Mike Gravel

Mike Gravel (1930–2021) was a Democratic United States senator from Alaska (1969–1981) whose public career is well documented, but who is best known in ufology for a single episode in 2013 when he endorsed claims of a government cover-up of UFO evidence.

Senate career

Gravel won a 1968 Senate race against an incumbent and later played a central role in legislation that enabled the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. He ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 and made an unsuccessful longshot bid in 2020. His obituary in Alaska's News Source and in UPI focus on these achievements and on his death at 91 at his home in Seaside, California.

The Pentagon Papers

Gravel's most famous act came in 1971, when he used a one-man filibuster to protest the Vietnam-era draft and read roughly 4,100 of the 7,000 pages of the leaked Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the newspapers that had published the documents a day after his filibuster. This record of defying official secrecy is the background against which his later statements on UFO secrecy were read.

The 2013 UFO hearing

In May 2013 Gravel spoke at the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure at the National Press Club, a five-day event organized by Paradigm Research Group. ABC News/Good Morning America reported that the group paid him and several former lawmakers $20,000 each to attend, and that the event was framed in a skeptical tone, with its conspiracy theories described as abundant.

Gravel's central argument was that testimony from former Air Force missile crew members about UFOs affecting nuclear missiles was "the smoking gun" of government secrecy. He said the cover-up runs down the chain of command once the White House says there is nothing to see, and he added that something may be monitoring the planet cautiously because humanity is a warlike species. The Blaze carried these remarks under a headline calling them wild claims.

Assessment

The claims are Gravel's own opinions, not official findings. The missile-crew accounts he cited have been debated within ufology for decades without establishing the cover-up he described. The hearing itself was organized by UFO advocates and the coverage available is not neutral. Gravel's 2013 statements are best understood as a late-career public endorsement of disclosure rather than as a contribution to the evidence base.