Colonel Gritz’s Dubious Mission

Congress gets an earful

“It’s a good day to die,” declared James Gordon (“Bo”) Gritz. The date was Nov. 27, 1982, and Gritz, 44, a swashbuckling former Green Beret, was about to lead three American daredevils and 15 Laotians on an improvised commando raid across the Mekong River. Their scheme: a 14-day trek to rescue American prisoners of war in the jungles of eastern Laos. After only three days, however, the bravado of “Operation Lazarus” was abruptly buried when a band of local guerrillas ambushed the raiders, killing two Laotians, capturing an American, and forcing the others to turn tail.

Four weeks ago, after parting with $17,000 to ransom his captured colleague, seeing two fellow mavericks arrested, and attempting fresh tragicomic excursions into Laos, Gritz (rhymes with sights) sauntered into a police station in north eastern Thailand and surrendered. He and four associates were each fined for the illegal possession of a high-powered radio, then released.

Cool and self-assured as ever, Gritz swaggered into a new mission last week: explaining his bungled exploits to the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs. There, seasoning his testimony with heroic nourishes, he reaffirmed his conviction that at least 50 American servicemen are still stranded in Indochina. Under questioning, however, each of Gritz’s “facts” seemed to dissolve into fiction. His photographs of alleged prison camps revealed nothing but Laotian terrain; his claims that he had heard of sighted prisoners were, he conceded, beyond empirical proof. Pressed for concrete evidence, the imperturbable Gritz finally replied, “I have the same evidence that might be presented to a convention of clergymen that God exists.” After he stepped down, one witness after another demolished what little remained of his credibility.

Gritz’s mission implausible grew out of the reality that 2,494 Americans were never found after the Viet Nam War, including 568 left unaccounted for in Laos. By now, all but two are listed as “presumed dead.” Most of the 484 “sightings” reported over the years have been as hazy and hopeful as the spotting of UFOs. After investigating the issue closely, a 1976 congressional committee concluded that no American prisoners survive. Yet Vietnamese prevarication, U.S. Government secrecy, and resilient wishfulness — especially among the National League of Families (N.L.F.), most of whose members are related to missing men — have conspired to keep hope, if nothing else, alive.

Gritz, the son of a B-17 pilot shot down over France in 1944, is a self-appointed caretaker of those hopes. Decorated 60 times during the Viet Nam War, he once led 250 Cambodian mercenaries on a daring raid that attacked 53 Viet Cong camps in 60 days; he lost only one man. Even after he left the Army in 1979 as a lieutenant colonel, Gritz never really left Indochina. In 1981 he rounded up 21 drifters, dreamers and desperadoes, recruited a psychic, a hypnotherapist and some reporters, and began practicing quixotic Laotian expeditions at an unlikely locale: the American Cheerleading Association Academy in Leesburg, Fla.

“Operation Velvet Hammer” was scratched before the buccaneers ever left training camp, but not before Gritz had squandered $40,000 raised from N.L.F. members. A subsequent “Operation Grand Eagle” also fizzled out prematurely. Says Tom Smith, one of Gritz’s many disaffected recruits: “I wouldn’t cross the street with this guy. He’s suffering from the early stages of ‘burning a bush’ complex.” Yet when Gritz rented a $1,000-a-month base in the remote northeastern Thailand town of Nakhon Phanom last fall, he was able to attract more than a dozen operatives, some desperate to recover the danger and exhilaration they knew in Viet Nam. Their impossibly romantic venture also seduced some improbable sponsors. Taken with Gritz’s dashing charisma, William Shatner paid almost $15,000 for Gritz’s life story; Litton Industries, Inc., provided $800,000 worth of radio equipment, which Gritz later tried to sell back to them for $31,000; Clint Eastwood reportedly contributed $50,000.

Gritz contends that his escapades have been conducted with Pentagon data and CIA support. But while the U.S. embassy in Bangkok is often willing to trade information with freelancing irregulars, the Government in Washington insists that it scrupulously dissociates itself from such adventurism. Small wonder. “At one point last year,” complains a U.S. diplomat, “we had over 30 Viet Nam veterans preparing trips to Laos.”

Though President Reagan personally addressed the N.L.F. at a special conference in January to demonstrate his sympathy, the Administration’s stated policy is to seek the return of any missing U.S. servicemen through diplomatic pressure. Concludes Daniel O’Donohue, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs: “When private Americans try to force their own solutions, our government-to-government efforts are jeopardized.” — By Pico Iyer. Reported by Victoria Butler/Bangkok and Ross H. Munro/Washington