SEASIDE, Calif. (AP) — Mike Gravel, a former U.S. senator from Alaska who read the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record and later ran for president twice, has died. He was 91.
Gravel died Saturday. He had been living in Seaside, California, and was in failing health, said Theodore W. Johnson, a former aide.
Gravel represented Alaska as a Democrat in the Senate from 1969 to 1981. His tenure was notable for his anti-war activity.
The lawmaker led a one-man filibuster to protest the Vietnam-era draft and read into the Congressional Record 4,100 pages of the 7,000-page leaked document known as the Pentagon Papers, the Defense Department’s history of the country’s early involvement in Vietnam.
In Alaska, he served as a state representative, including a stint as House speaker, in the mid-1960s.
