Bo Gritz
James Gordon "Bo" Gritz (/ˈɡraɪts/;[1] born January 18, 1939) is a retired United States Army Special Forces officer who served during the Vietnam War.
Following his formal retirement, Gritz claims, with video evidence, to have trained the Afghan mujahideen in America on behalf of the government.
[13][14] Gritz's missions were initially supported by elements of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 1981, and later financed by high-profile donors like Clint Eastwood and Ross Perot.
[17] Despite his efforts, Gritz was unable to provide any concrete evidence of the existence of the POWs when he testified as a witness before the House committee headed by Stephen Solarz in 1983.
For instance, some commentators pointed out that supposedly secret missions involved women openly selling commemorative POW-rescue T-shirts in border towns.
[22][23] Thai authorities expressed concern that Vietnamese forces in Laos would retaliate against them for cross-border armed intrusions and threatened to jail Gritz for 20 years.
[24] Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach called Gritz's actions "a flagrant violation of the sovereignty of Laos that everyone should denounce.
He returned with a videotaped interview in which Khun Sa named several officials in the Reagan administration as allegedly involved in narcotics trafficking in Southeast Asia.
During this time, Gritz established contacts with the Christic Institute, a progressive group that was then pursuing a lawsuit against the U.S. government over charges of drug trafficking in both Southeast Asia and Central America.
After meeting Duke, Gritz described him as "a brash, untraveled, overly opinionated, bigoted young man" and declared, "I will not support anyone that I know to hate any class of Americans.
Speakers at the conference included 1980 October Surprise theory researcher Barbara Honegger, Bill Davis of the Christic Institute, far-right writer Eustace Mullins, and others.
He appeared on Pacifica Radio stations in California as a guest several times, and for a short period he was sought after as a speaker to left-wing and anti-war audiences.
[2] During the campaign, Gritz openly declared the United States to be a "Christian Nation", asserting that the country's legal statutes "should reflect unashamed acceptance of Almighty God and His Laws.
[2] In 1994, Gritz, former Arizona State Senator Jerry Gillespie, and other partners established a 200-acre survivalist community and paramilitary training center in Kamiah, Idaho, called Almost Heaven.
[38] Almost Heaven was falling apart already before his departure, in part due to conflicts with local authorities and residents as well as between Gritz and an internal radical faction;[36] the community was near defunct by 2003.
[41] In 1996, Gritz unsuccessfully attempted to negotiate an end to the standoff involving the Montana Freemen, an anti-government White separatist militia group.
[43] In 1998, Gritz led an unsuccessful search for the Centennial Olympic Park bomber, Eric Rudolph, with the aim of persuading him to surrender to law enforcement.
On 19 March 2005, following the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube, Gritz was arrested for trespassing after attempting to enter the hospice where she was residing.
The 2017 documentary Erase and Forget saw filmmaker Andrea Luka Zimmerman follow Gritz for over a decade, including re-enactments of scenes from his life.
