Complete Pentagon Papers To Be Released

The New York Times (and other major dailies) reported today that all 7,000 pages of the Pentagon Papers will be released on Monday, June 13, 2011-- 40 years after Daniel Ellsberg's original leak which led to groundbreaking First Amendment jurisprudence.  Interesting to note from the news coverage on the release:

  1. This is the first time a full, unredacted copy of the Pentagon Papers will be published.  Earlier releases were incomplete.
  2. Leslie H. Gelb, now president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and then director of the task force that wrote the officially titled Report of the O.S.D. Vietnam Task Force, characterized his team's work as "catch-as-catch-can studies based on available documents," and said the work was never meant to be comprehensive.

Here's the link to the full story in The Times.

Wall Street Journal’s Motion to Intervene Reopens Court Case that Blocked Public Disclosure of Medicare Claims Data in 1979

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) maintains a computerized database that tracks every Medicare claim filed by providers and every dollar paid out to beneficiaries. The database is accessible by government investigators to detect fraud, but it is unavailable in its entirety to the general public due to a 1979 federal court decision. Yesterday, a United States Magistrate Judge recommended that the case be reopened for consideration.

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