Tenure
Stevenson took his seat on November 17, 1970.
Stevenson opposed the Vietnam War. He condemned Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Indochina policies and the violent police tactics at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, renewed his attacks on Republican President Richard Nixon’s prosecution of the war. He also introduced legislation requiring an end to all aid to South Vietnam by June 30, 1975.
Stevenson was highly critical of Republican President Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal. He called on Nixon to answer for the integrity of the country’s leaders. “All of us — Republicans and Democrats — have an interest in clearing the record," he said a year before Nixon resigned in disgrace. “The faith of the people in their system and their leaders — a faith that has already been shaken enough — is at stake."
Stevenson authored the International Banking Act of 1978, the Stevenson–Wydler Technology Innovation Act of 1980 and its companion, the Bayh–Dole Act, to foster cooperative research, organize national laboratories for technology utilization and commercialization, and permit private sector interests in government-funded research. He was the first chairman of the United States Senate Select Committee on Ethics charged with implementing a code of ethics he helped draft. Stevenson was also chairman of a special Senate committee that reorganized the Senate and served on the United States Senate Democratic Policy Committee. He also conducted the first in-depth congressional study of terrorism as chairman of the Subcommittee on the Collection and Production of Intelligence, leading to introduction of the Comprehensive Counter Terrorism Act of 1971. He warned of "spectacular acts of disruption and destruction" and an amendment that proposed reducing assistance for Israel by $200 million. His amendment received seven votes.
Stevenson was initially a strong supporter of Israel, but was critical of the influence of American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on US politics. Stevenson had sharp differences with the Israeli lobby on issues concerning the Middle East, including a 1979 vote to cut military assistance to Israel by 10 percent and support of a 1978 weapons sale to Saudi Arabia. AIPAC also criticized his meeting with PLO leader Yasser Arafat.
In a letter to Jewish leader Hyman Bookbinder in 1980, Stevenson wrote:"It is the Israeli lobby, led by AIPAC, which I deplore. It does not speak for all Jewry, including Israeli Jewry. Yet it exercises an inordinate degree of influence with weak public officials. I deplore their subservience to the vagaries of a foreign government."
