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Senator Mike Gravel: Man for America

Mike Gravel was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, to French Canadian immigrants. He attended French-speaking Catholic schools, and as a teenager, when he wasn’t working with his father and brothers in the house painting and construction business, he volunteered in local Springfield politics, developing an avid interest in governance and government.

In the early 1950s, Mike Gravel enlisted in the U.S. Army and served as adjutant in the Communications Intelligence Service and as a Special Agent in the Counter Intelligence Corps in Germany and France.

After graduating with a B.S. in economics from Columbia University, Mike Gravel moved to Alaska, where he built a real estate business. He served in the Alaska House of Representatives from 1963 to 1966, and was then elected to two terms in the U.S. Senate, representing Alaska from 1969 to 1981.

Senator Gravel served on the Finance, Interior, and Environment and Public Works committees, chairing the Energy, Water Resources, Buildings and Grounds, and the Environmental Pollution subcommittees. During the environmental watershed decade of the 1970s, he co-sponsored or co-authored every piece of meaningful Senate legislation dealing with air, water, waste and energy.

In 1971, as a freshman senator critical of the Vietnam War and of government secrecy, Mike Gravel used his position as a senator to release the “secret” Pentagon Papers and facilitated their publication as The Senator Gravel Edition, The Pentagon Papers, Beacon Press (1971). This publication occasioned litigation, Gravel v. U.S. Government, resulting in a landmark Supreme Court decision relative to the Speech and Debate Clause of the United States Constitution, establishing the precedent that members of Congress cannot be bound by the official secrets of any presidential administration.

Senator Gravel waged a successful lone filibuster for five months, ending the military draft in the United States. He forced an end to the undersea testing of obsolete nuclear warheads in the earthquake-prone area of Amchitka Island, Alaska, which could have compromised the food chain of the North Pacific. He also initiated the national and global critique of nuclear power generation.

Despite being opposed by both government entities and the oil industry, in 1973 Senator Gravel introduced the amendment to authorize the construction of the Alaska oil pipeline, building support and allies to secure passage of the amendment by a single vote. In addition to providing jobs and a wide array of economic benefits to citizens of Alaska, the pipeline has been responsible for providing 20 percent of the United States’ oil supply over the last generation.

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