White House Photos — Does the Public Need a License to Use?

Electronic Frontier Foundation says:

In posting the photos, the White House chose the least restrictive license available, a Creative Commons Attribution license — which means the public is free to download, copy, and re-mix freely, so long as the original photographer is credited.

While this is certainly better than releasing the photos under the usual copyright rules (no use without permission, specific license and compensation), the license made us wonder: if these are official photos by the official White House photographer, aren’t they government works? If so, they aren’t copyrightable, which means they needn’t be licensed at all, but should instead be flagged as public domain.