Former Democratic Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel passed away Saturday, The Associated Press reported. He was 91.
Gravel served in the Senate from 1969 to 1981. He was known for his protesting of the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, and perhaps most famously remembered for reading the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record, the AP reported.
Congress passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980 while he was a senator. The law was an agreement that reserved millions of acres for national parks, wildlife refuges and other protected areas in Alaska.
Gravel ran for president in 2008 and launched his campaign as a critic of the Iraq War.
“I believe America is doing harm every day our troops remain in Iraq — harm to ourselves and to the prospects for peace in the world,” Gravel said in 2006, according to the AP.
He ended his campaign after receiving little support, according to the AP. He briefly ran again for the Democratic nomination in 2020 but ended his campaign after he failed to qualify for the debates and endorsed Bernie Sanders, Politico reported.
BREAKING: Former U.S. Sen. Mike Gravel of Alaska, who read the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record in 1971 and decades later ran for the Democratic presidential nomination as a critic of the Iraq war, has died at age 91. https://t.co/5wqxNsR83u
— The Associated Press (@AP) June 27, 2021
Gravel was living in Seaside, California and had been in poor health, the AP reported.