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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.
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 publishingThe 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.
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.
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