Clerk and Doorkeeper were merely carrying out directions that were protected by the Speech or Debate Clause. In each case, protecting the rights of others may have to some extent frustrated a planned or completed legislative act; but relief could be afforded without proof of a legislative act or the motives or purposes underlying such an act. No threat to legislative independence was posed, and Speech or Debate Clause protection did not attach.

None of this, as we see it, involves distinguishing between a Senator and his personal aides with respect to legislative immunity. In Kilbourn-type situations, both aide and Member should be immune with respect to committee and House action leading to the illegal resolution. So, too, in Eastland, as in this litigation, senatorial aides should enjoy immunity for helping a Member conduct committee hearings. On the other hand, no prior case has held that Members of Congress would be immune if they executed an invalid resolution by themselves carrying out an illegal arrest, or if, in order to secure information for a hearing, themselves seized the property or invaded the privacy of a citizen. Neither they nor their aides should be immune from liability or questioning in such circumstances. Such acts are no more essential to legislating than the conduct held unprotected in United States v. Johnson, 383 U. S. 169 (1966).12

The United States fears the abuses that history reveals have occurred when legislators are invested with the power to relieve others from the operation of otherwise valid civil and criminal laws. But these abuses, it seems to us, are for the most part obviated if the privilege applicable to the aide is viewed, as it must be, as the

12 Senator Gravel is willing to assume that if he personally had "stolen" the Pentagon Papers, and that act were a crime, he could be prosecuted, as could aides or other assistants who participated in the theft. Consolidated Brief for Senator Gravel 93.

privilege of the Senator, and invocable only by the Senator or by the aide on the Senator's behalf,13 and if in all events the privilege available to the aide is confined to those services that would be immune legislative conduct if performed by the Senator himself. This view places beyond the Speech or Debate Clause a variety of services characteristically performed by aides for Members of Congress, even though within the scope of their employment. It likewise provides no protection for criminal conduct threatening the security of the person or property of others, whether performed at the direction of the Senator in preparation for or in execution of a legislative act or done without his knowledge or direction. Neither does it immunize Senator or aide from testifying at trials or grand jury proceedings involving third-party crimes where the questions do not require testimony about or impugn a legislative act. Thus our refusal to distinguish between Senator and aide in applying the Speech or Debate Clause does not mean that Rodberg is for all purposes exempt from grand jury questioning.

II

We are convinced also that the Court of Appeals correctly determined that Senator Gravel's alleged arrangement with Beacon Press to publish the Pentagon Papers was not protected speech or debate within the meaning of Art. I, § 6, cl. 1, of the Constitution.

Historically, the English legislative privilege was not viewed as protecting republication of an otherwise immune libel on the floor of the House. Stockdale v. Hansard, 9 Ad. & E., at 114, 112 Eng. Rep., at 1156, recognized that "[f] or speeches made in Parliament by a member to the prejudice of any other person, or hazardous

13 It follows that an aide's claim of privilege can be repudiated and thus waived by the Senator.

to the public peace, that member enjoys complete impu-nity." But it was clearly stated that "if the calumnious or inflammatory speeches should be reported and published, the law will attach responsibility on the publisher."1

14 Stockdale extensively reviewed the precedents and their interplay with the privilege so forcefully recognized in the Bill of Rights of 1689: "That the Freedom of Speech, and Debates or Proceedings in Parliament, ought not to be impeached or questioned in any Court or Place out of Parliament." 1 W. & M., Sess. 2, c. 2. From these cases, including Rex v. Creevey, 1 M. & S. 273, 105 Eng. Rep. 102 (K. B. 1813); Rex v. Wright, 8 T. R. 293, 101 Eng. Rep. 1396 (K. B. 1799); Rex v. Abingdon, 1 Esp. 226, 170 Eng. Rep. 337 (N. P. 1794); Rex v. Williams, 2 Show. K. B. 471, 89 Eng. Rep. 1048 (1686), it is apparent that to the extent English precedent is relevant to the Speech or Debate Clause there is little, if any, support for Senator Gravel's position with respect to republication. Parliament reacted to Stockdale v. Hansard by adopting the Parliamentary Papers Act of 1840, 3 & 4 Vict., c. 9, which stayed proceedings in all cases where it could be shown that publication was by order of a House of Parliament and was a bona fide report, printed and circulated without malice. See generally C. Wittke, The History of English Parliamentary Privilege (1921).

Gravel urges that Stockdale v. Hansard was later repudiated in Wason v. Walter, L. R. 4 Q. B. 73 (1868), which held a proprietor immune from civil libel for an accurate republication of a debate in the House of Lords. But the immunity established in Wason was not founded on parliamentary privilege, id., at 84, but upon analogy to the privilege for reporting judicial proceedings. Id., at 87-90. The Wason court stated its "unhesitating and unqualified adhesion" to the "masterly judgments" rendered in Stockdale and characterized the question before it as whether republication, quite apart from any assertion of parliamentary privilege, was "in itself privileged and lawful." Id., at 86-87. That the privileges for nonmalicious republication of parliamentary and judicial proceedings-later established as qualified-were construed as coextensive in all respects, id., at 95, further underscores the inappositeness of reading Wason as based upon parliamentary privilege that, like the Speech or Debate Clause, is absolute. Much later Holdsworth was to comment that at the time of Wason the distinction between absolute and qualified privilege had not been worked out and that the "part played by

This was accepted in Kilbourn v. Thompson as a "sound statement of the legal effect of the Bill of Rights and of the parliamentary law of England" and as a reasonable basis for inferring "that the framers of the Constitution meant the same thing by the use of language borrowed from that source." 103 U. S., at 202.

Prior cases have read the Speech or Debate Clause "broadly to effectuate its purposes," United States v. Johnson, 383 U. S., at 180, and have included within its reach anything "generally done in a session of the House by one of its members in relation to the business before it." Kilbourn v. Thompson, 103 U. S., at 204; United States v. Johnson, 383 U. S., at 179. Thus, voting by Members and committee reports are protected; and we recognize today-as the Court has recognized before, Kilbourn v. Thompson, 103 U. S., at 204; Tenney v. Brandhove, 341 U. S. 367, 377-378 (1951)—that a Member's conduct at legislative committee hearings, although subject to judicial review in various circumstances, as is legislation itself, may not be made the basis for a civil or criminal judgment against a Member because that conduct is within the "sphere of legitimate legislative activity." Id., at 376.15

But the Clause has not been extended beyond the legis

malice in the tort and crime of defamation" probably helped retard recognition of a qualified privilege. 8 W. Holdsworth, History of English Law 377 (1926).

15 The Court in Tenney v. Brandhove, 341 U. S. 367, 376-377 (1951), was equally clear that "legislative activity" is not all-encompassing, nor may its limits be established by the Legislative Branch: "Legislatures may not of course acquire power by an unwarranted extension of privilege. The House of Commons' claim of power to establish the limits of its privilege has been little more than a pretense since Ashby v. White, 2 Ld. Raym. 938, 3 id. 320. This Court has not hesitated to sustain the rights of private individuals when it found Congress was acting outside its legislative role. Kilbourn v. Thompson, 103 U. S. 168; Marshall v. Gordon, 243 U. S. 521; compare McGrain v. Daugherty, 273 U. S. 135, 176."

lative sphere. That Senators generally perform certain acts in their official capacity as Senators does not necessarily make all such acts legislative in nature. Members of Congress are constantly in touch with the Executive Branch of the Government and with administrative agencies they may cajole, and exhort with respect to the administration of a federal statute-but such conduct, though generally done, is not protected legislative activity. United States v. Johnson decided at least this much. "No argument is made, nor do we think that it could be successfully contended, that the Speech or Debate Clause reaches conduct, such as was involved in the attempt to influence the Department of Justice, that is in no wise related to the due functioning of the legislative process." 383 U. S., at 172. Cf. Burton v. United States, 202 U. S., at 367-368.

Legislative acts are not all-encompassing. The heart of the Clause is speech or debate in either House. Insofar as the Clause is construed to reach other matters, they must be an integral part of the deliberative and communicative processes by which Members participate in committee and House proceedings with respect to the consideration and passage or rejection of proposed legislation or with respect to other matters which the Constitution places within the jurisdiction of either House. As the Court of Appeals put it, the courts have extended the privilege to matters beyond pure speech or debate in either House, but "only when necessary to prevent indirect impairment of such deliberations." United States v. Doe, 455 F. 2d, at 760.

Here, private publication by Senator Gravel through the cooperation of Beacon Press was in no way essential to the deliberations of the Senate; nor does questioning as to private publication threaten the integrity or independence of the Senate by impermissibly exposing its deliberations to executive influence. The Senator