web he’s sharing.

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