Senator Mike
Gravel - Biography
Mike Gravel represented
Alaska
in the United States Senate from 1969 to 1981. He served on the
Finance, Interior, and Environment and Public Works committees, chairing
the Energy, Water Resources, and Environmental Pollution subcommittees.
Some of Senator Gravel's legislative accomplishments are outlined
below.
CANNIKIN NUCLEAR TESTS
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Pentagon was performing five
calibration tests for a nuclear missile warhead that, upon investigation,
was revealed to be obsolete. Yet the tests, involving the detonation
of nuclear warheads under the seabed of the North Pacific at
Amchitka Island, Alaska
(an earthquake prone area) were scheduled to continue. These tests
created large caverns under the seabed, encapsulating nuclear wastes with
life-threatening properties that would last more than a thousand years.
These caverns could rupture during an earthquake, spewing contaminated
wastes into the food chain of the North Pacific, thereby compromising one
of the planet’s major sources of food.
Mike Gravel
fought the tests in Congress, but he also went
beyond his role as a Senator to organize worldwide environmental opposition
to the Pentagon's plans. He succeeded in halting the program after the
second test, limiting the expansion of this threat to the marine
environment of the North Pacific.
“THE PEACEFUL
ATOM”
In the decades of the 1950s and 1960s, nuclear fission was considered an
environmentally clean alternative for the generation of commercial
electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use
of atomic energy.
Mike Gravel
was the first in Congress to publicly oppose this national nuclear policy
in 1970, and he used his office to organize citizen opposition,
successfully persuading Ralph Nader's organization to join the fight.
Senator Gravel's initial efforts, and later those of the
environmental movement that had coalesced in opposition, contributed to
making the production of commercial electricity through nuclear fission
uneconomical. The wisdom of this change in policy, was confirmed by
the Three Mile Island and
Chernobyl
disasters.
Mike Gravel
had
applied the brakes to a headlong policy that was threatening the global
environment by producing nuclear wastes and proliferating bomb-grade
nuclear materials.
PEACETIME
DRAFT
In May 1971, Senator Gravel began a one-man filibuster that continued into
September, forcing a deal to let the military draft expire. The
drafting of the nation's youth had been defense policy since 1947. In
order to save face and break the Senator's filibuster, the Nixon
administration agreed to let the draft expire in 1973 if given a two-year
extension in 1971.
THE PENTAGON
PAPERS
Daniel Ellsberg, a former Pentagon analyst who helped write the secret
Pentagon Papers, attempted to secure the Papers’ release through a member
of Congress in order to provide legal protection for the release of this
highly classified historical study that detailed how the
United States
had ensnared itself in the Vietnam War. After congressional leaders
Ellsberg initially approached failed to act, he turned to the New York
Times and Washington Post, which then published excerpts of
the study in June 1971. The Nixon Justice Department sought an
injunction against the newspapers, and a Supreme Court decision that was
due at the end of June put the publishers at risk. The day before the
Supreme Court decision, in an effort to moot any action that might
intimidate the newspapers,
Mike Gravel
officially released the Pentagon Papers in his capacity as a Senator
communicating with his constituency. As it happened, the Supreme
Court did not rule against the Fourth Estate, but Senator Gravel continued
to press for release of the full text of the Pentagon Papers by publishing
the papers in book form. He was turned down by every major (and
not-so-major) publishing house in the nation, save one. Beacon Press,
the publishing arm of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, faced down the
Nixon Administration by publishing The Senator Gravel Edition, The
Pentagon Papers.
The Justice Department next brought legal
action against Beacon Press and against the Senator's editor, Dr. David
Rotberg.
Mike Gravel
intervened in the case, using his Senate office as a shield for Beacon
Press and Rotberg. Decisions at the District Court and the Court of
Appeals protected the Senator from prosecution but left Beacon Press and
Rotberg at risk, so, against the advice of his attorneys, Gravel took the
matter to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court rendered a landmark
constitutional decision in the spring of 1972, narrowly defining the
prerogatives of an elected representative with respect to the “speech or
debate” clause of the constitution. Senator Gravel's defeat before
the Supreme Court placed him at risk of prosecution, along with Beacon
Press and Rotberg. With Watergate afoot, the Nixon Justice Department
lost interest in the prosecution of Ellsberg, Gravel and Rotberg.
However, the Court's decision did set the stage for its later
decision on the Nixon Tapes, forcing Nixon's resignation from the
Presidency.
A GREEK RELATIONSHIP
In the 1970s, Elias Demetracopoulos, an exiled Greek journalist living in
Washington, D.C.,
recruited
Mike Gravel
to use his
position in the U.S. Senate to speak out against the Nixon Administration's
support of the Colonels in
Athens.
Both the Greek Junta and the Nixon Administration were trying to
silence Mr. Demetracopoulos' effective leadership in building American
opposition to the military dictatorship in
Greece. Senator Gravel
was an outspoken ally in this effort and gave Demetracopoulos personal
succor. The Senator also counseled with Merlena Mercouri and her husband,
Jules Dassin, in their opposition to the Junta, and used his influence,
publicly and privately, to side with the Greek national position on the
Cyprus Question.
ENVIRONMENT
The decade of the 1970s saw the awakening by federal and state legislatures
to the need to control environmental pollution.
Mike Gravel
’s service on the Environment and
Public Works Committee throughout his Senate career placed him in a
leadership role on every major piece of environmental legislation dealing
with air, water, waste, and energy that emerged from the U.S. Congress
during this period.
LAW OF THE SEA
In the mid-1970s, the United Nations was moving toward the codification of
a legal regime for the oceans that cover two-thirds of the earth's surface.
Senator Gravel worked with UN leaders and committees, the Secretary
of State, our UN ambassador, and other agencies of government to advance
the UN's adoption of the Convention on the Law of the Sea -- despite the
opposition of the fishing industry in his home state of
Alaska. The momentum behind the UN
effort was undermined by legislation introduced by the powerful Senator
Warren Magnuson and his Alaskan colleague, Senator Ted Stevens --
legislation that permitted the U.S. to unilaterally take control of the
200-mile waters bordering its land mass. Senator Gravel successfully
delayed this legislation for two years in the hope that the UN would act
first, but his opposition ultimately failed to stop its passage.
Efforts at the UN lost momentum, and agreement was not reached until
1982. Shamefully, the U.S.
is the only nation in the world that has failed to ratify the Law of the
Sea Convention.
RED CHINA
Six months before Henry Kissinger's secret mission to the People's Republic
of
China
(PRC), Senator Gravel introduced unpopular legislation to recognize and
normalize relations with the PRC, in the hope of bringing about a
re-examination of our outdated policy towards the Chinese people.
NATIVE CLAIMS SETTLEMENT ACT
The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act was the first major political
settlement of aboriginal claims, which were customarily dealt with what
came to be recognized as a biased process. Senator Gravel co-authored
the legislation and provided outspoken leadership for some of its
important, but less popular, land-use features in the Settlement Act.
He was responsible for removing the federal government's
paternalistic role in the management of native economic affairs once the
settlement had been approved by Congress.
THE ALASKA PIPELINE
In 1973, following years of study and judicial delay, Senator Gravel
introduced an amendment to empower the Congress to make the policy decision
about the construction of the Alaska Oil Pipeline. Initially, the
amendment was opposed in all quarters, by state and federal officials, the
labor movement, and the oil industry. Alone at the beginning,
Mike Gravel
built support and gained allies who,
in the end, helped secure the amendment's passage in the Senate by a single
vote. This accomplishment placed Alaska
on a new economic footing. The pipeline has been responsible for 20%
of the
U.S.
oil supply, has contributed substantially to the nation's balance of
payments, and has yielded economic benefits that dramatically improved the
quality of life across Alaskan society. A recent retrospective
analysis has revealed that, absent Senator Gravel's amendment, the pipeline
would probably not have been built, relegating the nation to greater
foreign dependency and environmental pollution.
SATELLITE
COMMUNICATIONS
In the early 1970s, Senator Gravel pioneered satellite communications
through a demonstration project that established links between Alaskan
villages and the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland,
for medical diagnostic communications. He then developed a proposal
for the Alaska Legislature for a satellite communications and video
transmission system, which has since been implemented, making
Alaska's system the most advanced in the U.S.
AGSOC
In an effort to broaden the ownership of capital in our society, Senator
Gravel authored and secured the passage into law of the General Stock
Ownership Corporation (GSOC), Subchapter U of the Tax Code. With the hope
of first using this law in Alaska,
he brought about a ballot initiative in the state's general election of
1980 on the creation of an Alaska General Stock Ownership Corporation
(AGSOG). As part of this effort, he negotiated a tentative agreement
with the British Petroleum Company to sell its interest in the Alaska
Pipeline to the AGSOC. The electorate failed to approve the AGSOC
initiative. BP now considers its pipeline interest to be one of the
most profitable of its Alaska
holdings. Had the AGSOC been approved and the purchase consummated,
it would be paying out dividends of several hundred dollars annually to
every citizen/shareholder in Alaska.
CIRCUMPOLAR
CONFERENCE
The Inuit peoples populate the Arctic regions of the globe. At
Senator Gravel's instigation, and with a private grant he secured, the
Alaskan North Slope native leadership organized a circumpolar conference
attended by Inuit representatives from
Canada, Greenland, and Norway.
Their periodic convocations on culture, environment, and other
regional concerns now include representation from Russia.
RECORD IN ALASKA STATE LEGISLATURE
Mike Gravel
served in the Alaska
House of Representatives from 1963 to 1966, and as Speaker from 1965 to
1966. Among his accomplishments at the state include:
ALASKAN
HIGH SCHOOL SYSTEM
Authored legislation that
established the structure and budget for a regional high school system for
rural Alaska, permitting native students to receive their education near
their homes rather than travel to the Bureau of Indian Affairs' schools
outside Alaska.
LEGISLATIVE AND OTHER REFORMS
He effected legislative reforms, securing budgets to provide staffs for
members and to expand research and support facilities, initiated electronic
voting, and developed an intra-session hearing process throughout the state
that fostered citizen participation.
PUBLICATIONS
Mike Gravel is the author
of Jobs and More Jobs and Citizen Power to
support his political initiatives in the 1960s and 1970s and, while in the
Senate, used his office to officially release the Pentagon Papers and
facilitated their publication as The Senator Gravel Edition, The
Pentagon Papers; Beacon Press. More of his publications are llisted at amazon.com.
ACTIVITIES
OUTSIDE OF POLITICS
Senator Gravel enlisted in the
U.S. Army (1951-54) and served as an adjutant in the Communications
Intelligence Services and as a Special Agent in the Counter Intelligence
Corps. He received a B.S. in Economics at
Columbia University, New York City, and holds four honorary degrees in law and public affairs.
Mike Gravel's business activities have encompassed real estate,
finance and energy. He authored the National Initiative legislation and incorporated
the Democracy Foundation, Direct Democracy and Philadelphia II, nonprofit
corporations dedicated to the enactment of the National Initiative in the
United States.
Senator Gravel lectures and writes about governance, capitalism, energy,
environmental issues, and democracy. He is married to
Whitney Stewart Gravel
and has two grown
children, Martin and Lynne, and four grand children: Renee, Alex, Madison
and MacKenzie. |
