In geometry, a pentagon (from pente, which is Greek for the number 5) is any five-sided polygon. A pentagon may be simple or self-intersecting. The sum of the internal angles in a simple pentagon is 540°. A pentagram is an example of a self-intersecting pentagon.

Regular pentagons

In a regular pentagon, all sides are equal in length and each interior angle is 108°. It has five lines of reflectional symmetry, and rotational symmetry of order 5 (through 72°, 144°, 216° and 288°). Its Schläfli symbol is {5}. The chords of a regular pentagon are in golden ratio to its sides.

The area of a regular convex pentagon with side length ''t'' is given by

: $A\; =\; \backslash frac\{4\}\; =\; \backslash frac\{5t^2\; \backslash tan(54^\backslash circ)\}\{4\}\; \backslash approx\; 1.720477401\; t^2.$

A pentagram or pentangle is a regular star pentagon. Its Schläfli symbol is {5/2}. Its sides form the diagonals of a regular convex pentagon – in this arrangement the sides of the two pentagons are in the golden ratio.

When a regular pentagon is inscribed in a circle with radius ''R'', its edge length ''t'' is given by the expression

: $t\; =\; R\backslash \; \{\backslash sqrt\; \{\; \backslash frac\; \{5-\backslash sqrt\{5\}\}\{2\}\}\; \}\; =\; 2R\backslash sin\; 36^\backslash circ\; =\; 2R\backslash sin\backslash frac\{\backslash pi\}\{5\}\; \backslash approx\; 1.17557050458\; R.$

Derivation of the area formula

The area of any regular polygon is:

: $A\; =\; \backslash frac\{1\}\{2\}Pa$

where ''P'' is the perimeter of the polygon, ''a'' is the apothem. One can then substitute the respective values for ''P'' and ''a'', which makes the formula:

: $A\; =\; \backslash frac\{1\}\{2\}\; \backslash times\; \backslash frac\{5t\}\{1\}\; \backslash times\; \backslash frac\{t\backslash tan(54^\backslash circ)\}\{2\}$

with $t$ as the given side length. Then we can then rearrange the formula as:

: $A\; =\; \backslash frac\{1\}\{2\}\; \backslash times\; \backslash frac\{5t^2\backslash tan(54^\backslash circ)\}\{2\}$

and then, we combine the two terms to get the final formula, which is:

: $A\; =\; \backslash frac\{5t^2\backslash tan(54^\backslash circ)\}\{4\}.$

Derivation of the diagonal length formula

The diagonals of a regular pentagon (hereby represented by D) can be calculated based upon the golden ratio φ and the known side T (see discussion of the pentagon in Golden ratio):

:$\backslash frac\; \{D\}\{T\}\; =\; \backslash varphi\; =\; \backslash frac\; \{1+\; \backslash sqrt\; \{5\}\; \}\{2\}\; \backslash \; ,$

Accordingly:

: $D\; =\; T\; \backslash times\; \backslash varphi\; \backslash \; .$

Chords from the circumscribing circle to the vertices

If a regular pentagon with successive vertices A, B, C, D, E is inscribed in a circle, and if P is any point on that circle between points B and C, then PA + PD = PB + PC + PE.

Construction of a regular pentagon

A variety of methods are known for constructing a regular pentagon. Some are discussed below.

Euclid's methods

A regular pentagon is constructible using a compass and straightedge, either by inscribing one in a given circle or constructing one on a given edge. This process was described by Euclid in his ''Elements'' circa 300 BC.

Richmond's method

One method to construct a regular pentagon in a given circle is as follows:

Procedure

# Draw a Diameter. # Draw the radius perpendicular to the said diameter. # Bisect the said radius and draw a line from that point to the point of intersection of the diameter and the circumference. # Bisect the angle that was recently formed with a line until it intersects with the diameter. # Draw a line parallel to the bisected radius to the circumference. # Draw a line from the intersection of the drawn diameter and circumference (Refer to step 3) to the intersection of the line formed by step 5 and the circumference. This is the first side of your regular pentagon. # Let the latter drawn end of the side of your regular pentagon be a point to draw another diameter. Then, repeat from step 2.

Verification

The top panel describes the construction used in the animation above to create the side of the inscribed pentagon. The circle defining the pentagon has unit radius. Its center is located at point ''C'' and a midpoint ''M''  is marked half way along its radius. This point is joined to the periphery vertically above the center at point ''D''. Angle ''CMD''  is bisected, and the bisector intersects the vertical axis at point ''Q''. A horizontal line through ''Q'' intersects the circle at point ''P'', and chord ''PD'' is the required side of the inscribed pentagon.

To determine the length of this side, the two right triangles ''DCM'' and ''QCM'' are depicted below the circle. Using Pythagoras' theorem and two sides, the hypotenuse of the larger triangle is found as √5/2. Side ''h'' of the smaller triangle then is found using the half-angle formula: :$\backslash tan\; (\; \backslash phi/2)\; =\; \backslash frac\{1-\backslash cos(\backslash phi)\}\{\backslash sin\; (\backslash phi)\}\; \backslash \; ,$

where cosine and sine of ''ϕ'' are known from the larger triangle. The result is:

:$h\; =\; \backslash frac\{\backslash sqrt\; 5\; -\; 1\}\{4\}\; \backslash \; .$

With this side known, attention turns to the lower diagram to find the side ''s'' of the regular pentagon. First, side ''a'' of the right-hand triangle is found using Pythagoras' theorem again:

:$a^2\; =\; 1-h^2\; \backslash \; ;\; \backslash \; a\; =\; \backslash frac\{1\}\{2\}\backslash sqrt\; \{\; \backslash frac\; \{5+\backslash sqrt\; 5\}\{2\}\}\; \backslash \; .$

Then ''s'' is found using Pythagoras' theorem and the left-hand triangle as:

:$s^2\; =\; (1-h)^2\; +\; a^2\; =\; (1-h)^2\; +\; 1-h^2\; =\; 1-2h+h^2\; +\; 1-h^2\; =\; 2-2h=2-2\backslash left(\backslash frac\{\backslash sqrt\; 5\; -\; 1\}\{4\}\backslash right)\; \backslash$ ::$=\backslash frac\; \{5-\backslash sqrt\; 5\}\{2\}\; \backslash \; .$

The side ''s'' is therefore:

:$s\; =\; \backslash sqrt\{\; \backslash frac\; \{5-\backslash sqrt\; 5\}\{2\}\}\; \backslash \; ,$

a well established result. Consequently, this construction of the pentagon is valid.

Alternative method

An alternative method is this:

#Draw a circle in which to inscribe the pentagon and mark the center point ''O''. (This is the green circle in the diagram to the right).

#Choose a point ''A'' on the circle that will serve as one vertex of the pentagon. Draw a line through ''O'' and ''A''. #Construct a line perpendicular to the line ''OA'' passing through ''O''. Mark its intersection with one side of the circle as the point ''B''. #Construct the point ''C'' as the midpoint of ''O'' and ''B''. #Draw a circle centered at ''C'' through the point ''A''. Mark its intersection with the line ''OB'' (inside the original circle) as the point ''D''. #Draw a circle centered at ''A'' through the point ''D''. Mark its intersections with the original (green) circle as the points ''E'' and ''F''. #Draw a circle centered at ''E'' through the point ''A''. Mark its other intersection with the original circle as the point ''G''. #Draw a circle centered at ''F'' through the point ''A''. Mark its other intersection with the original circle as the point ''H''. #Construct the regular pentagon ''AEGHF''.

Carlyle circles

The Carlyle circle was invented as a geometric method to find the roots of a quadratic equation. This methodology leads to a procedure for constructing a regular pentagon. The steps are as follows: #Draw a circle in which to inscribe the pentagon and mark the center point ''O''. #Draw a horizontal line through the center of the circle. Mark one intersection with the circle as point ''B''. #Construct a vertical line through the center. Mark one intersection with the circle as point ''A''. #Construct the point ''M'' as the midpoint of ''O'' and ''B''. #Draw a circle centered at ''M'' through the point ''A''. Mark its intersection with the horizontal line (inside the original circle) as the point ''W'' and its intersection outside the circle as the point ''V''. #Draw a circle of radius ''OA'' and center ''W''. It intersects the original circle at two of the vertices of the pentagon. #Draw a circle of radius ''OA'' and center ''V''. It intersects the original circle at two of the vertices of the pentagon. #The fifth vertex is the intersection of the horizontal axis with the original circle.

Direct method

A direct method using degrees follows:

#Draw a circle and choose a point to be the pentagon's (e.g. top center) #Choose a point ''A'' on the circle that will serve as one vertex of the pentagon. Draw a line through ''O'' and ''A''. #Draw a guideline through it and the circle's center #Draw lines at 54 degrees (from the guideline) intersecting the pentagon's point #Where those intersect the circle, draw lines at 18 degrees (from parallels to the guideline) #Join where they intersect the circle

After forming a regular convex pentagon, if one joins the non-adjacent corners (drawing the diagonals of the pentagon), one obtains a pentagram, with a smaller regular pentagon in the center. Or if one extends the sides until the non-adjacent sides meet, one obtains a larger pentagram. The accuracy of this method depends on the accuracy of the protractor used to measure the angles.

Simple method

A simple method of creating a regular pentagon from just a strip of paper is by tying an overhand knot into the strip and carefully flattening the knot by pulling the ends of the paper strip. Folding one of the ends back over the pentagon will reveal a pentagram when backlit.

Graphs

The K₅ complete graph is often drawn as a ''regular pentagon'' with all 10 edges connected. This graph also represents an orthographic projection of the 5 vertices and 10 edges of the 5-cell. The rectified 5-cell, with vertices at the mid-edges of the 5-cell is projected inside of a pentagon.

{| class=wikitable |- align=center |150px
5-cell (4D) |150px
Rectified 5-cell (4D) |}

Pentagons in nature

Plants

Animals

Pentagons in tiling

A pentagon cannot appear in any tiling made by regular polygons. To prove a pentagon cannot form a regular tiling (a tiling with all congruent regular polygons,) 360 / 108 = 3 1/3, which is not a whole number. More difficult is proving a pentagon cannot be in any edge-to-edge tiling made by regular polygons:

There are no combinations of regular polygons with 4 or more meeting at a vertex that contain a pentagon. For combinations with 3, if 3 polygons meet at a vertex and one has an odd number of sides, the other 2 must be congruent. For the pentagon, this results in a polygon whose angles are all (360 − 108) / 2 = 126 degrees. To find the number of sides this polygon has, the result is 360 / (180 − 126) = 6 2/3, which is not a whole number. Therefore, a pentagon cannot appear in any tiling made by regular polygons.

In-line notes and references

See also

Dodecahedron, a polyhedron whose regular form is composed of 12 pentagonal faces

Trigonometric constants for a pentagon

Pentagonal numbers

Associahedron; A pentagon is an order-4 associahedron

Pentagram

Pentastar, the Chrysler logo

Pentagram map

Golden ratio

Pythagoras' theorem

List of geometric shapes

External links

Animated demonstration constructing an inscribed pentagon with compass and straightedge.

How to construct a regular pentagon with only a only compass and straightedge.

How to fold a regular pentagon using only a strip of paper

Definition and properties of the pentagon, with interactive animation

Renaissance artists' approximate constructions of regular pentagons

Pentagon. How to calculate various dimensions of regular pentagons.

Category:Polygons

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Name	Daniel Ellsberg
Birth date	April 07, 1931
Known for	Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg paradox
Education	Harvard University (PhD)Cambridge University
Employer	RAND Corporation
Spouses	Carol Cummings (divorced)Patricia Marx
Children	Robert, Mary (1st marriage)Michael Ellsberg (2nd marriage)
Website	"''Daniel Ellsberg's Website''"}}

Daniel Ellsberg, PhD, (born April 7, 1931) is a former United States military analyst who, while employed by the RAND Corporation, precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of U.S. government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War, to ''The New York Times'' and other newspapers. He was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 2006.

Early life and career

Ellsberg was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1931 to ethnic Jewish parents who had converted to Christian Science, and raised in a devout Christian atmosphere. He grew up in Detroit, Michigan, and attended Cranbrook Kingswood School. His mother had wanted her son to be a concert pianist but he stopped playing in July 1946 when she was killed in a car crash, together with his sister, after his father fell asleep at the wheel of the car in which the family was traveling and crashed into a culvert wall.

Ellsberg attended Harvard University on a scholarship, graduating with B.S. in economics in 1952 (summa cum laude). He then studied at Cambridge University on a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and one year later he returned to Harvard for graduate school. In 1954, he left Harvard for the U.S. Marine Corps. He graduated first in a class of almost 1,100 lieutenants at the Marine Corps Basic School in Quantico, Virginia. He served as a platoon leader and company commander in the Marine 2nd Infantry Division, and after satisfying his two year Reserve Officer commitment was discharged from the Corps as a first lieutenant in 1957. He resumed graduate studies at Harvard, but after two years he interrupted his academic studies again, to work at RAND, where he concentrated on nuclear strategy. He earned a PhD in Economics from Harvard in 1962. His dissertation introduced a paradox in decision theory now known as the Ellsberg paradox.

Ellsberg served in the Pentagon from August 1964 under Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (and, in fact, was on duty on the evening of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, reporting the incident to McNamara). He then served for two years in Vietnam working for General Edward Lansdale as a civilian in the State Department.

After serving in Vietnam, Ellsberg resumed working at RAND. In 1967, he contributed to a top-secret study of classified documents regarding the conduct of the Vietnam War that had been commissioned by Defense Secretary McNamara. These documents, completed in 1968, later became known collectively as the Pentagon Papers. It was because Ellsberg held an extremely high-level security clearance and desired to create a further synthesis from this research effort that he was one of very few individuals who had access to the complete set of documents.

Disaffection with Vietnam War

By 1969 Ellsberg began attending anti-war events while still remaining in his position at RAND. He experienced an epiphany attending a War Resisters League conference at Haverford College in August 1969, listening to a speech given by a draft resister named Randy Kehler, who said he was "very excited" that he would soon be able to join his friends in prison. Ellsberg described his reaction:

Decades later, reflecting on Kehler's decision, Ellsberg said;

The Pentagon Papers

In late 1969—with the assistance of his former RAND Corporation colleague Anthony Russo and the staff of Senator Edward Kennedy—Ellsberg secretly made several sets of photocopies of the classified documents to which he had access; these later became known as the Pentagon Papers. As an editor of the ''New York Times'' was to write much later, these documents "demonstrated, among other things, that the Johnson Administration had systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress, about a subject of transcendent national interest and significance". They revealed that the government had knowledge, early on, that the war could most likely not be won, and that continuing the war would lead to many times more casualties than was ever admitted publicly. Further, the papers showed the government had lied to Congress and the public.

Shortly after Ellsberg copied the documents, he resolved to meet some of the people who had influenced both his change of heart on the war and his decision to act. One of them was Randy Kehler. Another was the poet Gary Snyder, whom he'd met in Kyoto in 1960, and with whom he'd argued about U.S. foreign policy; Ellsberg was finally prepared to concede that Gary Snyder had been right, about both the situation and the need for action against it.

Throughout 1970, Ellsberg covertly attempted to persuade a few sympathetic U.S. Senators — among them J. William Fulbright, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and George McGovern, a leading opponent of the war — to release the papers on the Senate floor, because a Senator could not be prosecuted for anything he said on the record before the Senate. Ellsberg told U.S. Senators that they should be prepared to go to jail in order to end the Vietnam War.

Ellsberg allowed some copies of the documents to circulate privately, including among scholars at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). Ellsberg also shared the documents with ''New York Times'' correspondent Neil Sheehan under a pledge of confidentiality. Sheehan broke his promise to Ellsberg, and built a scoop around what he'd received both directly from Ellsberg and from contacts at IPS.

On Sunday, June 13, 1971, the ''Times'' published the first of nine excerpts and commentaries on the 7,000 page collection. For 15 days, the ''Times'' was prevented from publishing its articles by court order requested by the Nixon administration. Meanwhile, Ellsberg leaked the documents to ''The Washington Post'' and 17 other newspapers. On June 30, the Supreme Court ordered publication of the ''Times'' to resume freely (''New York Times Co. v. United States''). Although the ''Times'' did not reveal Ellsberg as their source, he went into hiding for 13 days afterwards, suspecting that the evidence would point to him as the source of the unauthorized release of the study.

On June 29, 1971, U.S. Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska entered 4,100 pages of the Papers into the record of his Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds—pages which he had received from Ellsberg via Ben Bagdikian—then an editor at the Washington Post. These portions of the Papers were subsequently published by Beacon Press.

Fallout

The release of these papers was politically embarrassing not only to those involved in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations but also to the incumbent Nixon administration. Nixon's Oval Office tape from June 14, 1972, shows H. R. Haldeman describing the situation to Nixon:

:"Rumsfeld was making this point this morning... To the ordinary guy, all this is a bunch of gobbledygook. But out of the gobbledygook comes a very clear thing.... It shows that people do things the president wants to do even though it's wrong, and the president can be wrong."

John Mitchell, Nixon's Attorney General, almost immediately issued a telegram to the ''Times'' ordering that it halt publication. The ''Times'' refused, and the government brought suit against it.

Although the ''Times'' eventually won the trial before the Supreme Court, prior to that, an appellate court ordered that the ''Times'' temporarily halt further publication. This was first time the federal government was able to restrain the publication of a major newspaper since the presidency of Abraham Lincoln during the U.S. Civil War. Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers to seventeen other newspapers in rapid succession. The right of the press to publish the papers was upheld in ''New York Times Co. v. United States''. The Supreme Court ruling has been called one of the "modern pillars" of First Amendment rights with respect to freedom of the press.

As a response to the leaks, the Nixon administration began a campaign against further leaks and against Ellsberg personally. Aides Egil Krogh and David Young, under the supervision of John Ehrlichman, created the "White House Plumbers", which would later lead to the Watergate burglaries.

Fielding break-in

In August 1971, Krogh and Young met with G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt in a basement office in the Old Executive Office Building. Hunt and Liddy recommended a "covert operation" to get a "mother lode" of information about Ellsberg's mental state in order to discredit him. Krogh and Young sent a memo to Ehrlichman seeking his approval for a "covert operation [to] be undertaken to examine all of the medical files still held by Ellsberg’s psychiatrist." Ehrlichman approved under the condition that it be "done under your assurance that it is not traceable."

On September 3, 1971, the burglary of Lewis Fielding's office – titled "Hunt/Liddy Special Project No. 1" in Ehrlichman's notes — was carried out by Hunt, Liddy and CIA officers Eugenio Martinez, Felipe de Diego and Bernard Barker. The "Plumbers" failed to find Ellsberg's file. Hunt and Liddy subsequently planned to break into Fielding's home, but Ehrlichman did not approve the second burglary. The break-in was not known to Ellsberg or to the public until it came to light during Ellsberg and Russo's trial in April 1973.

Trial and mistrial

On June 28, 1971, two days before a Supreme Court ruling saying that a federal judge had ruled incorrectly about the right of the New York Times to publish the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg publicly surrendered to the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts in Boston. In admitting to giving the documents to the press, Ellsberg said: :I felt that as an American citizen, as a responsible citizen, I could no longer cooperate in concealing this information from the American public. I did this clearly at my own jeopardy and I am prepared to answer to all the consequences of this decision. He and Russo faced charges under the Espionage Act of 1917 and other charges including theft and conspiracy, carrying a total maximum sentence of 115 years. Their trial commenced in Los Angeles on January 3, 1973, presided over by U.S. District Judge William Matthew Byrne, Jr.

On April 26, the break-in of Fielding's office was revealed to the court in a memo to Judge Byrne, who then ordered it to be shared with the defense.

On May 9, further evidence of illegal wiretapping against Ellsberg was revealed in court. The FBI had recorded numerous conversations between Morton Halperin and Ellsberg without a court order, and furthermore the prosecution had failed to share this evidence with the defense. During the trial, Byrne also revealed that he personally met twice with John Ehrlichman, who offered him directorship of the FBI. Byrne said he refused to consider the offer while the Ellsberg case was pending, though he was criticized for even agreeing to meet with Ehrlichman during the case.

Due to the gross governmental misconduct and illegal evidence gathering, and the defense by Leonard Boudin and Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson, Judge Byrne dismissed all charges against Ellsberg and Russo on May 11, 1973 after the government claimed it had lost records of wiretapping against Ellsberg. Byrne ruled: "The totality of the circumstances of this case which I have only briefly sketched offend a sense of justice. The bizarre events have incurably infected the prosecution of this case."

As a result of the revelation of the Fielding break-in during the trial, John Ehrlichman, H R Haldeman, Richard Kleindienst and John Dean were forced out of office on April 30, and all would later be convicted of crimes related to the Watergate scandal. Egil Krogh later pled guilty to conspiracy, and White House counsel Charles Colson pled no contest for obstruction of justice in the burglary. "The court concluded that Nixon, Mitchell, and Haldeman had violated the Halperins' Fourth Amendment rights, but not the terms of Title III. The Halperins were awarded $1 in nominal damages in August 1977."

Ellsberg later claimed that after his trial ended, Watergate prosecutor William H. Merrill informed him of an aborted plot by Liddy and the "plumbers" to have 12 Cuban-Americans who had previously worked for the CIA to "totally incapacitate" Ellsberg as he appeared at a public rally, though it is unclear whether that meant to assassinate Ellsberg or merely to hospitalize him. In his autobiography, Liddy describes an "Ellsberg neutralization proposal" originating from Howard Hunt, which involved drugging Ellsberg with LSD, by dissolving it in his soup, at a fund-raising dinner in Washington in order to "have Ellsberg incoherent by the time he was to speak" and thus "make him appear a near burnt-out drug case" and "discredit him". The plot involved waiters from the Miami Cuban community. According to Liddy, when the plan was finally approved, "there was no longer enough lead time to get the Cuban waiters up from their Miami hotels and into place in the Washington Hotel where the dinner was to take place" and the plan was "put into abeyance pending another opportunity".

Later activism and views

Reflecting on his time in government, Ellsberg has said the following, based on his extensive access to classified material:

:The public is lied to every day by the President, by his spokespeople, by his officers. If you can't handle the thought that the President lies to the public for all kinds of reasons, you couldn’t stay in the government at that level, or you’re made aware of it, a week. ... The fact is Presidents rarely say the whole truth—essentially, never say the whole truth—of what they expect and what they’re doing and what they believe and why they’re doing it and rarely refrain from lying, actually, about these matters.

Since the end of the Vietnam War, Ellsberg has continued his political activism, giving lecture tours and speaking out about current events. During the runup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq he warned of a possible "Tonkin Gulf scenario" that could be used to justify going to war, and called on government "insiders" to go public with information to counter the Bush administration's pro-war propaganda campaign, praising Scott Ritter for his efforts in that regard. He later provoked criticism from the Bush administration for supporting British GCHQ translator Katharine Gun and calling on others to leak any papers that reveal government deception about the invasion. Ellsberg also testified at the 2004 conscientious objector hearing of Camilo Mejia at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

He is a member of Campaign for Peace and Democracy.

Ellsberg was arrested, in November 2005, for violating a county ordinance for trespassing while protesting against George W. Bush's conduct of the Iraq War.

In September 2006, Ellsberg wrote in Harper's Magazine that he hoped someone would leak information about a potential U.S. invasion of Iran before the invasion happened, to stop the war. Subsequently, information on the acceleration of U.S.-sponsored anti-government activity in Iran was leaked to journalist Seymour Hersh. In November 2007, Ellsberg was interviewed by Brad Friedman on his Bradblog in regard to former FBI translator turned whistleblower Sibel Edmonds. "I'd say what she has is far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers", Ellsberg told Friedman.

In a speech on March 30, 2008 in San Francisco's Unitarian Universalist church, Ellsberg observed that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi doesn't really have the authority to declare impeachment "off the table". The oath of office taken by members of congress requires them to "defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic". He also argued that under the U.S. Constitution, treaties, including the United Nations Charter, become the supreme law of the land that neither the states, the president, nor the congress have the power to break. For example, if the Congress votes to authorize an unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation, that authorization wouldn't make the attack legal. A president citing the authorization as just cause could be prosecuted in the International Criminal Court for war crimes, and it is the duty of congress to impeach the offending president regardless of any agreements that may have been made.

On June 17, 2010, Ellsberg was interviewed by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez on the ''Democracy Now!'' program regarding the parallels between his actions in releasing the Pentagon Papers and those of Pfc. Bradley Manning, who was arrested by the U.S. Military in Kuwait after allegedly providing to the WikiLeaks web site a classified video showing U.S. military helicopter gunships strafing and killing Iraqis alleged to be civilians, including two Reuters journalists. Manning reportedly claims to have provided WikiLeaks with secret videos of additional massacres of alleged civilians in Afghanistan, as well as 260,000 classified State Department cables. Ellsberg has said that he fears for Manning and for Julian Assange, as he feared for himself after the initial publication of the Pentagon Papers. WikiLeaks initially said it had not received the cables, but did plan to post the video of an attack that may have killed 140 Afghani civilians in the village of Garani. Ellsberg expressed hope that either Assange or President Obama would post the video, and expressed his strong support for Assange and Manning, whom he called "two new heroes of mine".

On December 9, 2010, Ellsberg appeared on the Colbert Report where he commented that the existence of WikiLeaks helps to build a better government.

On March 21, 2011, Ellsberg along with 35 other demonstrators were arrested during a demonstration outside the Marine Corps Base Quantico, in protest of Manning's current detention at Marine Corps Brig, Quantico.

Awards and honors

Ellsberg is the recipient of the Inaugural Ron Ridenhour Courage Prize, a prize established by The Nation Institute and The Fertel Foundation. In 1978 he accepted the Gandhi Peace Award from Promoting Enduring Peace. On September 28, 2006 he was awarded the Right Livelihood Award.

Personal life

Ellsberg has been married twice. His first marriage, to Carol Cummings, the daughter of a Marine Corps Brigadier General, lasted 13 years before ending in divorce (at her request, as he has stated in his memoirs titled "Secrets"). Two children (Robert and Mary) were born of this marriage. In 1970, he married Patricia Marx, whom he had dated earlier.

Books

Daniel Ellsberg. 2002. "''Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers.''" New York: Viking Press. ISBN 0-670-03030-9

Daniel Ellsberg. 2001. [http://www.routledge.com/books/Risk-Ambiguity-and-Decision-isbn9780815340225 "''Risk, Ambiguity

"''Dissent: Voices of Conscience''"-(publishers catalog P.1) by Ann Wright, Susan Dixon (Foreword by) Daniel Ellsberg, January 2008 – Publisher: Koa Books

"''Flirting with Disaster: Why Accidents are Rarely Accidental''" by Marc S. Gerstein, Michael Ellsberg, (Foreword by) Daniel Ellsberg, June 2008 – Publisher: Sterling Publishing

"''Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State''" By Norman Solomon, Foreword by Daniel Ellsberg, September 2007 – Publisher: Polipoint Press

"''Protest and Survive''" by E. Thompson, Dan Smith, Introduction by Daniel Ellsberg, 1981 – Publisher: Monthly Review Press

Movies

''The Pentagon Papers'' (2003) is a historical film directed by Rod Holcomb about the Pentagon Papers and Daniel Ellsberg's involvement in their publication. The movie documents Ellsberg's life, starting with his work for RAND Corp and ending with the day on which the judge declared his espionage trial a mistrial.

''The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers'' (2009) documentary by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith.

See also

Jack Anderson

Thomas Andrews Drake

References

Further reading

Official name of the Pentagon Papers: "History of United States Decision-Making Process on Vietnam Policy, 1945–1967".

The New York Times version of Pentagon Papers: June 13, 14, 15 and July 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, 1971. Late in this year this edited version was published in the book "The Pentagon Papers as published by N.Y. Times", Bantam Books, Toronto – New York – London, 1971.

"United States-Vietnam Relations 1945–67, Department of Defense Study", 12 vols., Government Printing Office, Washington, 1971. This is the official and complete edition of the Pentagon Papers, published by the Government after the release by the press.

UNGAR, Sanford, "The Papers and the Papers. An account of the legal and political battle over the Pentagon Papers", E.P. Dutton & Co, New York, 1972.

External links

The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, official website of the documentary film (Nominated for Academy Award 2010 – Best Documentary Feature)

Zinn Education Project: A Teaching Guide for the Most Dangerous Man in America

Daniel Ellsberg at IMDB

The Truth-Telling Project – Project formed by Ellsberg for whistleblowers

Travels of John Interview – More Dangerous Than Julian Assange?

Reason Magazine Interview – June 1973

"Top Secret: Battle for the Pentagon Papers" a resource site that supports a currently-playing docu-drama about the Pentagon Papers. The site provides historical context, time lines, bibliographical resources, information on discussions with current journalists, and helpful links.

''Democracy Now!'' Special: "How the Pentagon Papers Came to Be Published by the Beacon Press: Mike Gravel and Daniel Ellsberg (audio/video and transcript)

2006 Right Livelihood Award Recipient Daniel Ellsberg

Interview with Daniel Ellsberg Daniel Ellsberg gives a 20 min. interview at Roskilde Universitets Center [Denmark] Fall 2004. (With links to "Related videos")

Daniel Ellsberg/William Kristol debate Iraq war in 2003 on C-Span

NNDB page on Daniel Ellsberg

Pentagon Papers Whistleblower on President Obama and the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

Daniel Ellsberg on Wikileaks Iraq War Docs (YouTube)

Daniel Ellsberg: "Julian Assange is Not a Terrorist" – video report by ''Democracy Now!''

Category:American anti–Iraq War activists Category:American anti–nuclear weapons activists Category:American anti–Vietnam War activists Category:American Christian Scientists Category:American economists Category:American Jews Category:American memoirists Category:American political writers Category:American whistleblowers Category:American people of the Vietnam War Category:Cranbrook Educational Community alumni Category:Harvard University alumni Category:American Jews Category:Jewish American social scientists Category:People from Detroit, Michigan Category:RAND Corporation people Category:Right Livelihood Award laureates Category:United States Marine Corps officers Category:Watergate figures Category:1931 births Category:Living people

da:Daniel Ellsberg de:Daniel Ellsberg fr:Daniel Ellsberg it:Daniel Ellsberg he:דניאל אלסברג nl:Daniel Ellsberg no:Daniel Ellsberg pl:Daniel Ellsberg pt:Daniel Ellsberg ru:Эллсберг, Даниэль fi:Daniel Ellsberg sv:Daniel Ellsberg vi:Daniel Ellsberg zh:丹尼尔·艾尔斯伯格

Name	Mike Gravel
Jr/sr	United States Senator
State	Alaska
Term start	January 3, 1969
Term end	January 3, 1981
Predecessor	Ernest Gruening
Successor	Frank Murkowski
Order2	3rd Speaker of the Alaska House of Representatives
Term start2	January 25, 1965
Term end2	January 22, 1967
Governor2	William Allen Egan
Predecessor2	Bruce Biers Kendall
Successor2	William K. Boardman
Order3	Member of the Alaska House of Representatives from the 8th district
Term start3	January 28, 1963
Term end3	January 22, 1967
Birth date	May 13, 1930
Birth place	Springfield, Massachusetts
Party	Democratic (until 2008)Libertarian (2008–present)
Spouse	Rita Martin (divorced)Whitney Stewart Gravel
Profession	Real estate development, author
Education	Columbia University
Religion	Unitarian Universalism
Signature	Mike Gravel Signature.svg
Branch	United States Army
Serviceyears	1951-1954
Rank	First Lieutenant }}

Maurice Robert "Mike" Gravel (; born May 13, 1930) is a former Democratic United States Senator from Alaska, who served two terms from 1969 to 1981, and a former candidate in the 2008 presidential election.

Born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts to French-Canadian immigrant parents, Gravel served in the United States Army in West Germany and graduated from Columbia University. He moved to Alaska in the late 1950s, becoming a real estate developer and entering politics. He served in the Alaska House of Representatives from 1963 to 1966 and became its Speaker of the House. Gravel was elected to the United States Senate in 1968.

As Senator, Gravel became nationally known for his forceful but unsuccessful attempts to end the draft during the Vietnam War and for putting the Pentagon Papers into the public record in 1971 at risk to himself. He conducted an unusual campaign for the Democratic nomination for Vice President of the United States in 1972, and then played a crucial role in getting Congressional approval for the Trans-Alaska pipeline in 1973. He was re-elected to the Senate in 1974, but gradually alienated most of his Alaskan constituencies and his bid for a third term was defeated in a primary election in 1980.

Gravel returned to business ventures and went through difficult times, suffering corporate and personal bankruptcies amid poor health. He is a passionate advocate of direct democracy and the National Initiative. In 2006, Gravel began a run for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States to promote those ideas. His campaign gained an Internet following and national attention due to forceful, humorous and politically unorthodox debate appearances during 2007, but showed very little support in national polls or in 2008 caucuses and primaries. In March 2008, he announced he was switching to the Libertarian Party to compete for its presidential nomination and the inclusion of the National Initiative into the Libertarian Platform. At the May 2008 Libertarian National Convention he failed on both counts and announced his political electoral career had ended.

Early life, military service, education

Gravel was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, one of five children to French-Canadian immigrant parents, Alphonse Gravel (born 1896/1897/1898, Sorel, Quebec — died 19??) and Marie (née Bourassa) Gravel (born January 26, 1901, Saint-Ours, Quebec — died December 28, 1989). His parents were part of the Quebec diaspora, and he was raised in a working class neighborhood during the Great Depression, speaking only French until he was seven years old. Calling him "Mike" from an early age, his father valued work above all else, while his mother stressed to him the importance of education.

Gravel was educated in parochial schools as a Roman Catholic. There he struggled – due to what he later said was undiagnosed dyslexia – and was left back in third grade. He completed elementary school in 1945 and his class voted him "most charming personality". A summer job as a soda jerk led to Gravel handing out campaign fliers for local candidates on behalf of his boss; Gravel was immediately impressed with "the awesomeness of political office."

Gravel then boarded at Assumption Preparatory School in Worcester, Massachusetts, where his performance was initially mediocre. Then an English teacher, the Assumptionist Edgar Bourque, gave him personal attention, improving Gravel's language skills and instructing him in public speaking. Gravel's grades improved measurably in his final year, and he graduated in 1949. He has a sister, Marguerite, who became a Holy Cross nun, but Gravel himself struggled with the Catholic faith. He studied for one year at Assumption College in Worcester, then transferred for his sophomore year to American International College in Springfield. Journalist I. F. Stone and philosopher Bertrand Russell strongly influenced Gravel in their willingness to challenge assumptions and oppose social convention and political authority.

Around May 1951, Gravel saw that he was about to be drafted, and instead enlisted in the United States Army for a three-year stint so that he could get into the counterintelligence corps. After basic training and counterintelligence school at Fort Holabird in Maryland and in South Carolina, he went to Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning in Georgia. While he expected to be sent off to the Korean War when he graduated as a second lieutenant in early 1952, he instead was assigned to Stuttgart, West Germany, as a Special Adjutant in the Army's Communications Intelligence Service. There he had an adventurous time moving around the country, conducting surveillance operations on civilians, and paying off spies. After about a year he transferred to Orléans, France, where his French language abilities (if not his Quebec-American accent) allowed him to infiltrate French communist rallies. He worked as a Special Agent in the Counter Intelligence Corps until 1954, eventually becoming a First Lieutenant.

Following his discharge, Gravel attended Columbia University's School of General Studies in New York City, where he studied economics and received a B.S. in 1956. He had come to New York "flat broke", and supported himself by working as a bar boy in a hotel, driving a taxicab, and working in the investment bond department at Bankers Trust. During this time he left the Catholic faith.

Move to Alaska

Gravel "decided to become a pioneer in a faraway place," and moved to pre-statehood Alaska in August 1956, without funds or a job, looking for a place where someone without social or political connections could be a viable candidate for public office. Alaska's voting age of 19, less than most other states' 21, played a role in his decision, as did its newness and cooler climate. Broke when he arrived, he immediately found work in real estate sales until winter arrived. Gravel then was employed as a brakeman for the Alaska Railroad, working the snow-clearing train on the Anchorage-Fairbanks run. Subsequently he opened a small real estate brokerage in Anchorage (the Territory of Alaska not requiring a license) and saved enough so as not to have to work the railroad again. Gravel joined the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist fellowship, and would continue a sporadic relationship with the movement throughout his life.

Gravel married Rita Jeannette Martin, who had been Anchorage's "Miss Fur Rendezvous" of 1958, on April 29, 1959. They had two children, Martin Anthony Gravel and Lynne Denise Gravel, born c. 1960 and 1962 respectively.

Meanwhile, he went to Washington, D.C. in 1957 to campaign for Alaskan statehood via the "Tennessee Plan": dressed as Paul Revere, he rode with a petition to the steps of the U.S. Capitol. Seeing Alaska as a wide-open place with no political establishment or entrenched interests, and using the slogan "Gravel, the Roadbed to Prosperity", he ran for the territorial legislature in 1958 but lost. He went on a national speaking tour concerning tax reform in 1959, sponsored by the Jaycees. He ran unsuccessfully for the Anchorage City Council in 1960. During this time, he had become a successful real estate agent; after the 1960 election, he became a property developer in a mobile home park on the outskirts of Anchorage. A partner ran into financial difficulty, however, and the project went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy and Gravel was forced out in 1962.

State legislator

With the support of Alaska wholesale grocer Barney Gottstein and supermarket builder Larry Carr, Gravel ran for the Alaska House of Representatives representing Anchorage in 1962 and won.

Gravel served in the Alaska House of Representatives from 1963 to 1966, winning re-election in 1964. He coauthored and sponsored the act that created the Alaska State Commission for Human Rights. Gravel was the chief architect of the law that created a regional high school system for rural Alaska; this allowed Alaska Natives to attend schools near where they lived, instead of having to go to schools run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the lower 48 states.

During the half-years that the legislature was not in session, Gravel resumed his real estate work. With Gottstein and Carr's backing, he became quite successful as a property developer on the Kenai Peninsula.

During 1965 and 1966, he served as the Speaker of the House, surprising observers by winning that post. Gravel convinced former Speaker Warren A. Taylor to not try for the position against him by promising Taylor chairmanship of the Rules Committee, then reneged on the promise. (Gravel denied later press charges that he had promised but not delivered on other committee chairmanships.) As Speaker he antagonized fellow lawmakers by imposing his will on the legislature's committees and feuded with Alaska State Senate president Robert J. McNealy.

Gravel did not run for re-election in 1966, instead choosing to run for Alaska's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, losing to four-term incumbent Democrat Ralph Rivers by 1,300 votes and splitting the Democratic party in the process. Rivers lost the general election that year to Republican state Senator Howard Wallace Pollock.

Following his defeat, Gravel returned to the real estate business in Anchorage.

U.S. Senator

Election to Senate in 1968

In 1968 he ran against the 81-year-old incumbent Democratic Senator Ernest Gruening, a popular former governor of the Alaska Territory who was considered one of the fathers of Alaska's statehood, for his party's nomination to the U.S. Senate. Gravel's campaign was primarily based on his youth rather than issue differences. He hired Joseph Napolitan, the first self-described political consultant, in late 1966. They spent over a year and a half planning a short, nine-day primary election campaign that featured the slogans "Alaska first" and "Let's do something about the state we're in", the distribution of a collection of essays entitled ''Jobs and More Jobs'', and the creation a half-hour, well-produced, glamorized biographical film of Gravel, ''Man for Alaska''. The film was shown twice a day on every television station in Alaska and carried by plane and shown on home projectors in hundreds of Eskimo villages. The heavy showings quickly reversed a 2–to–1 Gruening lead in polls into a Gravel lead. Gravel visited many remote villages by seaplane and showed a thorough understanding of the needs of the bush country and the fishing and oil industries. Gravel also benefited by being deliberately ambiguous about his Vietnam policy. Gruening had been one of only two Senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and his opposition to President Lyndon B. Johnson's war policies was harming him among the Democratic electorate; according to Gravel, "...all I had to do was stand up and not deal with the subject, and people would assume that I was to the right of Ernest Gruening, when in point of fact I was to the left of him."

Gravel beat Gruening in the primary in a tight result with a margin of about 2,000 votes. Gruening found "the unexpected defeat hard to take" and thought that some aspects of his opponent's biographical film had misled viewers. In the general election, Gravel faced Republican Elmer E. Rasmuson, a banker and former mayor of Anchorage. College students in the state implored Gruening to run a write-in campaign as an Independent, but legal battles prevented the senator from getting approval for it until only two weeks were left. A late appearance by anti-war presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy could not offset Gruening's lack of funds and endorsements; meanwhile, Gravel and Rasmuson both saturated local media with their filmed biographies. On November 5, 1968, Gravel won the general election, gaining 45 percent of the vote against 37 percent for Rasmuson and 18 percent for Gruening.

Senate assignments and style

When Gravel joined the Senate in January 1969, he requested and received a seat on the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, which had direct relevance to Alaskan issues. He also got a spot on the Public Works Committee, which he held throughout his time in the Senate. Finally, he was a member of the Select Committee on Small Business. In 1971 he became chair of the Public Works Committee's Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds, then by 1973 he was chair of its Subcommittee on Water Resources, then by some date its Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution. Gravel was also initially named to the Joint Committee on Congressional Operations. By 1973 Gravel was off the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee and the Select Small Business Committee and instead a member of the Finance Committee, and by 1977 was chair of that body's Subcommittee on Energy and Foundations. By 1973 he had also been on the ad hoc Special Committee to Study Secret and Confidential Government Documents.

By his own admission, Gravel was too new and "too abrasive" to be effective in the Senate by the usual means of seniority-based committee assignments or negotiating deals with other senators, and was sometimes seen as arrogant by the more senior members. Gravel instead relied upon attention-getting gestures to achieve what he wanted, hoping national exposure would force other senators to listen to him. As part of this he voted with Southern Democrats to keep the Senate filibuster rule in place, and accordingly supported Russell Long and Robert Byrd and opposed Ted Kennedy in Senate leadership battles. In retrospective assessment, University of Alaska Anchorage history professor Stephen Haycox would say, "Loose cannon is a good description of Gravel's Senate career. He was an off-the-wall guy, and you weren't really ever sure what he would do."

Nuclear issues and the Cold War

In the late 1960s and early 1970s the U.S. Department of Defense was in the process of performing tests for the nuclear warhead for the Spartan anti-ballistic missile interceptor. Two tests, the Milrow and Cannikin tests, were planned, involving the detonation of nuclear bombs under Amchitka Island in Alaska. The Milrow test would be a one megaton calibration exercise for the second, and larger five megaton, Cannikin test, which would measure the effectiveness of the warhead. Gravel opposed the tests in Congress. Before the October 1969 Milrow test took place, he wrote that there were significant risks of earthquakes and other adverse consequences, and called for an independent national commission on nuclear and seismic safety to be created; he then made a personal appeal to President Nixon to stop the test.

After Milrow was conducted, there was continued pressure on the part of environmental groups against going forward with the larger Cannikin test, while the Federation of American Scientists claimed the warhead being tested was already obsolete. In May 1971 Gravel sent a letter to Atomic Energy Commission hearings held in Anchorage, in which he said the risk of the test was not worth taking. Eventually a group not involving Gravel took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to issue an injunction against it, and the Cannikin test took place as scheduled in November 1971. Gravel had failed to stop the tests (notwithstanding his later claims during his 2008 presidential campaign).

Nuclear power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for the commercial generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gravel publicly opposed this policy; besides the dangers of nuclear testing, he was a vocal critic of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw American nuclear efforts, and of the powerful United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had a stranglehold on nuclear policy and which Gravel tried to circumvent. In 1971, Gravel sponsored a bill to impose a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction and to make power utilities liable for any nuclear accidents; in 1975, he was still proposing similar moratoriums. By 1974, Gravel was allied with Ralph Nader's organization in opposing nuclear power.

Six months before United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's secret mission to the People's Republic of China in July 1971, Gravel introduced legislation to recognize and normalize relations with China, including a proposal for unity talks between China and Republic of China (Taiwan) regarding the China seat at the United Nations. Gravel reiterated his position in favor of recognition, with four other senators in agreement, during Senate hearings in June 1971.

Vietnam War, the draft, and the Pentagon Papers

President Richard Nixon had campaigned in 1968 on a promise to end the U.S. military draft, a decision endorsed by the February 1970 report of the Gates Commission. The existing draft law was scheduled to conclude at the end of June 1971, and the Senate faced a contentious debate about whether to extend it as the Vietnam War continued. The Nixon administration announced in February 1971 that it wanted a two-year extension to June 1973, after which the draft would end; Army planners had already been operating under the assumption of a two-year extension, after which an all-volunteer force would be in place. Skeptics such as Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John Stennis thought this unrealistic and wanted a four-year extension, but the two-year proposal is what went forward in Congress. By early May 1971, Gravel had indicated his intention to filibuster the draft renewal legislation, halting conscription and thereby bringing U.S. involvement in the war to a rapid end.

By June 1971, some Democratic senators opposed to the war wanted to limit the renewal to a one-year extension, while others wanted to end it immediately; Gravel reiterated that he was one of the latter, saying, "It's a senseless war, and one way to do away with it is to do away with the draft." A Senate vote on June 4 indicated majority support for the two-year extension. On June 18 Gravel announced again his intention to counteract that by filibustering the renewal legislation, defending the practice against those who associated it only with blocking civil rights legislation. The first filibuster attempt failed on June 23 when, by three votes, the Senate voted cloture for only the fifth time since 1927.

Protracted negotiations took place over House conference negotiations on the bill, revolving in large part around Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield's eventually unsuccessful amendment to tie renewal to a troop withdrawal timetable from Vietnam; during this time the draft law expired and no more were conscripted. On August 5, the Nixon administration pleaded for a renewal before the Senate went on recess, but Gravel successfully blocked Stennis's attempt to limit debate, and no vote was held. Finally on September 21, 1971, the Senate invoked cloture over Gravel's second filibuster attempt by one vote, and then passed the two-year draft extension. Gravel's attempts to stop the draft had failed (notwithstanding Gravel's later claims that he had stopped or shortened the draft, taken at face value in some media reports, during his 2008 presidential campaign).

Meanwhile, on June 13, 1971, ''The New York Times'' began printing large portions of the Pentagon Papers. The papers were a large collection of secret government documents and studies pertaining to the Vietnam War, of which former Defense Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg had made unauthorized copies and was determined to make public. Ellsberg had for a year and a half approached members of Congress — such as William Fulbright, George McGovern, Charles Mathias, and Pete McCloskey — about publishing the documents, on the grounds that the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution would give congressional members immunity from prosecution, but all had refused. Instead, Ellsberg gave the documents to the ''Times''.

The U.S. Justice Department immediately tried to halt publication, on the grounds that the information revealed within the papers harmed the national interest. Within the next two weeks, a federal court injunction halted publication in ''The Times''; ''The Washington Post'' and several other newspapers began publishing parts of the documents, with some of them also being halted by injunctions; and the whole matter went to the U.S. Supreme Court for arguments. Looking for an alternate publication mechanism, Ellsberg returned to his idea of having a member of Congress read them, and chose Gravel based on the latter's efforts against the draft; Gravel agreed where previously others had not. Ellsberg arranged for the papers to be given to Gravel on June 26 via an intermediary, ''Washington Post'' editor Ben Bagdikian. Gravel used his counter-intelligence experience to choose a midnight transfer in front of the Mayflower Hotel in the center of Washington.

On the night of June 29, 1971, Gravel attempted to read the papers on the floor of the Senate as part of his filibuster against the draft, but was thwarted when no quorum could be formed. Gravel instead convened a session of the Buildings and Grounds subcommittee that he chaired. He got New York Congressman John Dow to testify that the war had soaked up funding for public buildings, thus making discussion of the war relevant to the committee. He began reading from the papers with the press in attendance, omitting supporting documents that he felt might compromise national security, and declaring, "It is my constitutional obligation to protect the security of the people by fostering the free flow of information absolutely essential to their democratic decision-making."

He read until 1 a.m., until with tears and sobs he said that he could no longer physically continue, the previous three nights of sleeplessness and fear about the future having taken their toll. Gravel ended the session by, with no other senators present, establishing unanimous consent towards inserting 4,100 pages of the Papers into the Congressional Record of his subcommittee. The following day, the Supreme Court's ''New York Times Co. v. United States'' decision ruled in favor of the newspapers and publication in ''The Times'' and others resumed. In July 1971, Bantam Books published an inexpensive paperback edition of the papers containing the material ''The Times'' had published.

Gravel, too, wanted to privately publish the portion of the papers he had read into the record, believing that "immediate disclosure of the contents of these papers will change the policy that supports the war." After being turned down by many commercial publishers, on August 4 he reached agreement with Beacon Press, the publishing arm of the Unitarian Universalist Association, of which Gravel was a member. Announced on August 17 and published on October 22, 1971, this four-volume, relatively expensive set became the "Senator Gravel Edition", which studies from Cornell University and the Annenberg Center for Communication have labeled as the most complete edition of the Pentagon Papers to be published. The "Gravel Edition" was edited and annotated by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, and included an additional volume of analytical articles on the origins and progress of the war, also edited by Chomsky and Zinn. Beacon Press then was subjected to a FBI investigation; an outgrowth of this was the ''Gravel v. United States'' court case, which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled upon in June 1972; it held that the Speech or Debate Clause did grant immunity to Gravel for his reading the papers in his subcommittee, did grant some immunity to Gravel's congressional aide, but granted no immunity to Beacon Press in relation to their publishing the same papers.

The events of 1971 changed Gravel in the months following from an obscure freshman senator in a far corner of the country to a nationally-visible political figure. He became a sought-after speaker on the college circuit as well as at political fundraisers, opportunities he welcomed as lectures were "the one honest way a Senator has to supplement his income." The Democratic candidates for the 1972 presidential election sought out his endorsement. In January 1972 Gravel did endorse Maine Senator Ed Muskie, hoping his endorsement would help Muskie with the party's left wing and in the ethnic French-Canadian areas in first primary state New Hampshire (which Muskie won, but not strongly, and his campaign faltered soon thereafter). In April 1972, Gravel appeared on all three network nightly newscasts to decry the Nixon administration's reliance on Vietnamization by making reference to the secret National Security Study Memorandum 1 document, which stated it would take 8–13 years before the Army of the Republic of Vietnam could defend South Vietnam. Gravel made excerpts from the study public, but his attempt to read NSSM 1 into the Congressional Record was blocked by Senators Robert P. Griffin and William B. Saxbe.

Run for Vice President in 1972

Gravel actively campaigned for the office of Vice President of the United States during the 1972 presidential election, announcing on June 2, 1972, over a month before the 1972 Democratic National Convention began, that he was interested in running for the nomination should the choice be opened up to convention delegates. Towards this end he began soliciting delegates for their support in advance of the convention. He was not alone in this effort, as former Governor of Massachusetts Endicott Peabody had been running a quixotic campaign for the same post since the prior year. Likely presidential nominee George McGovern was in fact considering the unusual move of naming three or four acceptable vice-presidential candidates and letting the delegates choose.

At the convention's final day on July 14, 1972, presidential nominee McGovern selected and announced Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his vice-presidential choice. Eagleton was unknown to many delegates and the choice seemed to smack of traditional ticket balancing considerations. Thus, there were delegates willing to look elsewhere. Gravel was nominated by Bettye Fahrenkamp, the national committeewoman of Alaska; He then seconded his own nomination, breaking down in tears at his own words and maybe trying to withdraw his nomination. In any case he won 226 delegate votes, coming in third behind Eagleton and Frances "Sissy" Farenthold of Texas, in chaotic balloting that included several other candidates as well.

For his efforts, Gravel attracted some attention: famed writer Norman Mailer would say he "provided considerable excitement" and was "good-looking enough to have played leads in B-films", while ''Rolling Stone'' correspondent Hunter S. Thompson said Gravel "probably said a few things that might have been worth hearing, under different circumstances ..." Yet, the whole process had been doubly disastrous for the Democrats. The time consumed with the nominating and seconding and other speeches of all the vice-presidential candidates had lost the attention of the delegates on the floor and pushed McGovern's speech until 3:30 a.m. The haste with which Eagleton had been selected led to surprise when his past mental health treatments were revealed; he withdrew from the ticket soon after the convention, to be replaced by Sargent Shriver.

Re-election to Senate in 1974

Several years earlier, Alaska politicians had speculated that Gravel would have a hard time getting both renominated and elected when his first term expired, given that he was originally elected without a base party organization and tended to focus on national rather than local issues.

Nonetheless, in 1974 Gravel was re-elected to the Senate, winning 58 percent of the vote against 42 percent for Republican State Senator C. R. Lewis, who was a national officer of the John Birch Society.

Second term

In June 1976, Gravel was the focus of a federal investigation into allegations that he was involved in a sex-for-vote arrangement. Congressional staff clerk Elizabeth Ray (who was already the subject of a sex scandal that led to the downfall of Representative Wayne Hays) stated that in August 1972, she had sex with Gravel aboard a houseboat on the Potomac River, under the instruction of Representative Kenneth J. Gray, her boss at the time. Gray allegedly wanted to secure Gravel's support for further funding for construction of the National Visitor Center in Washington, a troubled project that was under the jurisdiction of subcommittees that both members chaired. Another Congressional staffer said she witnessed the boat encounter, but Gravel said at the time that he had never met either of the women. Both Gravel and Gray strongly denied that they had made any arrangement regarding legislation, and neither was ever charged with any wrongdoing. Decades later, Gravel wrote that he had indeed had sex with Ray, but had not changed any votes because of it.

Alaskan issues

By 1971, Gravel was urging construction of the much-argued Trans-Alaska pipeline, addressing environmental concerns by saying that the pipeline's builders and operators should have "total and absolute" responsibility for any consequent environmental damage. Two years later, the debate over the pipeline came to a crux, with ''The New York Times'' describing it as "environmentalists [in] a holy war with the major oil companies." In February 1973 the U.S. Court of Appeals blocked the issuance of permits for construction; Gravel and fellow Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens reacted by urging Congress to pass legislation overturning the court's decision. Environmentalists opposed to the pipeline, such as the Environmental Defense Fund and the Sierra Club then sought to use the recently-passed National Environmental Policy Act to their advantage; Gravel designed an amendment to the pipeline bill that would immunize the pipeline from any further court challenges under that law, and thus speed its construction. Passage of the amendment became the key battle regarding the pipeline. On July 17, 1973, in a dramatic roll call vote, the Gravel amendment was approved as a 49–49 tie was broken in favor by Vice President Spiro Agnew. The actual bill enabling the pipeline then passed easily; Gravel had triumphed.

In opposition to the Alaskan fishing industry, Gravel advocated American participation in the formation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. For two years he opposed legislation that established a Exclusive Economic Zone for marine resources. He was one of only 19 senators to vote against Senate approval for the expanded zone in 1976, saying it would undermine the U.S. position in Law of the Sea negotiations and that nations arbitrarily extending their fishing rights limits would "produce anarchy of the seas." The legislation was passed, and the United States has signed but never ratified the Law of the Sea treaty.

During his first year in the Senate Gravel urged abolition of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In the early 1970s Gravel supported a demonstration project that established links between Alaskan villages and the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, for medical diagnostic communications. Gravel helped secure a private grant to facilitate the first Inuit Circumpolar Conference in 1977, attended by Inuit representatives from Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. These conferences now also include representatives from Russia. In 1977, Gravel helped lead an effort to have the U.S. Interior Department rename Mount McKinley to Denali; this eventually led to Denali National Park being so named. Subsequently Gravel proposed a never-built "Denali City" development above the Tokositna River near the mountain, to consist of a giant Teflon dome enclosing hotels, golf courses, condominiums, and commercial buildings.

A key, emotional issue in the state at the time was "locking up Alaska", making reference to allocation of its vast, mostly uninhabited land. In 1978 Gravel blocked passage, via procedural delays such as walking out of House-Senate conference committee meetings, of a complex bill which represented a compromise on land use policy. The bill would have put some of Alaska's vast federal land holdings under state control while preserving other portions for federal parks and refuges; the action would earn Gravel the enmity of fellow Alaska Senator Ted Stevens. In 1980, a new lands bill came up for consideration, that was less favorable to Alaskan interests and more liked by environmentalists; it set aside of Alaska's for national parks, conservation areas, and other restricted federal uses. Gravel blocked it, as not ensuring enough future development in the state. A new compromise version of the bill came forward, which reduced the land set aside to . Gravel, in representation of Alaskan interests, tried to stop the bill, including staging a filibuster. The Senate, however, voted cloture and then passed the bill. Frustrated, Gravel said "the legislation denies Alaska its rights as a state, and denies the U.S. crucial strategic resources," and commented that the Senate was "a little bit like a tank of barracudas."

In 1978, Gravel authored and secured the passage into law of the General Stock Ownership Corporation, that became Subchapter U of the Tax Code under the Internal Revenue Code of 1954. While that was originally done as a prerequisite to a failed 1980 Alaskan ballot initiative that would have paid dividends to Alaskan citizens for pipeline-related revenue, it also turned out to be significant in the development of binary economics.

Loss of Senate seat in 1980

In 1980, Gravel was challenged for the Democratic Party's nomination by State Representative Clark Gruening, the grandson of the man Gravel had defeated in a primary 12 years earlier. Several factors made Gravel vulnerable. As an insurgent candidate in 1968, Gravel had never established a firm party base. Not liking to hunt or fish, he was also always culturally suspect in the state. A group of Democrats, including future governor Steve Cowper, led the campaign against Gravel, with Gravel's actions in respect to the 1978 and 1980 Alaskan lands bills a major issue, especially given that the latter's dénouement happened but a week before the primary. The sources of Gravel's campaign funds, some of which came from political action committees outside the state, also became an issue in the contest. Another factor may have been Alaska's blanket primary system of the time, which allowed unlimited voting across party lines and from its many independents; Republicans believed Gruening would be an easier candidate to defeat in the general election.

Gruening won the bitterly-fought primary, with about 55 percent of the vote to Gravel's 44 percent. Gravel would later concede that by the time of his defeat, he had alienated "almost every constituency in Alaska."

Gruening lost the general election to Republican Frank Murkowski. Gravel was the last Democrat to represent Alaska in Congress for 28 years, until Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich defeated Stevens, by now an aged, iconic figure who had just been convicted of seven felonies for taking unreported gifts, in a very close and protracted election result in mid-November 2008. (The charges against Stevens were subsequently dropped due to prosecutorial misconduct.)

Career after leaving the Senate

A difficult transition

Gravel took the 1980 defeat hard, recalling years later: "I had lost my career. I lost my marriage. I was in the doldrums for ten years after my defeat," and "Nobody wanted to hire me for anything important. I felt like I was worthless. I didn't know what I could do." By his own later description, Gravel had been a womanizer while in the Senate, and in December 1980 he and his wife Rita separated. They filed for divorce in September 1981; she would later get all of his Senate pension income.

During the 1980s, Gravel was a real estate developer in Anchorage and Kenai, Alaska, a consultant, and a stockbroker. One of his real estate ventures, a condominium business, was forced to declare bankruptcy and a lawsuit ensued. During 1986, Gravel worked in partnership with Merrill Lynch Capital Markets to buy losses that financially troubled Alaska Native Corporations could not take as tax deductions and sell them to large national companies looking for tax writeoffs.

Gravel married his second wife, Whitney Stewart Gravel, a former administrative assistant for Senator Jacob Javits, in 1984.

Return to politics

In 1989, Mike Gravel reentered politics. He founded and led The Democracy Foundation, which promotes direct democracy. He established the Philadelphia II corporation, which seeks to replicate the original 1787 Constitutional Convention in bringing direct democracy about.

Gravel led an effort to get a United States Constitutional amendment to allow voter-initiated federal legislation similar to state ballot initiatives. He argued that Americans are able to legislate responsibly, and that the Act and Amendment in the National Initiative would allow American citizens to become "law makers".

In 2001, Gravel became director of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, where he admired institute co-founder Gregory Fossedal's work on direct democracy in Switzerland. By 2004, Gravel had become chair of the institute, and Fossedal (who in turn was a director of the Democracy Foundation) gave the introduction at Gravel's presidential announcement.

Mike and Whitney Gravel live in Arlington County, Virginia. They have the two grown children from his first marriage, Martin Gravel and Lynne Gravel Mosier, and four grandchildren. Whitney Gravel's income has sustained the couple since 1998. In the 2000s (decade), Gravel suffered poor health, requiring three surgeries in 2003 for back pain and neuropathy. Due to unreimbursed medical expenses and debts from his political causes, he declared personal bankruptcy in 2004. He began taking a salary from the non-profit organizations for which he was working; much of that income was lent to his presidential campaign. In 2007, he declared that he had "zero net worth."

''Barnes Review'' controversy

In June 2003, Gravel gave a speech on direct democracy at a conference hosted by the ''American Free Press''. The event was cosponsored by the ''Barnes Review'', a journal that endorses Holocaust denial. In the wake of criticism for his appearance, Gravel has said repeatedly that he does not share such a view, stating, "You better believe I know that six million Jews were killed. I've been to the Holocaust Museum. I've seen the footage of General Eisenhower touring one of the camps. They're [referring to the ''Barnes Review'' and publisher Willis Carto] nutty as loons if they don't think it happened". The newspaper had intended to interview Gravel about the National Initiative. Gravel later recounted the background to the event:

"He [Carto] liked the idea of the National Initiative. I figured it was an opportunity to discuss it. Whether it is the far right, far left, whatever, I'll make my pitch to them. They gave me a free subscription to ''American Free Press''. They still send it to me today. I flip through it sometimes. It has some extreme views, and a lot of the ads in it are even more extreme and make me want to upchuck. Anyways, sometime later, Carto contacted me to speak at that ''Barnes Review'' Conference. I had never heard of the ''Barnes Review'', didn't know anything about it or what they stood for. I was just coming to give a presentation about the National Initiative. I was there maybe 30 minutes. I could tell from the people in the room (mainly some very old men) that they were pretty extreme. I gave my speech, answered some questions and left. I never saw the agenda for the day or listened to any of the other presentations."

The group invited Gravel to speak again, but he declined.

Political positions

Gravel has stated that he is an advocate for "a national, universal single-payer not-for-profit health care system" in the United States which would utilize vouchers and enable citizens to choose their own doctor. He has proposed to index veteran health care entitlements to take full account of increases in the costs of care and medicine. He supports a drug policy that legalizes and regulates all drugs, treating drug abuse as a medical issue, rather than a criminal matter. Gravel favors a guest worker program, supports the FairTax proposal that calls for eliminating the IRS and the income tax and replacing it with a progressive national sales tax of 23 percent on newly manufactured items and services, retaining progressivity via all taxes on spending up to the poverty level being refunded to every household. Gravel has advocated that carbon energy should be taxed to provide the funding for a global effort to bring together the world's scientific and engineering communities to develop energy alternatives to significantly reduce the world’s energy dependence on carbon.

Gravel in principle does not object to the use of embryonic stem cells for medical research purposes. He is avowedly pro-choice on the issue of abortion and women's reproductive rights. He supports constitutional amendments towards direct democracy. His political leanings and convictions are also in his 1972 manifesto, ''Citizen Power: A People's Platform''.

2008 presidential campaign

At the start of 2006, Gravel decided the best way he could promote direct democracy and the National Initiative was to run for president. On April 17, 2006, Gravel became the first candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2008 election, announcing his run in a speech to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Short on campaign cash, he took public transportation to get to his announcement. Other principal Gravel positions were the FairTax, withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq within 120 days, a single payer national health care system, and term limits.

Gravel campaigned almost full time in New Hampshire, the first primary state, following his announcement. Opinion polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination showed Gravel with 1 percent or less support. By the end of March 2007, Gravel's campaign had less than $500 in cash on hand against debts of nearly $90,000.

Because of his time in the Senate, Gravel was invited to many of the early Democratic presidential debates. During the initial one at South Carolina State University on April 26, 2007, he suggested a bill requiring the president to withdraw from Iraq on pain of criminal penalties. He also advocated positions such as opposing preemptive nuclear war. He stated that the Iraq War had the effect of creating more terrorists and that the "war was lost the day that George Bush invaded Iraq on a fraudulent basis." Regarding his fellow candidates, he said, "I got to tell you, after standing up with them, some of these people frighten me — they frighten me." Media stories said that Gravel was responsible for much of whatever "heat" and "flashpoints" had taken place. Gravel gained considerable publicity by shaking up the normally staid multiple-candidate format; ''The New York Times''' media critic said that what Gravel had done was "steal a debate with outrageous, curmudgeonly statements." The Internet was a benefit: a YouTube video of his responses in the debate was viewed more than 225,892 times, ranking seventeenth in most views for week and first among news and politics clips; his name became the fifteenth most searched-for in the blogosphere; and his website garnered more traffic than those of frontrunners Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, or John Edwards. Gravel appeared on the popular ''Colbert Report'' on television on May 2, and his campaign and career were profiled in national publications such as ''Salon''. Two wordless, Warholesque campaign videos, "Rock" and "Fire", were released on YouTube in late May and became hits, and eventually gained over 760,000 and 185,000 views respectively. "Rock," in turn, was given airtime during an episode of ''The Daily Show with Jon Stewart''. Some thirty-five years after he first achieved the national spotlight, he had found it again.

All this did not improve his performance in the polls; a May 2007 CNN poll showed him with less than 0.5 percent support among Democrats. Gravel was in the next several debates, in one case after CNN reversed a decision to exclude him. Gravel, as with some of the other second-tier candidates, did not get as much time as the leaders; during the June 2, 2007, New Hampshire debate, which lasted two hours, he was asked 10 questions and allowed to speak for five minutes and 37 seconds.

During the July 23, 2007, CNN-YouTube presidential debate, Gravel responded to audience applause when he had complained of a lack of airtime and said: "Thank you. Has it been fair thus far?" Detractors began to liken him to "the cranky uncle who lives in the attic," or "the angry old guy that just seemed to want to become angrier." In the ABC News Des Moines, Iowa, debate of August 19, 2007, moderator George Stephanopoulos noted that Gravel polled a statistical zero percent support in the state, meaning less than 0.5% support, and then directed roughly five percent of his questions to Gravel; in a poll asking who did the best in the debate, Gravel placed seventh among the eight candidates. National opinion polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination continued to show Gravel with one percent or zero percent numbers. By the end of the third-quarter 2007, Gravel had about $17,500 in cash on hand, had collected a total of about $380,000 so far during the 2008 election cycle, and was continuing to run a threadbare campaign with minimal staff.

Beginning with the October 30, 2007, Philadelphia event, Gravel was excluded from most of the debates, with the debate sponsors or the Democratic National Committee saying Gravel's campaign had not met fund-raising, polling, or local campaign organizational thresholds. For the Philadelphia exclusion, Gravel blamed corporate censorship on the part of sponsor owner and alleged military-industrial complex member General Electric for his exclusion and mounted a counter-gathering and debate against a video screen a short distance away, but he had lost his easiest publicity. In reaction, supporters organized "mass donation days" to try to help the campaign gain momentum and funds, such as on December 5, 2007, the anniversary of the Repeal of Prohibition.

Gravel did not compete in the initial 2008 vote, the Iowa caucuses, but was still subjected to a false report from MSNBC that he had pulled out of the race afterward. Gravel did focus his attention on the second 2008 vote, the New Hampshire primary. There he received about 400 votes out of some 280,000 cast, or 0.14 percent, before taking time off to improve his health. He resumed campaigning, but fared no better in subsequent states. By the end of January 2008, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Gravel were the only remaining Democrats from the initial debates still running; Gravel vowed to stay in the presidential campaign until November. On March 11, 2008, Gravel continued to remain in the Democratic race but additionally endorsed a Green Party candidate for president, Jesse Johnson, saying he wanted to help Johnson prevail against Green Party rivals Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader. By late March, Gravel had almost no fundraising and was only on the ballot in one of the next ten Democratic primaries.

Switch to Libertarian Party

On March 25, 2008, Gravel announced that he would leave the Democrats and join the Libertarian Party, saying: "My libertarian views, as well as my strong stance against war, the military industrial complex and American imperialism, seem not to be tolerated by Democratic Party elites who are out of touch with the average American; elites that reject the empowerment of American citizens I offered to the Democratic Party at the beginning of this presidential campaign with the National Initiative for Democracy." The following day Gravel entered the race for the 2008 Libertarian presidential nomination, saying that he would have run as a third-party candidate all along except that he needed the public exposure that came from being in the earlier Democratic debates. Gravel's initial notion of running as a fusion candidate with other parties was met with skepticism and not pursued.

As a Libertarian candidate, Gravel faced resistance to his liberal past and unorthodox positions; nevertheless, he garnered more support than he had as a Democrat, placing second and third in two April 2008 straw polls. In the May 25 balloting at the 2008 Libertarian National Convention in Denver, Gravel finished fourth out of eight candidates on the initial ballot, with 71 votes out of a total 618; he trailed former Congressman and eventual winner Bob Barr, author Mary Ruwart, and businessman Wayne Allyn Root. Gravel's position did not subsequently improve and he was eliminated on the fourth ballot. Afterwards he stated that "I just ended my political career," but he vowed to continue promoting his positions as a writer and lecturer.

After the campaigns

In June 2008, Gravel endorsed the NYC 9/11 Ballot Initiative, saying the measure would create a "citizens commission rather than a government commission" with subpoena power against top U.S. officials to "make a true investigation as to what happened" regarding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Gravel subsequently said that, "Individuals in and out of government may certainly have participated with the obviously known perpetrators of this dastardly act. Suspicions abound over the analysis presented by government. Obviously an act that has triggered three wars, Afghan, Iraqi and the continuing War on Terror, should be extensively investigated which was not done and which the government avoids addressing."

In August 2008, Gravel was speaking to a crowd of supporters of Sami Al-Arian (who two years earlier had pleaded guilty and been sentenced to prison for a charge of conspiracy in helping Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a "specially designated terrorist" organization) when he was caught on tape saying of Al-Arian's prosecutor, "Find out where he lives, find out where his kids go to school, find out where his office is: picket him all the time. Call him a racist in signs if you see him. Call him an injustice. Call him whatever you want to call him, but in his face all the time." Gravel was criticized for potentially involving the children of the prosecutor, and Al-Arian's family disavowed the sentiments.

Gravel defended Alaska Governor Sarah Palin after she was chosen as Republican presidential nominee John McCain's running mate in September 2008. He praised Palin's record in standing up to corruption among Alaskan Republicans, thought her national inexperience was an asset not a detriment, and predicted that the "Troopergate" investigation into whether she improperly fired a state official would "come out in her favor." Gravel made clear he would not support or vote for either McCain-Palin or Obama-Biden in the general election. The following year, Gravel said that Palin's politics were "terrible, but that doesn't detract from the fact that she's a very talented person". He predicted that Palin would run for president in 2012 and that "she's going to surprise a lot of people."

From mid-2008 through October 2009 Gravel gave several lectures at South Korean universities about the Korean National Initiative, a Korean adaption of the National Initiative Gravel has proposed in the United States.

In December 2010, Gravel praised WikiLeaks, in the news during the year for the Afghan War documents leak, Iraq War documents leak, and United States diplomatic cables leak, as the "most significant effort to save democracy (which is slowly being eclipsed by the Military Industrial Complex) since the release of the Pentagon Papers". Gravel also indicated that he might run for president again and possibly challenge President Obama for the Democratic nomination for the 2012 presidential election.

Electoral history

Writings

Gravel, Mike. ''Jobs and More Jobs''. Mt. McKinley Publishers, 1968.

Gravel, Mike. ''Citizen Power: A People's Platform''. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972. ISBN 0-03-091465-5.

* revised and reissued as ''Citizen Power: A Mandate for Change'', AuthorHouse, 2008. ISBN 1-4343-4315-4.

Gravel, Mike and Lauria, Joe. ''A Political Odyssey: The Rise of American Militarism and One Man's Fight to Stop It''. Seven Stories Press, 2008. ISBN 1-58322-826-8.

Gravel, Mike and Eisenbach, David. ''The Kingmakers: How the Media Threatens Our Security and Our Democracy''. Phoenix Books, 2008. ISBN 1-59777-586-X.

Gravel, Mike. ''Voice of a Maverick: The Speeches and Writings of Senator Mike Gravel''. Brandywine House, 2008.

Gravel, Mike. Foreword to "Poisoned Power: The Case Against Nuclear Power Plants." [John W. Goffman & Arthur R. Tamplin, Rodale Press, Inc., Emmaus, PA, June 1971].

Notes

References

''The Pentagon Papers'' Senator Gravel Edition. Vol. Five. Critical Essays. Boston. Beacon Press, 1972. 341p. plus 72p. of Index to Vol. I–IV of the Papers, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, editors.

External links

;Official websites

Mike Gravel official website

Mike Gravel YouTube channel

Mike Gravel MySpace

National Initiative for Democracy official website

;Biographical

Genealogy of Mike Gravel

;Pentagon Papers

Gravel edition of the Pentagon Papers Complete text, with supporting documents

Unedited footage of Senator Gravel reading the Pentagon Papers in the Senate in 1971 Streaming and download links at archive.org

''Democracy Now!'' special: "How the Pentagon Papers Came to Be Published by the Beacon Press": Mike Gravel and Daniel Ellsberg (audio/video and transcript)

{{U.S. Senator box |state = Alaska |class = 3 |before = Ernest Gruening |years = 1969–1981 |after = Frank Murkowski |alongside = Ted Stevens}}

Category:1930 births Category:Living people Category:People from Springfield, Massachusetts Category:People from Anchorage, Alaska Category:People from Kenai Peninsula Borough, Alaska Category:American Unitarian Universalists Category:American people of French-Canadian descent Category:Alaska Democrats Category:Libertarian Party (United States) politicians Category:United States Senators from Alaska Category:American democracy activists Category:American International College alumni Category:American political writers Category:American anti–Iraq War activists Category:Direct democracy activists Category:Drug policy reform activists Category:American people of French descent Category:Speakers of the Alaska House of Representatives Category:United States Army soldiers Category:United States presidential candidates, 2008 Category:United States vice-presidential candidates, 1972 Category:Columbia University alumni Category:People from Arlington County, Virginia Category:Former Roman Catholics Category:Anti-corporate activists Category:Writers about direct democracy Category:Youth rights individuals Category:Democratic Party United States Senators Category:Assumption College alumni

br:Mike Gravel da:Mike Gravel de:Mike Gravel eo:Mike Gravel fr:Mike Gravel is:Mike Gravel it:Mike Gravel hu:Mike Gravel nl:Mike Gravel ja:マイク・グラベル no:Mike Gravel pl:Mike Gravel pt:Mike Gravel simple:Mike Gravel fi:Mike Gravel sv:Mike Gravel zh:迈克·格拉韦尔

Name	Osama bin Laden
Birth date	March 10, 1957
Birth place	Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Death date	May 02, 2011
Death place	Abbottabad, Pakistan
Placeofburial	North Arabian Sea
Religion	Sunni Islam (Qutbism)
Years active	1979–2011
Death cause	Ballistic trauma
Successor	Ayman Al-Zawahiri
Spouse(s)	Najwa GhanhemKhadijah SharifKhairiah SabarSiham SabarAmal Ahmed al-Sadah
Children
Allegiance	Al-Qaeda
Serviceyears	1988–2011
Battles	Soviet war in AfghanistanWar on Terror: War in Afghanistan *Battle of Tora Bora War in North-West Pakistan *Operation Neptune Spear }}

}} Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (; , ''''; March 10, 1957 May 2, 2011) was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets. He was a member of the wealthy Saudi bin Laden family, and an ethnic Yemeni Kindite.

Bin Laden was on the American Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) lists of Ten Most Wanted Fugitives and Most Wanted Terrorists for his involvement in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings. From 2001 to 2011, bin Laden was a major target of the War on Terror, with a bounty by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

After being placed on the FBI's Most Wanted list, bin Laden remained in hiding during three U.S. presidential administrations. On May 2, 2011, bin Laden was shot and killed inside a private residential compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, by U.S. Navy SEALs and CIA operatives in a covert operation ordered by United States President Barack Obama. Shortly after his death, bin Laden's body was buried at sea. Al-Qaeda acknowledged his death on May 6, 2011, vowing to retaliate.

Early life and education

Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a son of Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, a billionaire construction magnate with close ties to the Saudi royal family, and Mohammed bin Laden's tenth wife, Hamida al-Attas (then called Alia Ghanem). In a 1998 interview, bin Laden gave his birth date as March 10, 1957.

Mohammed bin Laden divorced Hamida soon after Osama bin Laden was born. Mohammed recommended Hamida to Mohammed al-Attas, an associate. Al-Attas married Hamida in the late 1950s or early 1960s, and they are still together. The couple had four children, and bin Laden lived in the new household with three half-brothers and one half-sister. The bin Laden family made $5 billion in the construction industry, of which Osama later inherited around $25–30 million.

Bin Laden was raised as a devout Wahhabi Muslim. From 1968 to 1976, he attended the élite secular Al-Thager Model School. He studied economics and business administration at King Abdulaziz University. Some reports suggest he earned a degree in civil engineering in 1979, or a degree in public administration in 1981. One source described him as "hard working", another said he left university during his third year without completing a college degree. At university, bin Laden's main interest was religion, where he was involved in both "interpreting the Quran and jihad" and charitable work. Other interests included writing poetry; reading, with the works of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery and Charles de Gaulle said to be among his favorites; black stallions; and association football, in which he enjoyed playing at centre forward and followed the fortunes of Arsenal F.C.

Personal life

In 1974, at the age of 17, bin Laden married Najwa Ghanem at Latakia, Syria; they were divorced before September 11, 2001. Bin Laden's other known wives were Khadijah Sharif (married 1983, divorced 1990s), Khairiah Sabar (married 1985), Siham Sabar (married 1987), and Amal al-Sadah (married 2000). Some sources also list a sixth wife, name unknown, whose marriage to bin Laden was annulled soon after the ceremony. Bin Laden fathered between 20 and 26 children with his wives. Many of bin Laden's children fled to Iran following the September 11 attacks and Iranian authorities reportedly continue to control their movement.

Bin Laden's father Mohammed died in 1967 in an airplane crash in Saudi Arabia when his American pilot misjudged a landing. Bin Laden's eldest half-brother, Salem bin Laden, the subsequent head of the bin Laden family, was killed in 1988 near San Antonio, Texas, in the United States, when he accidentally flew a plane into power lines.

The FBI described bin Laden as an adult as tall and thin, between 6 ft 4 in and 6 ft 6 in (193–198 cm) in height and weighing about 165 pounds (75 kg). Interviewer Lawrence Wright, on the other hand, described him as quite slender, but not particularly tall. Bin Laden had an olive complexion and was left-handed, usually walking with a cane. He wore a plain white turban and he had stopped wearing the traditional Saudi male headdress. Bin Laden was described as soft-spoken and mild-mannered in demeanor.

Name

There is no universally accepted standard for transliterating Arabic words and Arabic names into English; bin Laden's name is most frequently rendered "Osama bin Laden". The FBI and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as well as other U.S. governmental agencies, have used either "Usama bin Laden" or "Usama bin Ladin", both of which may be abbreviated as "UBL". Less common renderings include "Ussamah bin Ladin" and, in the French-language media, "Oussama ben Laden". Other spellings include "Binladen" or, as used by his family in the West, "Binladin". The decapitalization of ''bin'' is based on the convention of leaving short prepositions and articles uncapitalized in surnames; however, ''bin'' means "son of" and is not, strictly speaking, a preposition or article. The spellings with ''o'' and ''e'' come from a Persian-influenced pronunciation also used in Afghanistan, where bin Laden spent many years.

Osama bin Laden's full name, Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, means "Osama, son of Mohammed, son of Awad, son of Laden". "Mohammed" refers to bin Laden's father Mohammed bin Laden; "Awad" refers to his grandfather, Awad bin Aboud bin Laden, a Kindite Hadhrami tribesman; "Laden" refers not to bin Laden's great-grandfather, who was named Aboud, but to a more distant ancestor.

The Arabic linguistic convention would be to refer to him as "Osama" or "Osama bin Laden", not "bin Laden" alone, as "bin Laden" is a patronymic, not a surname in the Western manner. According to bin Laden's son Omar bin Laden, the family's hereditary surname is "al-Qahtani" (, ''āl-Qaḥṭānī''), but bin Laden's father Mohammed bin Laden never officially registered the name.

Osama bin Laden had also assumed the ''kunyah'' "Abū ʿAbdāllāh" ("father of Abdallah"). His admirers have referred to him by several nicknames, including the "Prince" or "Emir" (الأمير, ''al-Amīr''), the "Sheik" (الشيخ, ''aš-Šayḫ''), the "Jihadist Sheik" or "Sheik al-Mujahid" (شيخ المجاهد, ''al-Muǧāhid Šayḫ''), "Hajj" (حج, ''Ḥaǧǧ''), and the "Director". The word ''ʾusāmah'' (أسامة) means "lion", earning him the nicknames "Lion" and "Lion Sheik".

Beliefs and ideology

According to former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer, who led the CIA's hunt for Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader was motivated by a belief that U.S. foreign policy has oppressed, killed, or otherwise harmed Muslims in the Middle East, condensed in the phrase "They hate us for what we do, not who we are."

Bin Laden also said only the restoration of Sharia law would "set things right" in the Muslim world, and that alternatives such as "pan-Arabism, socialism, communism, democracy" must be opposed. This belief, in conjunction with violent jihad, has sometimes been called Qutbism after being promoted by Sayyid Qutb. Bin Laden believed that Afghanistan, under the rule of Mullah Omar's Taliban, was "the only Islamic country" in the Muslim world. Bin Laden consistently dwelt on the need for violent jihad to right what he believed were injustices against Muslims perpetrated by the United States and sometimes by other non-Muslim states, the need to eliminate the state of Israel, and the necessity of forcing the United States to withdraw from the Middle East. He also called on Americans to "reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling, and usury", in an October 2002 letter.

Bin Laden's ideology included the idea that innocent civilians, including women and children, are legitimate targets of jihad. Bin Laden was anti-Semitic, and delivered warnings against alleged Jewish conspiracies: "These Jews are masters of usury and leaders in treachery. They will leave you nothing, either in this world or the next." Shia Muslims have been listed along with "heretics, [...] America, and Israel" as the four principal "enemies of Islam" at ideology classes of bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization.

Bin Laden opposed music on religious grounds, and his attitude towards technology was mixed. He was interested in "earth-moving machinery and genetic engineering of plants" on the one hand, but rejected "chilled water" on the other.

His viewpoints and methods of achieving them had led to him being designated as a terrorist by scholars, journalists from ''The New York Times'', the BBC, and Qatari news station Al Jazeera, analysts such as Peter Bergen, Michael Scheuer, Marc Sageman, and Bruce Hoffman and he was indicted on terrorism charges by law enforcement agencies in Madrid, New York City, and Tripoli.

Bin Laden's overall strategy against much larger enemies such as the Soviet Union and United States was to lure them into a long war of attrition in Muslim countries, attracting large numbers of jihadists who would never surrender. He believed this would lead to economic collapse of the enemy nation. Al-Qaeda manuals clearly outline this strategy.

Militant activity

Mujahideen in Afghanistan

After leaving college in 1979, bin Laden went to Pakistan and joined Abdullah Azzam to take part in the Soviet war in Afghanistan. During Operation Cyclone from 1979 to 1989, the United States provided financial aid and weapons to the mujahideen leaders through Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Bin Laden met and built relations with Hamid Gul, who was a three-star general in the Pakistani army and head of the ISI agency. Although the United States provided the money and weapons, the training of militant groups was entirely done by the Pakistani Armed Forces and the ISI.

By 1984, bin Laden and Azzam established Maktab al-Khidamat, which funneled money, arms and fighters from around the Arab world into Afghanistan. Through al-Khadamat, bin Laden's inherited family fortune paid for air tickets and accommodation, paid for paperwork with Pakistani authorities and provided other such services for the jihadi fighters. Bin Laden established camps inside Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan and used it to train volunteer fighters against the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. It was during his time in Pakistan that he began wearing camouflage-print jackets and carrying a Russian-made assault rifle.

Formation and structuring of Al-Qaeda

By 1988, bin Laden had split from Maktab al-Khidamat. While Azzam acted as support for Afghan fighters, bin Laden wanted a more military role. One of the main points leading to the split and the creation of al-Qaeda was Azzam's insistence that Arab fighters be integrated among the Afghan fighting groups instead of forming a separate fighting force. Notes of a meeting of bin Laden and others on August 20, 1988, indicate al-Qaeda was a formal group by that time: "Basically an organized Islamic faction, its goal is to lift the word of God, to make his religion victorious." A list of requirements for membership itemized the following: listening ability, good manners, obedience, and making a pledge (''bayat'') to follow one's superiors.

According to Wright, the group's real name was not used in public pronouncements because "its existence was still a closely held secret". His research suggests that al-Qaeda was formed at an August 11, 1988, meeting between "several senior leaders" of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Abdullah Azzam, and bin Laden, where it was agreed to join bin Laden's money with the expertise of the Islamic Jihad organization and take up the jihadist cause elsewhere after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan. Following the Soviet Union's withdrawal from Afghanistan in February 1989, Osama bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia in 1990 as a hero of jihad, who along with his Arab legion "had brought down the mighty superpower" of the Soviet Union.

The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait under Saddam Hussein on August 2, 1990, put the Saudi kingdom and the House of Saud at risk, with Iraqi forces on the Saudi border and Saddam's appeal to pan-Arabism potentially inciting internal dissent. Bin Laden met with King Fahd, and Saudi Defense Minister Sultan, telling them not to depend on non-Muslim assistance from the United States and others, offering to help defend Saudi Arabia with his mujahideen. Bin Laden's offer was rebuffed, and after the Saudi monarchy invited the deployment of U.S. troops in Saudi territory, Bin Laden publicly denounced Saudi Arabia's dependence on the U.S. military. Bin Laden believed the presence of foreign troops in the "land of the two mosques" (Mecca and Medina) profaned sacred soil. Bin Laden's criticism of the Saudi monarchy led that government to attempt to silence him.

Shortly after Saudi Arabia invited U.S. troops into Saudi Arabia, bin Laden turned his attention to attacks on the West. On November 8, 1990, the FBI raided the New Jersey home of El Sayyid Nosair, an associate of al-Qaeda operative Ali Mohamed, discovering copious evidence of terrorist plots, including plans to blow up New York City skyscrapers. This marked the earliest discovery of al-Qaeda terrorist plans outside of Muslim countries. Nosair was eventually convicted in connection to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and later admitted guilt for the murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane in New York on November 5, 1990.

Bin Laden continued to speak publicly against the Saudi government for harboring American troops, for which the Saudis banished him. He went to live in exile in Sudan, in 1992, in a deal brokered by Ali Mohamed.

Sudan and return to Afghanistan

In Sudan, bin Laden established a new base for mujahideen operations in Khartoum. He bought a house on Al-Mashtal Street in the affluent Al-Riyadh quarter and a retreat at Soba on the Blue Nile. During his time in the country he heavily invested in the infrastructure and in agriculture and businesses. He continued his verbal assault on King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, and in response, on March 5, 1994, Fahd sent an emissary to Sudan demanding bin Laden's passport. His family was persuaded to cut off his $7 million a year stipend. By now bin Laden was strongly associated with Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ), which made up the core of al-Qaeda. In 1995 the EIJ attempted to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The attempt failed, and the EIJ was expelled from Sudan.

As a result of his dealings in and advocacy of violent extremist jihad, Osama bin Laden lost his Saudi citizenship in 1994 and was disowned by his billionaire family.

Sudan also began efforts to expel bin Laden. The 9/11 Commission Report states:

In late 1995, when Bin Laden was still in Sudan, the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) learned that Sudanese officials were discussing with the Saudi government the possibility of expelling Bin Laden. CIA paramilitary officer Billy Waugh tracked down Bin Ladin in the Sudan and prepared an operation to apprehend him, but was denied authorization. U.S. Ambassador Timothy Carney encouraged the Sudanese to pursue this course. The Saudis, however, did not want Bin Laden, giving as their reason their revocation of his citizenship. Sudan's minister of defense, Fatih Erwa, has claimed that Sudan offered to hand Bin Laden over to the United States. The Commission has found no credible evidence that this was so. Ambassador Carney had instructions only to push the Sudanese to expel Bin Laden. Ambassador Carney had no legal basis to ask for more from the Sudanese since, at the time, there was no indictment outstanding.

The 9/11 Commission Report further states:

In February 1996, Sudanese officials began approaching officials from the United States and other governments, asking what actions of theirs might ease foreign pressure. In secret meetings with Saudi officials, Sudan offered to expel Bin Laden to Saudi Arabia and asked the Saudis to pardon him. U.S. officials became aware of these secret discussions, certainly by March. Saudi officials apparently wanted Bin Laden expelled from Sudan. They had already revoked his citizenship, however, and would not tolerate his presence in their country. Also Bin Laden may have no longer felt safe in Sudan, where he had already escaped at least one assassination attempt that he believed to have been the work of the Egyptian or Saudi regimes, or both.

In May 1996, under increasing pressure on Sudan, from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United States, bin Laden returned to Jalalabad, Afghanistan aboard a chartered flight, and there forged a close relationship with Mullah Mohammed Omar. When bin Laden left Sudan, he and his organization were significantly weakened, despite his ambitions and organizational skills.

In August, 1996, bin Laden declared war against the United States. This fatwā was first published in Al Quds Al Arabi, a London-based newspaper. The fatwā is entitled "Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places." Saudi Arabia is sometimes called "The Land of the Two Holy Mosques" in reference to Mecca and Medina, the two holiest places in Islam. The reference to occupation in the fatwā refers to U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia for the purpose of controlling air space in Iraq, known as Operation Southern Watch.

In Afghanistan, bin Laden and al-Qaeda raised money from "donors from the days of the Soviet jihad", and from the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to establish more training camps for Mujahideen fighters.

Bin Laden effectively had hijacked Ariana Afghan Airlines, which ferried Islamic militants, arms, cash and opium through the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan as well as provided false identifications to members of bin Laden's terrorist network. Viktor Bout helped to run the airline, maintaining planes and loading cargo. Michael Scheuer, head of the CIA's bin Laden unit, concluded that Ariana was being used as a "terrorist taxi service".

Early attacks and aid for attacks

It is believed that the first bombing attack involving bin Laden was the December 29, 1992, bombing of the Gold Mihor Hotel in Aden in which two people were killed.

It was after this bombing that al-Qaeda was reported to have developed its justification for the killing of innocent people. According to a fatwa issued by Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, the killing of someone standing near the enemy is justified because any innocent bystander will find their proper reward in death, going to ''Jannah'' (Paradise) if they were good Muslims and to ''Jahannam'' (hell) if they were bad or non-believers. The fatwa was issued to al-Qaeda members but not the general public.

In the 1990s bin Laden's al-Qaeda assisted jihadis financially and sometimes militarily in Algeria, Egypt and Afghanistan. In 1992 or 1993 bin Laden sent an emissary, Qari el-Said, with $40,000 to Algeria to aid the Islamists and urge war rather than negotiation with the government. Their advice was heeded but the war that followed killed 150,000–200,000 Algerians and ended with Islamist surrender to the government.

Bin Laden funded the Luxor massacre of November 17, 1997, which killed 62 civilians, but outraged the Egyptian public. In mid-1997, the Northern Alliance threatened to overrun Jalalabad, causing bin Laden to abandon his Nazim Jihad compound and move his operations to Tarnak Farms in the south.

Another successful attack was carried out in the city of Mazar-e-Sharif in Afghanistan. Bin Laden helped cement his alliance with the Taliban by sending several hundreds of Afghan Arab fighters along to help the Taliban kill between five and six thousand Hazaras overrunning the city.

In February 1998, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri co-signed a ''fatwa'' in the name of the World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders which declared the killing of North Americans and their allies an "individual duty for every Muslim" to "liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque (in Jerusalem) and the holy mosque (in Mecca) from their grip". At the public announcement of the fatwa bin Laden announced that North Americans are "very easy targets". He told the attending journalists, "You will see the results of this in a very short time."

Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri organized an al-Qaeda congress on June 24, 1998.

The 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings were a series of attacks that occurred on August 7, 1998, in which hundreds of people were killed in simultaneous truck bomb explosions at the United States embassies in the major East African cities of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya. The attacks were linked to local members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, brought Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri to the attention of the United States public for the first time, and resulted in the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation placing bin Laden on its Ten Most Wanted list.

In December 1998, the Director of Central Intelligence Counterterrorist Center reported to President Bill Clinton that al-Qaeda was preparing for attacks in the United States of America, including the training of personnel to hijack aircraft.

At the end of 2000, Richard Clarke revealed that Islamic militants headed by bin Laden had planned a triple attack on January 3, 2000 which would have included bombings in Jordan of the Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman and tourists at Mount Nebo and a site on the Jordan River, the sinking of the destroyer USS ''The Sullivans'' in Yemen, as well as an attack on a target within the United States. The plan was foiled by the arrest of the Jordanian terrorist cell, the sinking of the explosive-filled skiff intended to target the destroyer, and the arrest of Ahmed Ressam.

Yugoslav Wars

A former U.S. State Department official in October 2001 described Bosnia and Herzegovina as a safe haven for terrorists, after it was asserted that militant elements of the former Sarajevo government were protecting extremists, some with ties to Osama bin Laden. In 1997, ''Rzeczpospolita'', one of the largest Polish daily newspapers, reported that intelligence services of the Nordic-Polish SFOR Brigade suspected that a center for training terrorists from Islamic countries was located in the Bocina Donja village near Maglaj in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1992, hundreds of volunteers joined an "all-mujahedeen unit" called El Moujahed in an abandoned hillside factory, a compound with a hospital and prayer hall.

According to Middle East intelligence reports, bin Laden financed small convoys of recruits from the Arab world through his businesses in Sudan. Among them was Karim Said Atmani who was identified by authorities as the document forger for a group of Algerians accused of plotting the bombings in the United States of America. He is a former roommate of Ahmed Ressam, the man arrested at the Canadian-U.S. border in mid-December 1999 with a car full of nitroglycerin and bomb-making materials. He was convicted of colluding with Osama bin Laden by a French court.

A Bosnian government search of passport and residency records, conducted at the urging of the United States, revealed other former mujahideen who were linked to the same Algerian group or to other groups of suspected terrorists, and had lived in the area north of Sarajevo, the capital, in the past few years. Khalil al-Deek, was arrested in Jordan in late December 1999 on suspicion of involvement in a plot to blow up tourist sites; a second man with Bosnian citizenship, Hamid Aich, lived in Canada at the same time as Atmani and worked for a charity associated with Osama bin Laden. In its June 26, 1997, report on the bombing of the Al Khobar building in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, ''The New York Times'' noted that those arrested confessed to serving with Bosnian Muslims forces. Further, the captured men also admitted to ties with Osama bin Laden.

In 1999 it was revealed that bin Laden and his Tunisian assistant Mehrez Aodouni were granted citizenship and Bosnian passports in 1993 by the government in Sarajevo. This information was denied by the Bosnian government following the September 11 attacks, but it was later found that Aodouni was arrested in Turkey and that at that time he possessed the Bosnian passport. Following this revelation, a new explanation was given that bin Laden "did not personally collect his Bosnian passport" and that officials at the Bosnian embassy in Vienna, which issued the passport, could not have known who bin Laden was at the time.

During his trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević presented FBI documents that verified bin Laden's al-Qaeda had a presence in the Balkans and aided the Kosovo Liberation Army, which was identified by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization shortly before the 1998 embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya. Milošević had argued that the United States aided the terrorists which culminated in its backing of the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War.

September 11, 2001 attacks

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After his denial, Osama bin Laden finally claimed responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States in 2004. The attacks involved the hijacking of four commercial passenger aircraft, the subsequent destruction of those planes and the World Trade Center in New York City, New York, severe damage to The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and the deaths of 2,974 people and the nineteen hijackers. In response to the attacks, the United States launched a War on Terror to depose the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and capture al-Qaeda operatives, and several countries strengthened their anti-terrorism legislation to preclude future attacks. The CIA's Special Activities Division was given the lead in tracking down and killing or capturing bin Laden.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has stated that classified evidence linking al-Qaeda and bin Laden to the September 11 attacks is clear and irrefutable. The UK Government reached a similar conclusion regarding al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden's culpability for the September 11 attacks, although the government report notes that the evidence presented is not necessarily sufficient for a prosecutable case.

Bin Laden initially denied involvement in the attacks. On September 16, 2001, bin Laden read a statement later broadcast by Qatar's Al Jazeera satellite channel denying responsibility for the attack.

In a videotape recovered by U.S. forces in November 2001 in Jalalabad, bin Laden was seen discussing the attack with Khaled al-Harbi in a way that indicates foreknowledge. The tape was broadcast on various news networks on December 13, 2001. The merits of this translation have been disputed. Arabist Dr. Abdel El M. Husseini stated: "This translation is very problematic. At the most important places where it is held to prove the guilt of bin Laden, it is not identical with the Arabic."

In the 2004 Osama bin Laden video, bin Laden abandoned his denials without retracting past statements. In it he stated he had personally directed the nineteen hijackers. In the 18-minute tape, played on Al-Jazeera, four days before the American presidential election, bin Laden accused U.S. President George W. Bush of negligence on the hijacking of the planes on September 11.

According to the tapes, bin Laden claimed he was inspired to destroy the World Trade Center after watching the destruction of towers in Lebanon by Israel during the 1982 Lebanon War.

Through two other tapes aired by Al Jazeera in 2006, Osama bin Laden announced, "I am the one in charge of the nineteen brothers. [...] I was responsible for entrusting the nineteen brothers [...] with the raids" (May 23, 2006). In the tapes he was seen with Ramzi bin al-Shibh, as well as two of the 9/11 hijackers, Hamza al-Ghamdi and Wail al-Shehri, as they made preparations for the attacks (videotape broadcast September 7, 2006).

Identified motivations of the September 11 attacks include the support of Israel by the United States, presence of the U.S. military in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. enforcement of sanctions against Iraq.

Criminal charges

name	Usama Bin Laden
charge	* Murder of U.S. Nationals Outside the United States Conspiracy to Murder U.S. Nationals Outside the United States Attack on a Federal Facility Resulting in Death
reward	$25 million
alias	* Usama Bin Muhammad Bin Ladin Shaykh Usama Bin Ladin the Prince the Emir Abu Abdallah Mujahid Shaykh Hajj the Director
birth date	1957
birth place	Saudi Arabia
death date	May 02, 2011
death place	Abbottabad, Pakistan
cause	Ballistic trauma
nationality	Saudi Arabian
gender	Male
height	6'4" to 6'6"
weight	Approximately 160 pounds
occupation	Unknown
added date	June 7, 1999
remove date	May 2, 2011
number	456
status	Killed/Captured }}

On March 16, 1998, Libya issued the first official Interpol arrest warrant against bin Laden and three other people. They were charged for killing Silvan Becker, agent of Germany’s domestic intelligence service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, in the Terrorism Department, and his wife Vera in Libya on March 10, 1994. Bin Laden was still wanted by the Libyan government at the time of his death. Osama bin Laden was first indicted by the United States on June 8, 1998, when a grand jury indicted Osama bin Laden on charges of killing five Americans and two Indians in the November 14, 1995, truck bombing of a U.S.-operated Saudi National Guard training center in Riyadh. Bin Laden was charged with "conspiracy to attack defense utilities of the United States" and prosecutors further charged that bin Laden is the head of the terrorist organization called al-Qaeda, and that he was a major financial backer of Islamic fighters worldwide. Bin Laden denied involvement but praised the attack. On November 4, 1998, Osama bin Laden was indicted by a Federal Grand Jury in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, on charges of ''Murder of U.S. Nationals Outside the United States, Conspiracy to Murder U.S. Nationals Outside the United States, and Attacks on a Federal Facility Resulting in Death'' for his alleged role in the 1998 United States embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. The evidence against bin Laden included courtroom testimony by former al-Qaeda members and satellite phone records, from a phone purchased for him by al-Qaeda procurement agent Ziyad Khaleel in the United States.

Bin Laden became the 456th person listed on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, when he was added to the list on June 7, 1999, following his indictment along with others for capital crimes in the 1998 embassy attacks. Attempts at assassination and requests for the extradition of bin Laden from the Taliban of Afghanistan were met with failure prior to the bombing of Afghanistan in October 2001. In 1999, U.S. President Bill Clinton convinced the United Nations to impose sanctions against Afghanistan in an attempt to force the Taliban to extradite him.

Years later, on October 10, 2001, bin Laden appeared as well on the initial list of the top 22 FBI Most Wanted Terrorists, which was released to the public by the President of the United States George W. Bush, in direct response to the September 11 attacks, but which was again based on the indictment for the 1998 embassy attack. Bin Laden was among a group of thirteen fugitive terrorists wanted on that latter list for questioning about the 1998 embassy bombings. Bin Laden remains the only fugitive ever to be listed on both FBI fugitive lists.

Despite the multiple indictments listed above and multiple requests, the Taliban refused to extradite Osama bin Laden. They did however offer to try him before an Islamic court if evidence of Osama bin Laden's involvement in the September 11 attacks was provided. It was not until eight days after the bombing of Afghanistan began in October 2001 that the Taliban finally did offer to turn over Osama bin Laden to a third-party country for trial in return for the United States ending the bombing. This offer was rejected by President Bush stating that this was no longer negotiable, with Bush responding "there's no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he's guilty."

On June 15, 2011, federal prosecutors of the United States of America officially dropped all criminal charges against Osama Bin Laden following his death in May.

Attempted capture by the United States

Clinton administration

Capturing Osama bin Laden had been an objective of the United States government since the presidency of Bill Clinton. Shortly after the September 11 attacks it was revealed that President Clinton had signed a directive authorizing the CIA (and specifically their elite Special Activities Division) to apprehend bin Laden and bring him to the United States to stand trial after the 1998 United States embassy bombings in Africa; if taking bin Laden alive was deemed impossible, then deadly force was authorized. On August 20, 1998, 66 cruise missiles launched by United States Navy ships in the Arabian Sea struck bin Laden's training camps near Khost in Afghanistan, narrowly missing him by a few hours. In 1999 the CIA, together with Pakistani military intelligence, had prepared a team of approximately 60 Pakistani commandos to infiltrate Afghanistan to capture or kill bin Laden, but the plan was aborted by the 1999 Pakistani coup d'état; in 2000, foreign operatives working on behalf of the CIA had fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a convoy of vehicles in which bin Laden was traveling through the mountains of Afghanistan, hitting one of the vehicles but not the one in which bin Laden was riding.

In 2000, prior to the September 11 attacks, Paul Bremer characterized the Clinton administration as "correctly focused on bin Laden", while Robert Oakley criticized their "obsession with Osama".

Bush administration

Immediately after the September 11 attacks, U.S. government officials named bin Laden and the al-Qaeda organization as the prime suspects and offered a reward of $25 million for information leading to his capture or death. On July 13, 2007, this figure was doubled to $50 million. The Airline Pilots Association and the Air Transport Association offered an additional $2 million reward.

According to ''The Washington Post'', the U.S. government concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the Battle of Tora Bora, Afghanistan in late 2001, and according to civilian and military officials with first-hand knowledge, failure by the United States to commit enough U.S. ground troops to hunt him led to his escape and was the gravest failure by the United States in the war against al-Qaeda. Intelligence officials have assembled what they believe to be decisive evidence, from contemporary and subsequent interrogations and intercepted communications, that bin Laden began the Battle of Tora Bora inside the cave complex along Afghanistan's mountainous eastern border.

''The Washington Post'' also reported that the CIA unit composed of their special operations paramilitary forces dedicated to capturing bin Laden was shut down in late 2005. Bush had previously defended this scaling back of the effort several times, saying, "I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority."

U.S. and Afghanistan forces raided the mountain caves in Tora Bora between August 14–16, 2007. The military was drawn to the area after receiving intelligence of a pre-Ramadan meeting held by al-Qaeda members. After killing dozens of al-Qaeda and Taliban members, they did not find either Osama bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Obama administration

On October 7, 2008, in the second presidential debate, on foreign policy, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama pledged, "We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al-Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority." Upon being elected, then President-elect Obama expressed his plans to "renew U.S. commitment to finding al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, according to his national security advisers" in an effort to ratchet up the hunt for the terrorist. President Obama rejected the Bush administration's policy on bin Laden that "conflated all terror threats from al-Qaeda to Hamas to Hezbollah," replacing it with "with a covert, laserlike focus on al-Qaeda and its spawn."

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said in December 2009 that officials had had no reliable information on bin Laden's whereabouts for years. One week later, General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said in December 2009 that al-Qaeda will not be defeated unless its leader, Osama bin Laden, is captured or killed. Testifying to the U.S. Congress, he said bin Laden had become an "iconic figure, whose survival emboldens al-Qaeda as a franchising organization across the world", and that Obama's deployment of 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan meant that success would be possible. "I don't think that we can finally defeat al-Qaeda until he's captured or killed", McChrystal said of bin Laden. "Killing or capturing bin Laden would not spell the end of al-Qaeda, but the movement could not be eradicated while he remained at large."

In April 2011, President Obama ordered a covert operation to kill or capture bin Laden. On May 1, 2011, the White House announced that U.S. Navy SEALs had carried it out, killing him in his Abbottabad, Pakistan compound.

Activities and whereabouts after the September 11 attacks

While referring to Osama bin Laden in a CNN film clip on September 17, 2001, then President George W. Bush stated, "I want justice. There is an old poster out west, as I recall, that said, 'Wanted dead or alive'. Subsequently, bin Laden retreated further from public contact to avoid capture. Numerous speculative press reports were issued about his whereabouts or even death; some placed bin Laden in different locations during overlapping time periods. None were ever definitively proven. After military offensives in Afghanistan failed to uncover his whereabouts, Pakistan was regularly identified as his suspected hiding place. Some of the conflicting reports regarding bin Laden’s continued whereabouts and mistaken claims about his death follow:

In December 11, 2005, a letter from Atiyah Abd al-Rahman to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi indicated that bin Laden and the al-Qaeda leadership were based in the Waziristan region of Pakistan at the time. In the letter, translated by the United States military's Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, "Atiyah" instructs Zarqawi to "send messengers from your end to Waziristan so that they meet with the brothers of the leadership [...] I am now on a visit to them and I am writing you this letter as I am with them..." Al-Rahman also indicates that bin Laden and al-Qaeda are "weak" and "have many of their own problems." The letter has been deemed authentic by military and counterterrorism officials, according to The Washington Post. Al-Qaeda continued to release time-sensitive and professionally-verified videos demonstrating bin Laden's continued survival as recently as August 2007. In 2009, a research team led by Thomas W. Gillespie and John A. Agnew of UCLA used satellite-aided geographical analysis to pinpoint three compounds in Parachinar as bin Laden's likely hideouts. . In March 2009, the New York Daily News reported that the hunt for bin Laden had centered in the Chitral District of Pakistan, including the Kalam Valley. Author, Rohan Gunaratna, stated that captured al-Qaeda leaders had confirmed that bin Laden was hiding in Chitral. In the first week of December 2009, a Taliban detainee in Pakistan said he had information that bin Laden was in Afghanistan in 2009. The detainee reported that in January or February (2009) he met a trusted contact who had seen bin Laden in Afghanistan about 15 to 20 days earlier. However, on December 6, 2009, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stated that the United States had had no reliable information on the whereabouts of bin Laden in years. Pakistan's Prime Minister Gillani rejected claims that Osama bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan. On Dec. 9, 2009 BBC News reported that U.S. Army General Stanley A. McChrystal, who served as Commander of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan from June 15, 2009 until June 23, 2010 emphasized the continued importance of the capture or killing of bin Laden, thus indicating that the U.S. high command believed that bin Laden was still alive On February 2, 2010, Afghan president, Hamid Karzai arrived in Saudi Arabia for an official visit. The agenda included discussion of a possible Saudi role in Karzai’s plan to reintegrate Taliban militants. During the visit an anonymous official of the Saudi Foreign Ministry declared that the kingdom had no intention of getting involved in peacemaking in Afghanistan unless the Taliban severed ties with extremists and expelled Osama bin Laden. On June 7, 2010, the Kuwaiti newspaper, Al Siyassa reported that bin Laden was hiding out in the mountainous town of Savzevar, in north eastern Iran. The Australian News,online edition published the claim on June 9. On June 9, The Australian News, online edition repeated the claim. On October 18, 2010, an unnamed NATO official suggested that bin Laden was "alive and well and living comfortably" in Pakistan, protected by elements of the country's intelligence services. A senior Pakistani official denied the allegations and said the accusations were designed to put pressure on the Pakistani government ahead of talks aimed at strengthening ties between Pakistan and the United States. On April 16, 2011, a leaked Al Jazeera report claimed that bin Laden had been captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Whereabouts just prior to his death

In July 2010, CIA operatives spotted Bin Laden's courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti driving through the streets of Peshawar, Pakistan. In August 2010, Al-Kuwaiti drives into a large compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. About 35 miles north of the capital, Islamabad, and just yards from a military academy. It was originally believed that bin Laden was hiding near the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas, but he was found away in a three-story mansion in Abbottabad at . Bin Laden's mansion was located southwest of the Pakistan Military Academy, the country's "West Point". Google Earth maps show that the compound was not present in 2001, but was present on images taken in 2005.

Death

Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan on May 2, 2011, shortly after 1 a.m. local time by a United States special forces military unit. The operation, code-named Operation Neptune Spear, was ordered by United States President Barack Obama and carried out in a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operation by a team of United States Navy SEALs from the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group (also known as DEVGRU or informally by its former name, SEAL Team Six) of the Joint Special Operations Command, with support from CIA operatives on the ground. The raid on bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan was launched from Afghanistan. After the raid, U.S. forces took bin Laden's body to Afghanistan for identification, then buried it at sea within 24 hours of his death.

Critics accused Pakistan's military and security establishment of protecting bin Laden. For example, Mosharraf Zaidi, a leading Pakistani columnist, stated, "It seems deeply improbable that bin Laden could have been where he was killed without the knowledge of some parts of the Pakistani state." Pakistan's president Asif Ali Zardari denied that his country's security forces sheltered bin Laden, and called any supposed support for bin Laden by the Pakistani government "baseless speculation".

It was speculated that the issue might further strain U.S. ties with Pakistan. Bin Laden was killed in what some suggest was his residence for five years. It was an expensive compound located less than a mile from Pakistan's version of West Point, probably built for him and less than 100 kilometers' drive from the capital.

The Pakistani government's foreign office issued a statement that "categorically denies" any reports by the media that the country's leadership, "civil as well as military, had any prior knowledge of the U.S. operation against Osama bin Laden".

Pakistan's United States envoy, ambassador Husain Haqqani, promises a "full inquiry" into how Pakistani intelligence services failed to find bin Laden in a fortified compound, just a few hours drive from Islamabad, and stated that "obviously bin Laden did have a support system; the issue is, was that support system within the government and the state of Pakistan or within the society of Pakistan?"

See also

Afghan civil war

Childhood, education and personal life of Osama bin Laden

Fatawā of Osama bin Laden

Islamic fundamentalism

Islamic mujahid movement

Islamic terrorism

Osama bin Laden in popular culture

Pakistan and state terrorism

The Golden Chain

War against Islam

Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad

References

;Footnotes ;Additional notes # The date according to Pakistan Standard Time (UTC+05:00). ;Bibliography }} }} }}

Further reading

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Foreign Broadcast Information Service (2006) – Compilation of Usama Bin Laden Statements 1994 – January 2004

External links

Osama bin Laden collected news and commentary at ''Dawn''

Full text: bin Laden's 'letter to America', ''The Observer'', November 24, 2002

Hunting Bin Laden, ''PBS Frontline'', (November 2002)

Young Osama, Steve Coll, ''The New Yorker'', December 12, 2005

How the World Sees Osama bin Laden, slideshow by ''Life''

The Osama bin Laden File from The National Security Archive, posted May 2, 2011

Category:1957 births Category:2011 deaths Category:20th-century criminals Category:21st-century criminals Category:Abdullah Yusuf Azzam Category:Afghan Civil War Category:Al-Qaeda founders Category:Al-Qaeda propagandists Category:Bin Laden family Category:Burials at sea Category:Civil engineers Category:Deaths by firearm in Pakistan Category:FBI Most Wanted Terrorists Category:FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives Category:Islamic terrorism Category:People from Abbottabad Category:People of the Soviet war in Afghanistan Category:People of the War in Afghanistan (2001–present) Category:Salafis Category:Saudi Arabia expatriates Category:Saudi Arabian expatriates in Pakistan Category:Saudi Arabian al-Qaeda members Category:Saudi Arabian anti-communists Category:Saudi Arabian poets Category:September 11 attacks Category:Stateless persons Category:War on Terror Category:People designated by the Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee

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