Gravel v. United States
In Gravel v. United States, a 6-3 U.S. Supreme Court clarified the scope of the Speech or Debate Clause to include staffers of congressmen, while narrowing the scope not to include republication of information through an outside publishing house.
The factual background of this decision, which was written by Justice Byron White, is as follows:
| “ | These cases arise out of the investigation by a federal grand jury into possible criminal conduct with respect to the release and publication of a classified Defense Department study entitled History of the United States Decision-Making Process on Viet Nam Policy. This document, popularly known as the Pentagon Papers, bore a Defense security classification of Top Secret-Sensitive. The crimes being investigated included the retention of public property or records with intent to convert (18 U. S. C. § 641), the gathering and transmitting of national defense information (18 U. S. C. § 793), the concealment or removal of public records or documents (18 U. S. C. § 2071), and conspiracy to commit such offenses and to defraud the United States (18 U. S. C. § 371).
Among the witnesses subpoenaed were Leonard S. Rodberg, an assistant to Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska and a resident fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies, and Howard Webber, Director of M. I. T. Press. Senator Gravel, as intervenor, 1 filed motions to quash the subpoenas and to require the Government to specify the particular questions to be addressed to Rodberg. 2 He asserted that requiring these witnesses to appear and testify would violate his privilege under the Speech or Debate Clause of the United States Constitution, Art. I, § 6, cl. 1. It appeared that on the night of June 29, 1971, Senator Gravel, as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Buildings and Grounds of the Senate Public Works Committee, convened a meeting of the subcommittee and there read extensively from a copy of the Pentagon Papers. He then placed the entire 47 volumes of the study in the public record. Rodberg had been added to the Senator's staff earlier in the day and assisted Gravel in preparing for and conducting the hearing. 3 Some weeks later there were press reports that Gravel had arranged for the papers to be published by Beacon Press 4 and that members of Gravel's staff had talked with Webber as editor of M. I. T. Press. |
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Gravel v. United States, 408 U.S. 606, 608-10 (1972) (footnotes omitted).