Mike Gravel, former US senator from Alaska, dead at 91

Mike Gravel, a former U.S. senator from Alaska who read the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record and confronted Barack Obama about nuclear weapons during a later presidential run, has died. He was 91.

Gravel’s two terms came during tumultuous years for Alaska, when construction of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline was authorized and when Congress was deciding how to settle Alaska Native land claims and whether to classify enormous amounts of federal land as parks, preserves and monuments. He had the unenviable position of being an Alaska Democrat when some residents were burning President Jimmy Carter in effigy for his measures placing large sections of public lands in the state under protection from development.