It's All Greek to Us

An Alaska Native Corporation company with an undetermined address has won a potential five-year, $250 million award from the U.S. Special Operations Command for linguist and translation services worldwide.

Now, for all we know, Shee Atika Languages LLC is perfectly capable of providing U.S. special operators with the language-related support they need to defeat al Qaeda and other terrorists in far-flung places like Iraq, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa and the Philippines. But mid-Maine's SunJournal.com, which reported at length about the award, couldn't get in contact with the company and couldn't even get a good fix on its address while one reader says they've left town.

Shee Atika is supposedly at 94 River Street, Suite 300, Rumford, Maine, according the Pentagon's contract announcement June 5.

For obvious reasons, SOCOM is not the most forthcoming group within the U.S. military realm, itself a bastion of contradictory, confusing and even obfuscating communications (see any Pat Tillman article). Still, we doubt SOCOM really means to be this oblique about a quarter-of-a-billion dollar award to provide significant services for several years. Leave it to the Defense Department's acquisition process to do it for them.

--Michael Bruno