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Rex Tinch's avatar

For the record.....Published June 29, 2021 by Freedom of the Press Foundation

Fifty years ago today, Senator Mike Gravel read the Pentagon Papers into the official record. More lawmakers should follow his lead.

Fifty years ago today, with the New York Times and the Washington Post tied up in the Supreme Court over whether they could report on the leaked Pentagon Papers, a young Senator named Mike Gravel was taking matters into his own hands.

Gravel had just obtained a second copy of the Pentagon Papers from whistleblower (and, much later, Freedom of the Press Foundation co-founder) Daniel Ellsberg, through a midnight curbside handoff from Ben Bagdikian, an editor and journalist at the Post. In an act of remarkable bravery, Gravel convened a subcommittee meeting, and read from the Papers until one A.M., culminating in an emotional description of the violence of war. He then inserted 4,100 pages of the document into the Congressional Record.

In the morning, the Supreme Court cleared the Times and the Post to continue publishing, in one of the most important press freedom decisions in the court's history. h/t Joe Murgia

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