The Senator, Adara and Lost Rabbit

As I reported on Wednesday, Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss, has earmarked just more than $5 million for Adara Networks to work on information technology projects at the Military Health System and has another $10 million pending earmark for Adara in the fiscal 2010 Defense appropriations bill.

Why, oh why, I wondered, is a senator from Mississippi serving as rainmaker for Adara, which hangs out in San Jose, Calif.? Chris Gallegos, a spokesman for Cochran, told me his boss gets funding requests from outfits nationwide, cares about military health, and believes that improvements and efficiencies in MHS should always be considered and explored.

OK, standard pap. But then there's the Mississippi-Adara-Lost-Rabbit connection, which I exhumed from a deep Google search on Adara. Lost Rabbit, in this case, is not a critter, but rather a high-end housing development located 12 miles north of Jackson, the Mississippi state capitol.

In 2004, Adara and Sun Microsystems announced plans to install advanced, high-end IP telecommunications infrastructure to manage TV and video-on-demand in tony Lost Rabbit, where houses cost between $450,000 and $1 million.

Google (what would reporters do without it?) also helped me track down another Adara-Mississippi connection: In 2003, when Adara was known as Cenus Technologies, it announced a deal to install an advanced broadband network at the University of Mississippi using the company's NPX routers, which MHS also wants to use in its next generation electronic health record system.

I reported on Tuesday that the Defense Department inspector general opened an investigation into alleged unethical contracting between MHS and Adara. Gallegos told me that despite the investigation, Cochran has no intention of pulling the $10 million earmark for Adara in the Defense bill, but added that Cochran will make sure the Defense subcommittee is aware of the allegations and the investigation.