The office of the Defense Department’s inspector general said in a report Friday that it had found no wrongdoing in a Pentagon public relations program that made use of retired officers who worked as military analysts for television and radio networks.

The report was prompted by articles in The New York Times last year that described an elaborate and largely hidden Pentagon effort, dating from 2002, to transform a group of high-profile network military analysts into “surrogates” or “message force multipliers” for the Bush administration.

The articles also documented how military analysts with ties to defense contractors sometimes used their special access to seek advantage in the competition for contracts related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In response to the articles, at least 45 members of Congress called for inquiries into the program, with some asserting that it might have constituted an illegal campaign of propaganda directed at the American public.