The Pentagon Papers

[soupy]

United States-Vietnam relations, 1945-1967 / study prepared by Department of Defense. Commonly known as the Pentagon papers.
"The 12-volume text here contains the first 43 volumes of the original 47-volume study."
"Printed for the use of the House Committee on Armed Services."
At head of title: Committee print.

https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000019395

[michaelwy]

https://www.archives.gov/research/pentagon-papers

The Pentagon Papers includes a nice biographical description of Ho Chi Mihn, also there are nice historical outlines, each of which could be used as an entry into the short non-fiction section.

https://nara-media-001.s3.amazonaws.com/arcmedia/research/pentagon-papers/Pentagon-Papers-Part-I.pdf

It is of course a huge 1969 report, but there are a lot of interesting passages.

[cowguy02]

Hi there. Correct me if i'm wrong but these are CC4 and not PD. Correct?

[michaelwy]

I don't know. I thought all US government reports were public domain? Does it say CC4 on the page?

[dlolso21]

https://www.archives.gov/global-pages/privacy.html#copyright

This is the National Archives copyright statement. When in doubt, contact them about a specific item.

David O

[elsieselwyn]

I emailed them asking. The website says to expect a response in around 10 working days so I should know the answer in ~2 weeks.

[elsieselwyn]

Hi! So they never responded to my email. MCs, do you think this would be considered PD? It is a government report and the files are all scans of the original documents.

I would be interested in this as a project eventually (once I have finished the ones I have open).

[Availle]

I think this is not so easy to answer...

I took the following from the respective pages on wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers

The Pentagon Papers, officially titled Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force, is a United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. The papers were released by Daniel Ellsberg, who had worked on the study;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg

Ellsberg began working as a strategic analyst at the RAND Corporation for the summer of 1958 and then permanently in 1958.
Ellsberg worked in the Pentagon from August 1964[6] under Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara as special assistant to Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs John McNaughton. He then went to South Vietnam for two years, working for General Edward Lansdale as a member of the State Department.
On his return from South Vietnam, Ellsberg resumed working at RAND. In 1967, he contributed to a top-secret study of classified documents on the conduct of the Vietnam War that had been commissioned by Defense Secretary McNamara.[7] These documents, completed in 1968, later became known collectively as the Pentagon Papers.[8]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAND_Corporation

RAND Corporation ("Research ANd Development")[8] is an American nonprofit global policy think tank[1] created in 1948 by Douglas Aircraft Company to offer research and analysis to the United States Armed Forces. It is financed by the U.S. government and private endowment,[6] corporations,[9] universities[9] and private individuals.

The question may boil down to if Ellsberg was working for RAND on the Pentagon papers, who did actually pay him? If it was the US government, then he was a government employee and thus the Pentagon papers would be PD. If the money came from private endowment ect. then?
And then of course, it's the question how many other people worked on the Pentagon papers; he needed help with leaking, and he definitely needed help with writing them.

And then we have, also from the Pentagon Papers wikipedia page:

To ensure the possibility of public debate about the papers' content, on June 29, US Senator Mike Gravel, an Alaska Democrat, entered 4,100 pages of the papers into the record of his Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds.
That clause provides that "for any Speech or Debate in either House, [a Senator or Representative] shall not be questioned in any other Place", meaning that Gravel could not be prosecuted for anything said on the Senate floor, and, by extension, for anything entered to the Congressional Record, allowing the papers to be publicly read without threat of a treason trial and conviction.

So now they are part of the public record in the US, apparently? And those are PD??

For my taste, this is too convoluted. I'd be very careful with this one...

[elsieselwyn]

Ah! Thank you for all the sleuthing! I agree with you - I think I’ll let this one go because it seems much too complicated to prove that it is PD.