Bo Gritz
Vietnam Veteran & Military Adventurer
Part 1: 1939-1986 

Lt. Col. James Gordon “Bo” Gritz

2,275 words

Part 1 of 2

The 1992 United States presidential election was one in which both candidates for the two mainstream parties offered the electorate nothing more than sweeping neo-liberal economic policies as well as continued military involvement in far-off foreign lands. The third-party candidate who had different ideas was Ross Perot, a Texas billionaire. Perot won 18% of the national vote, taking votes which otherwise might have gone to Bush, thus helping Bill Clinton to win.

Besides them, three “Rightist” politicians made notable appearances during the campaign. The first was Pat Buchanan, who ran as a Republican on a platform that endorsed protectionism for American industry, to put it simply. David Duke, a serious and principled white advocate, also ran as a Republican. The third was retired Lieutenant Colonel James Gordon “Bo” Gritz of the Populist Party, a party which had been formed in 1984 by Willis Carto.

Bo Gritz, who was born in 1939 and is still alive today, was involved in significant historical events from the early 1960s until the mid-1990s.  His career is said to have inspired the TV show The A-Team, the movie Rambo: First Blood Part II, as well as the Missing in Action series that starred Chuck Norris. His political activities were dual-natured; he tended to focus on distractions as well as vital issues.

Gritz was born on January 18, 1939 in Enid, Oklahoma. He had German, Yankee, and Anglo-Pennsylvanian ancestry. His grandfather had served in the First World War, and a great-grandfather had served in the Union Army. His father, Roy Loyd Gritz, died in combat while serving in the US Army Air Corps in 1944. His mother served as a ferry pilot, flying new aircraft to combat zones. Gritz’s uncles likewise served in the military during the conflict.

In Called to Serve, his 1991 autobiography, Gritz only vaguely describes his family. The book includes photos of his veteran grandfather and great-grandfather, but the captions under the images don’t provide any names or regiment numbers. By 1991 Gritz had been married three times and divorced twice, but the book says nothing about his first wife, Deloris Beneditti. He married her in 1957 and had two children with her. He then married an ethnic Chinese prostitute from Vietnam named Tan Muoi Tu in 1968. Gritz was granted a divorce from her by the Commonwealth of Virginia on October 15, 1974 on grounds of desertion; she’d left him after they had two children. Shortly after his second divorce, he married Claudia King, who was 16 at the time.

Vietnam

Given that both of his parents were serving in the military during the Second World War, Gritz was raised by his grandparents. He attended Fork Union Military Academy in Virginia and enlisted in the US Army shortly after graduation. He attended officer candidate school and was promoted to Captain in 1963. When President Kennedy sent the first US military advisors and Special Forces units to South Vietnam, Captain Gritz was with them. He served in the Special Forces as the leader of a group of Cambodian mercenary fighters.

In Called to Serve, Gritz writes in depth about his service in Vietnam and he ably describes the problems the Americans faced there. The climate and terrain were as hostile as the enemy. On one mission, Gritz’s command nearly died of thirst while advancing during the dry season. The Vietnamese were also well-hidden in the jungle. In one engagement, an armed Viet Cong guerrilla popped out of a spider hole nearby and would have killed Gritz, but his ammunition failed to discharge when he attempted to fire.

America’s allies were likewise difficult. The mercenaries Gritz commanded were motivated solely by money and avoided fighting whenever they could. Additionally, the missions in which Gritz participated didn’t do anything to win the war despite the fact that they incurred the same risks as a decisive attack would have. In late 1966, Gritz and his team were sent to recover a classified radar jammer from a crashed U-2 spy plane. Gritz and his men had to infiltrate a Viet Cong base to each it. The story of the recovery is one of derring-do, but even though it was successful, it didn’t alter the war’s unsuccessful outcome.

You can buy Greg Johnson’s Against Imperialism here.

After American combat divisions first began arriving in Vietnam in 1965, Gritz’s Cambodians were used as bait in one battle to lure the Vietnamese into an exposed position where the 1st Infantry Division could destroy them. Gritz carried out his part of the plan, but the fighting went so badly that the 1st Infantry Division’s commander did not engage with the enemy, and Gritz’s battalion was nearly destroyed itself.

Early in the war, General William Westmorland decided that no particular part of South Vietnam was critical for the US to hold. Instead, success was measured by the number of enemy bodies that were found after a battle, i.e. the “body count.” The aim of this strategy was to win by attrition, but this approach proved to be problematic. Dishonest officers simply invented the numbers of enemy slain, while more honest ones killed everyone who moved even if they were not hostile in order to get their numbers up. This incentive made massacres such as the one at My Lai inevitable. Gritz himself was frustrated by this misguided strategy.

The missing

After serving for six years in Vietnam, Gritz was sent to Panama. What he discovered there was a problem that all American administrations face: Once a particular soldier or politician becomes “America’s man on the spot,” he can get away with all sorts of illicit behavior. Manuel Noriega was America’s man on the spot in Panama, and Gritz discovered that he was heavily involved in drug smuggling. In 1983 he would become dictator of the country.

Gritz believed that the CIA was receiving illicit funds by cooperating with Noriega and other drug smugglers in Latin America via a program called Operation Watchtower. This accusation has never been proven, but is certainly possible. The TV news program 60 Minutes likewise received a tip on this story in the 1980s but didn’t follow up on it.[1]

Gritz also pointed out some Jewish issues which were ongoing in Latin America at this time. A Mossad agent named Michael Harari was involved in Operation Watchtower and was active in supplying Israeli weapons and espionage technology to Panama and Guatemala. This technology had been given to Israel by the US on the condition that it would not be transferred to any other country. The Israelis likewise sold weapons they had been provided by the US to Honduras.

Late in his term of office, President Carter wisely attempted to pull US troops out of South Korea, but the Pentagon produced intelligence with Gritz’s involvement which claimed that North Korean troops and equipment levels had recently doubled. The report became part of a political battle between various factions in the US security bureaucracy, and at the end of it all, Americans remained in Korea. Gritz favored keeping US troops in Korea at the time given that the Cold War was ongoing.

Gritz was also involved in selling weapons to the Shah of Iran during the late 1970s. This is when he recognized just how out-of-control the military-industrial complex had become. He realized that American arms dealers can lobby for policies that will lead to wars abroad and then sell the weapons to wage them. The costs of this are enormous, especially given that such wars grow the nation’s debt. Gritz did not recognize that foreign pressure groups also influence American policy to support one country over another.

Gritz retired as a Lieutenant Colonel in 1979 as one of the most highly-decorated veterans. All military careers are can be subjected to criticism, however. Critics have pointed to the fact that military awards were inflated during the Vietnam War, and also claim that Gritz was awarded multiple medals for the same actions. Nonetheless, his service was certainly valorous. When he relates stories from his military service, he includes the names of the men he was with as well as the dates — and nobody has come forward to claim that Gritz was lying about any of it.

Gritz voted for Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election. His new administration had a very different view of Vietnam than had the outgoing Carter team. Regan held that the war had been a noble cause and was troubled by allegations that missing Americans were still being held prisoner in Southeast Asia. This concern dated back to the time of the war itself. President Nixon had rallied the country to supporting his efforts by promoting the cause of American prisoners of war (POWs) that were then being held in North Vietnam. When the US’ military involvement in the war ended in 1973, many American POWs were freed, but more than a thousand Americans were listed as missing in action (MIA). Reagan won in 1980 in part because he had tapped into the public’s lingering anger over Vietnam, expressing concern for those who remained missing.

The status of America’s soldiers who went missing during Vietnam, as well as the plight of Americans being held captive elsewhere, became a political issue for the next two decades. During the 1980s, some young women wore metal bracelets engraved with the name of a missing soldier. When I was a cadet, I participated in a POW/MIA vigil in the mid-1990s in which I stood guard at a flagpole. The vigil became a circus when overweight, slovenly-dressed “tough guys” handed out literature and broadsides that made claims about the missing men. One Christian cadet also attempted to proselytize in uniform, which caused a Jewish female cadet to become angry and quit. Attractive young women would also approach and chat with the cadets who were standing guard at parade rest. The POW/MIA issue was a very real phenomenon at the time.

You can buy Tito Perdue’s novel The New Austerities here.

Bo Gritz was one of the most credible and serious promoters of the MIA cause. He pointed out that Americans had vanished in the Communist world dating back to the US intervention against the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1919, as well as in later conflicts. Gritz was certain that there were still Americans being held in Southeast Asia. He suspected they were being held in Laos, based on images of Caucasians in what appeared to be prison camps that were photographed from the air.

The Reagan administration recruited many Vietnam veterans who stood on the political Right and sent them to participate in clandestine operations abroad so that they could not cause trouble at home. Gritz was a perfect candidate for this. The Reagan administration claimed that Gritz never had official authorization to go looking for MIAs in Laos. By his own account, however, the administration did initially support his quest, but withdrew its support at the last minute. He instead received funding for his mission from private donors, including Ross Perot and Clint Eastwood.

The MIA hunt was called Operation Lazarus. Gritz recruited a team of Laotians and Americans who infiltrated Laos through Thailand in early 1983. Gritz’s account of the operation is filled with military jargon and many details. The operation didn’t lead to the discovery of any MIAs, although one of the Laotians on the team was killed. One of the American members was imprisoned in Thailand and a diplomatic row between its government and the US followed, since Gritz had been operating there illegally.

Gritz was recruited by the White House in 1986 to infiltrate Burma’s Golden Triangle and search for missing American POWs rumored to be held there. He did not find any Americans, but he did make contact with a local drug warlord named General Khun Sa. Gritz worked out a deal with Khun Sa for him to sell his entire heroin supply to the US government for less than its street value so that they could be destroyed. The Reagan administration didn’t accept this opportunity, however, and Gritz was encouraged to “erase and forget” what he had discovered.

Khun Sa also claimed that American government officials were involved in drug smuggling. He may have been making this up, but we’ll never know for certain. Gritz described the accusations in Called to Serve. Ross Perot was one of those who believed him. One of the officials said to be involved in drug smuggling was Richard Armitage, who was then Reagan’s Assistant Secretary of Defense in charge of POW/MIA affairs. As a result of this, Perot campaigned against Armitage throughout the late 1980s, which sank Armitage’s chances for a higher-level cabinet job. Armitage was later appointed as a Special Envoy to several different Asian countries by President George H. W. Bush. For his part in the debacle, Gritz was targeted by the US Department of Justice for having carried a “false passport” during his trip to Burma, although he beat the charges on a technicality. The prosecuting attorney claimed that President Bush had ordered the charge in order to pay Gritz back for his accusations.

Gritz was likewise involved in supporting the Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet-Afghan War. During one classified high-level briefing, an official Gritz believed was a Jewish Mossad agent warned that Islam was a threat and that arming the mujahideen would lead to trouble later. Gritz saw Communism as a greater threat, however — a perspective which seemed sensible at the time.

Note

[1] In his effort to supply the Contras in their war against the Communist government of Nicaraguan, one of President Reagan’s staffers, Oliver North, campaigned to obtain money from private donors. It is possible that drug lords were among those who donated in the expectation that the US government would assist, or at least tolerate, their activities. What cannot be argued is that the US was certainly flooded with cocaine in the 1980s.