DoD NIC Curiosity

This is something for the network security minded folks out there. I was updating my spam filters today and was looking up ip addresses when I saw that a quite a bit of the spam had been passed through this one address that belongs to the DoD NIC. Well I visited their website to see what exactly goes on there. My questions are, is it normal for "civilian" traffic to pass through the DoD NIC, and can it/is it used for other purposes like.. echelon?

Heres the "What we do" from the DoD NIC site

What we do:

The Department of Defense Network Information Center (DoD NIC) provides worldwide operational support to the military and DoD community connected to the NIPRNet and SIPRNet backbones

The organizational structure of the DoD NIC supports two environments that are unclassified yet sensitive, supported by the Network Information Center (NIC) and classified (secret) supported by the SIPRNet Support Center (SSC).

I'm not the paranoid type.. I just found it interesting that a good amount of my email passes through this ip range that is owned by the DoD NIC

Questions and comments please!!

[EDIT: IP in question ws.arin.net... ]

[Edited on 17-11-2003 by MrRadicalEd]

I'm very curious on this whole thing. What was the email address they used?

Well the emails wasn't sent to me by the DoD or anything, but it was routed through the DoD NIC.. I'm just curious as to how the DoD NIC operates and if its normal for "civilian" traffic to pass through it.