Gravel v. United States

The Supreme Court ruled that congressional aides are in fact "alter egos" of the legislators for whom they work. As such, their speech receives special protection under the Constitution's Speech or Debate Clause.

The Pentagon Papers is the popular name given to a secret study done from 1967 to 1969 by a team of analysts for the U.S. Department of Defense. The 47-volume study (officially called "History of the U.S. Decision-Making Process on Vietnam Policy") sharply criticized the U.S. policies in Southeast Asia that led to the Vietnam War and stated that the government had misrepresented its role there to the American people. In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg, who had access to the study, released it to the New York Times, which began publishing excerpts in a series of articles.

On 29 June 1971, Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska called a meeting of the Senate Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds. He began to read aloud from the Pentagon Papers and place their full text into the subcommittee's official record. Later, Gravel provided a copy of the documents to Beacon Press, a Boston publishing house, which did in fact publish them. A federal grand jury investigated to determine whether Gravel had broken the law in releasing the sensitive documents to the public. One of his aides, Leonard Rodberg, was called to testify before this grand jury. Gravel and Rodberg moved to block this action, on the grounds that Article I, Section 6 of the U.S. Constitution, known as the Speech or Debate Clause, extends immunity to the actions of congressional staff workers when they act on behalf of members of Congress.

The case came before the U.S. Court of Appeals, which issued a mixed decision. It held that the commercial publication of the Papers was not protected under the Speech or Debate Clause because it was not a legislative act. However, neither Gravel nor Rodberg could be questioned by a grand jury. The case was then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed to hear it and issued its ruling on 29 June 1972.