Friday, May 5, 1972
Senate Studies A Study - In Silence
WASHINGTON (AP) --The Senate has kept a shroud of secrecy over its debate on a move by Sen. Mike Gravel to make public a classified Vietnam war study.For four hours and six minutes, senators met behind locked doors late Tuesday and then adjourned without voting to lift the injunction of secrecy on the session."I can't tell you anything," Acting Democratic leader Robert C. Byrd said to newsmen afterward.He cited a Senate rule that makes any member who discloses what goes on in a closed session subject to expulsion and any employe (sic) to dismissal.Other senators were equally close-mouthed, but it was reported that the issue may be debated at another closed session, possibly Thursday.The material Gravel wants to place in the Congressional Record is a study, classified secret, that assessed the Vietnam war situation for President Nixon shortly after he took office in 1969.Titled National Security Study Memorandum 1, and running to over 500 pages, it contains the responses of eight government agencies to questions submitted by presidential aide Henry A. Kissinger about the war.It was leaked recently to various news media, and stories about it and excerpts from the text have been published.Gravel, an Alaska Democrat, who has declined to say how he obtained a copy, said that in his judgment the study contains no military secrets and the public is entitled to the information.Last week, Acting Republican leader Robert P. Griffin of Michigan blocked Gravel's attempt to obtain unanimous consent to place the material in the record.Griffin said it would be highly irresponsible for an individual senator to take it on himself to declassify government documents.Last year Gravel startled his colleagues with a tearful reading of the then-classified Pentagon papers at a midnight meeting of a public-works subcommittee after he had been blocked in an effort to read them in the Senate chamber."Senate Studies a Study - in Silence", by (AP), published in the Pacific Stars and Stripes on Friday, May 5, 1972 and reprinted from European and Pacific Stars and Stripes, a Department of Defense publication copyright, 2002 European and Pacific Stars and Stripes.