Mike Gravel, former U.S. senator for Alaska from 1969-81, is best known for his release of the Pentagon Papers into the public record. As a junior senator in 1971, Gravel insisted the public had a right to know the truth behind the Vietnam War. He then read more than 4,000 pages of the 7,000-page document into the Senate record.
On the Senate floor last week, outgoing Democratic Sen. Mark Udall called for a purge of top CIA officials implicated in the torture program and cover-up. That’s sparked demands that Udall invoke a rarely used congressional privilege and make the report public.
There is precedent for him to follow: In 1971, then-Alaska Senator Mike Gravel entered more than 4,000 pages of the 7,000-page Pentagon Papers into the Senate record, insisting the public had a right to know the truth behind the Vietnam War.
Interview with Mike Gravel: Most members of Congress, unfortunately, don’t fully understand that there’s three functions that representatives have to perform. One is to inform the public. Two is to legislate. And three is to have oversight. And so, what we have with the release of this document, or the summary, was an oversight. This is—they conducted oversight, and they released it to the public.
Madison, Jefferson, James Wilson, George Washington all felt—all felt the most important function of representation was to inform the people as to what their government is doing. And so, this is all that the Feinstein committee has done thus far, but we need to see the entire record so that it could be probed.
See Full Story at DemocracyNow.org
