Bo Gritz, Perot and the POW Myth
Brian Wright
>From the book PRISONERS OF HOPE; Exploiting the POW/MIA Myth in
America, by Susan Katz Keating.
After the war, POW rescue missions lost their urgency and
faded from public consciousness. But in 1979 the concept resurfaced
in a spectacular fashion, when the Son Tay raid's Colonel
Simons was credited for rescuing two of Ross Perot's employees
being held captive in Iran. The rescue made instant heroes of Perot
and Colonel Simons. Perot and the colonel, who has since died,
are still recognized for their part in the mission; but contrary to
popular myth, neither Perot nor Colonel Simons had a hand in
freeing the imprisoned employees.
The truth was uncovered when Reader's Digest assigned one
of its writers, Nathan Adams, to write a book about the adventure.
Adams was given free rein at Perot's Dallas office. Perot was
apparently unprepared for the meticulous research that goes into
Reader 's Digest projects. From his place inside the Perot sanctum,
Adams uncovered the unsettling truth: Colonel Simons had indeed
planned to rescue Perot's employees. But in a replay of the Son
Tay scenario, the colonel's plans had been circumvented. Before
Simons had a chance to carry out his mission, a rampaging mob
had stormed the jail and released all the prisoners, including the
American civilians. Once free, the Americans simply walked to the
hotel where they knew their would-be saviors were staying.
"I have the utmost respect for Ross Perot," Adams told me.
"His group had planned a prison assault, but it just didn't happen."
Reader's Digest said nothing publicly but quietly dropped the
book. Novelist Ken Follett later wrote about the Iran rescue
mission in his best-selling On Wings of Eagles. Long before the book
appeared, however, the rescue was much admired by the activist
community. Among those who knew of it was retired Army
Lieutenant Colonel James "Bo" Gritz.
Gritz has most recently been in the news for his short-lived
1992 presidential bid, as well as for his role in persuading white
separatist Randy Weaver to surrender after a shootout with federal
marshals in Idaho.
At best, Gritz is an inveterate publicity hound who thrives on
excitement and theatrics. He is also a genuine war hero who seems
determined to be a legend. On his resume, he portrays himself as
the quintessential secret operative who has barely had time between
missions to take the knife blade from between his teeth. He
boasts that he was the inspiration for the main characters in the
films Rambo, Uncommon Valor, and Mission MIA. He says he is a
certified hypnotherapist and is fluent in Swahili and Mandarin. He
has five objectives: to restore constitutional sovereignty; resist
global rule; return the POWs; win the war on drugs; and revive
integrity and accountability within government (in that order).
But if Gritz at first comes across as an amusing egotist, he is
also a charismatic leader gone wrong, a man who has toyed with
human lives while in pursuit of his goals. In the process, he has
earned a dubious distinction, a place of note among the charlatans
whose claims have so distorted the MIA issue; for it is Bo Gritz,
American hero, who is directly responsible for constructing much
of the framework that supports the POW hoax today.
MlAs have long been a part of Gritz's life. His father, a pilot
for the Army Air Corps, disappeared while flying a mission in
World War II. Gritz's mother was also absent from home, working
as a wartime ferry pilot. Young Bo was raised by his grandparents,
who encouraged his military fantasies. His Grandmother sent
him on nightly make-believe missions with his father and read to
him daily about the exploits of fictional air commandos. Little Bo
took on a soldier's mantle; old family photographs show him in
military uniform from the time he was a toddler.
At age 14, Bo used the proceeds from his father's $10,000 life
insurance policy to attend military school in Virginia. There
his fantasies came true. He did well at Fork Lincoln Military
Academy, rising to cadet corps commander in his senior year.
Gritz's graduation picture shows a heartbreakingly handsome
teenager who could have gone straight from school to a career in
Hollywood. Instead he chose the Army, where he found his niche
in the newly formed Special Forces.
Gritz was smart, daring, and inspiring, His exploits were
rewarded with an enviable array of decorations. He became a
celebrity among his peers. But even then, his reputation was
controversial.
In 1966 Gritz led a raid into Cambodia in search of the black
box from a downed U-2 spy plane. The raid was carried out at the
request of President Johnson, who was afraid the Soviets might
acquire the secret codes contained in the black box. As Gritz tells
it, he arrived at the crash site and found that the box was gone.
He followed sandal tracks to a nearby NVA camp, then led a
guerrilla assault and recovered the black box.
Other Green Berets say there was no firefight--that Gritz
found the black box at the crash site and returned it without
incident. For his efforts he was awarded a Bronze Star for
meritorious service, without the Valor device.
The military community is divided on the topic of Gritz.
Former General William C. Westmoreland portrayed Gritz as a
hero in his 1976 memoir, A Soldier Reports. Others insist Gritz
does not have the war record he claims and that he has not been
awarded all the medals he displays on his uniform.
Gritz's 22 year career ended in 1978 under mysterious
circumstances. According to Gritz, the late General Harold
Aaron, while deputy director of the DIA, asked Gritz to retire and
lead private rescue missions into Indochina. After General Aaron
died, Gritz circulated a letter from the general implying Gritz was
associated with the DIA; the FBI determined the letter was a
forgery.
Pentagon sources tell me the real reason Gritz retired was
that he was pressured into leaving by superiors who felt he had
"done a Colonel Kurtz," meaning he was uncontrollable, like the
character in the Joseph Conrad novel Heart of Darkness.
Whatever the reasons for Gritz's retirement, it came soon
after the supposed rescue in Iran. Gritz lost little time in
contacting Perot and asked the Texas businessman to fund a private
POW rescue mission run by Gritz and Colonel Simons.
The request was not as audacious as it may sound. Perot had
been funding secret private rescue attempts since 1975. He would
eventually finance about twenty failed raids and would become one
of the more persistent MIA activists. He phoned the Nixon White
House so frequently with news of POWs that the administration
thought he was obsessed; an aide finally told him to "Goddamn
stop calling." Later, Perot would pledge $ 2.5 million to the
Reagan Library and renege on $2 million in retaliation for Reagan's
supposed lack of interest in POWs. But even Perot made
some sensible decisions in the course of his obsession. After meeting
with Gritz, who flew to Dallas on money supplied by Perot,
the billionaire declined to fund the Project.
Gritz left Texas empty-handed but arrived home with a
strange boast. Gritz said that Perot had given him an assignment
from DIA Director Tighe to rescue POWs. Gritz described the
assignment as a "quasi go-ahead" from the U.S. government.
A small portion of the story was true. Gritz had recently
acquired a "quasi go-ahead", but not from General Tighe. The
assignment had come from one of Gritz's old Special Forces
buddies, who was now working for the Army's secretive Intelligence
Support Activity.
In the early 1980s, the ISA was what was left of the Foreign
Operating Group, formed in 1979 to plan the rescue of American
hostages held at the U.S. embassy in Tehran. The ISA had conducted
several successful missions the world over. By 1981 the
unit had run afoul of Pentagon bureaucrats, who viewed it as a
rogue operation that deemed itself accountable to no one. In 1982
Deputy Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci ordered the ISA
disbanded . The organization was salvaged when it was reorganized
into a more controlled--and controllable--entity. But at the time
Gritz was in the market for a mission, the ISA still enjoyed
considerable autonomy. One of its members, code-named Shipman,
was Gritz's old buddy from the Special Forces. It was
Shipman, acting on his own, who provided the "quasi go-ahead"
that would prompt Gritz to organize his first POW rescue mission,
operation Velvet Hammer.
The underpinnings of Velvet Hammer were formed in late
1980, when Loh Tharaphant, an ethnic Vietnamese living in
Thailand, approached American agents about POWs being held
in Laos . Tharaphant's tale was persuasive enough to prompt a
spy plane reconnaissance flight. The resulting picture of "Fort
Apache" was intriguing but inconclusive. It showed a large facility
with walls, fences, and two guard towers. It had standing
figures whose shadows seemed to indicate they were taller than
Asians and sitting figures who did not squat like Asians. In addition,
the picture had what appeared to be the symbols B and 52 stamped
out in the grass. A copy of the picture was given to the ISA.
In February 1981 the United States dispatched a covert team
to reconnoiter the site. No Americans were used on the mission,
just Thai and mainly Laotian operatives. Tharaphant briefed the
team, explaining how to reach Fort Apache and where to spot the
Americans.
But after a lengthy, risky stakeout, the team found no evidence
of POWs. The camp looked as if it had been deserted for
some time. The DIA suspected a setup and asked Tharaphant to
take a polygraph test. He failed several tests, and the DIA
dismissed him.
There still remained the question of Fort Apache. The DIA
believed it was most likely a former reeducation camp, temporarily
invaded by Tharaphant while he was staging the photograph. As
for the so-called B-52 figures, expert analysts decided they were
not deliberate but were naturally occurring shadows.
Nonetheless, the ISA 's Shipman believed the photo showed
a POW camp. He called his friend Bo Gritz and surreptitiously
gave him the classified Fort Apache picture. Gritz wanted to
organize a private rescue raid. Shipman said he could arrange
funding from ISA.
News of Gritz's impending mission eventually reached the
DIA's Admiral Allen Paulson, who was assistant vice-director for
collection management. Paulson was no fan of Gritz, thinking him
an unstable glory seeker. Paulson would later tell Congress that
the best thing Gritz could do for the POW issue would be to find
another activity. When Paulson learned that the ISA had actually
given money to Gritz, he was furious. He declared that Gritz was
not to receive any government cooperation. He also asked that
Gritz return the Fort Apache picture. Gritz refused. The "quasi
go-ahead" was now officially countermanded, but Gritz was determined
to carry on.
Gritz got out his old Special Forces directory and called on
former comrades to join in a POW rescue. Gritz offered each man
$7,000 to participate in Operation Velvet Hammer. The respondents
thought they were part of a secret government project.
Gritz assembled his team at a cheerleading camp in Leesburg,
Florida. In addition to the combat veterans, Gritz also recruited
some unconventional rescuers, including a psychic and a hypno-
therapist; but the strangest participant by far was Ann Mills
Griffiths of the National League of Families. Griffiths has since
dissociated herself from Gritz, but at the time the two were close
allies. Lofty rhetoric notwithstanding, Velvet Hammer got off to
a ludicrous start. Gritz invited two reporters to witness the training
for the clandestine mission. He admitted the journalists only
after threatening to kill them if they compromised the mission by
reporting the story too early.
Inside the cheerleading camp, Gritz told his team they would
raid the Fort Apache compound in Laos. He explained that he had
a reconnaissance photo of the camp but refused to show the Picture
to anyone . A description of the prison was instead provided by the
psychic, Karen Page, who saw the camp layout in a vision. Page
said she intuited that the compound contained a building in an area
surrounded by barbed wire . She said the building sat atop an
underground tunnel that held a row of cells. Each cell door had a
dog tag attached to it, identifying the POW inside. She was not
able to read the names on the dog tags. Page said the prisoners
spent their days digging up bamboo shoots near the edge of the
jungle.
The team members could not believe their own senses. The
Son Tay raid had been rehearsed meticulously, using exact replicas
of the prison compound. Now Gritz was planning an attack based
on psychic visions and a single aerial photo only he had seen.
Oblivious to the doubts that were already afflicting the team,
Gritz told his men they would set up a base at the Nana Hotel in
Bangkok. There would be a forward operating station at Nakhon
Phanom. The men would use state-of-the-art equipment, including
covertly obtained experimental devices, to swoop down on
Fort Apache. Central to the mission was an item that had not yet
been tested in combat, an inflatable rubber aircraft.
The team members grew even more dubious as they pictured
themselves hiding in the jungle under cover of darkness, fervently
pumping air into the untested plane.
The rest of the mission sounded as if it might have been
cooked up by little Bo as he sat on his grandmother's knee. Once
the POWs were in hand, the team would send word via its series
of relay stations to the base commander at the Nana Hotel. The
Nana commander would notify Griffiths, who was on standby in
Washington. Griffiths was then supposed to call her contacts at the
DIA, who would tell the President to order the Seventh Fleet to
dispatch helicopters to rescue the entire group of raiders and
prisoners . To preserve secrecy, none of the agencies involved
would know anything of the rescue until Griffiths made her call to
Washington.
Training for Velvet Hammer consisted of morning and evening
exercise sessions, plus group hypnosis and church services.
Gritz was the preacher, telling the assembled he had been ordained
by God to rescue POWs. The team members were his disciples.
In one session, Gritz told his men they would all be issued cyanide
capsules, which would be wired to their teeth. If they were
captured or tortured, Gritz explained, they could simply bite
down on the capsules . Gritz tried to energize his men with talk of
their forthcoming victory parade up Fifth Avenue in New York.
He rhapsodized about having a book, and then a movie, detailing
the success of Operation Velvet Hammer. He was so enthralled
with the idea of having his own Wings of Eagles glory, he allowed
two more journalists to enter the camp. Again under threat of
death, the reporters were told they could not write their stories
before the mission took place.
Fortunately for the Velvet Hammer team, the journalists
decided to risk their lives and break the embargo. Otherwise,
Gritz might have found a way to get his people to Laos, where they
surely would have run afoul of someone.
The mission fell apart in stages, commencing in March, 1981.
Gritz had confided to reporters that the operation was being
funded with $300,000 from Federal Express. That corporation
first learned of its own involvement when reporters called to
confirm the contribution. Two team members sent to collect the
money quit the mission when confronted by the wrath of an angry
corporate executive.
Fearing the mission had been compromised, Gritz announced
that he was moving the encampment to a nearby hunting lodge.
Once there, Gritz grew even more spiritual, holding services that
required the men to join hands and sing hymns. Five more members
quit.
MIA father George Brooks, the chairman of the National
League of Families, visited the new camp. His son Nicholas had
been shot down over Laos in 1970. When Brooks arrived at the
lodge, he learned that none of the team members had been paid.
Brooks wrote a check for $20,000, to be used for the families of
team members who had quit their jobs to participate.
Three days after Brooks's arrival, The Orlando Sentinel Star ran
a front-page story on Operation Velvet Hammer. Gritz canceled
the mission.
Most of the remaining team members were stranded in
Florida, with no funds to get them home. George Brooks once
again pulled out his checkbook, providing plane tickets for about
twenty men.
Twelve years after the fact, Brooks was still angry about
Operation Velvet Hammer. He told the Kerry Committee that an
"extremely convincing" Gritz had "hoodwinked" him into believing
that Gritz knew where prisoners were being held in Laos
and that Gritz could get them out. Brooks said he wasn't specifically
upset about spending $30,000 on Gritz, because that was
only a tenth of what he had spent in the search for his son. "But"
Brooks said, "I do believe that this committee has a responsibility
to investigate and, where necessary, prosecute these incredible
liars."
At the time, though, no one thought to prosecute Gritz. He
quickly recouped his losses and went on to develop another rescue
mission. Its official title was Operation Grand Eagle. Gritz also
gave it a secret code name, BOHICA (Bend Over, Here It Comes
Again). It was a curious choice for a name, although perhaps it
applied to the handful of Velvet Hammer veterans who signed up
to participate.
This time Gritz claimed backing by the CIA. Former Laotian
General Vang Pao and Congressman Robert Dornan of California
both thought the mission was legitimate and pledged initial support.
Dornan realized he had been fooled when, at Gritz's request,
he asked CIA Deputy Director Bobby Ray Inman why the funds
had not yet arrived. In a replay of the scene at Federal Express,
Inman replied that this was the first he had heard of his agency
supporting a civilian POW rescue mission.
Operation Grand Eagle ended on the spot. It would later
resurface in legend when one of its participants, Scott Barnes,
would write BOHICA, a book describing how he had been ordered
to kill American POWs.
Gritz threw himself into forming another mission, Operation
Lazarus. This time he intended to collect his own funds and call
in the government once the POWs were in hand.
Gritz bought a charter from the United Vietnam Veterans
Organization and used his new affiliation to solicit tax-exempt
donations. Gritz named his group the "POW/MIA Never Forget
Chapter."
Gritz then found a new group of sources, some of them
chosen specifically for their enmity to the CIA, which Gritz said
he no longer trusted. One such associate was General Phoumi
Nosavon, the former deputy premier of Laos. Phoumi was well
known for his shady maneuverings, but he claimed to have a large
army at his disposal, and Gritz seemed to think Phoumi would rent
him the troops.
Gritz recruited two other disreputable helpers, Loh Tharaphant
of the Port Apache episode and professional POW hunter
Jack Bailey. Others on the roster included holdovers from previous
Gritz missions, plus two young MIA daughters, Lynn Standerwick
and Janet Townley. The women were to be used as United
States-based communications links.
Gritz intended to circumvent the DIA, the CIA, and any
other agency that might try to foil his operation. He would tell
only the president of the United States about the new mission . But
Gritz did not know President Reagan, so he looked for a middle-man
to approach him. Gritz found his perfect contact in actor Clint
Eastwood. Gritz showed Eastwood the forged letter from General
Aaron and outlined the plan to raid Fort Apache. Eastwood signed
on; he gave Gritz $30,000 and agreed to talk to Reagan . Eastwood's
assignment was to convince Reagan to send in rescue
helicopters from the Seventh Fleet. Gritz then wangled a meeting
with actor William Shatner, who bought the book and movie rights
for $10,000.
Litton Industries also gave $50,000 for Gritz to spend on
Litton equipment, such as night vision goggles and field radios.
Gritz purchased the equipment, including fourteen of Litton's
highly sophisticated communications devices, worth more than $1
million. The so-called IDT boxes, about the size of a hardcover
book, emitted coded transmissions to other IDT boxes. They were
designed for use in nuclear war, but Gritz thought they would
come in handy for his POW raid.
Gritz packed up his goods--the IDT boxes, the night vision
goggles, a polygraph, and more--and led his group to Thailand.
Through a series of mishaps, Gritz wound up grossly unprepared
for a cross-border foray. Phoumi Nosavon and his son,
Phoumano, swindled Gritz out of $ 6,000, and Nosavon reneged
on the offer to rent Gritz his army. Jack Bailey, who was paid
$5,000 for the use of his boat, never got the boat into working
order. Eastwood did not tell Reagan to send in the rescue helicopters.
A contact who was supposed to supply guns apparently lost
the key to the locker that held the weapons. And, finally, the
$27,000 payroll for the men of Operation Lazarus mysteriously
disappeared.
The payroll problem had serious repercussions for the men's
families. One family was evicted for nonpayment of rent, and
other similar tales began coming in from the United States . The
Lazarus men grew restless.
When it seemed as if this mission, too, might end before it
started, Gritz decided that his team would set out anyway . Despite
objections from his followers, Gritz insisted they embark on a
sixty-five-mile trek through dense jungle, armed with only three
weapons for nineteen men. They were to meet with a hastily hired
band of Laotian mercenaries and proceed from the rendezvous
point to the still-unnamed rescue site.
Two days into the trip, Gritz's team was ambushed. One of
the Americans, Dominic Zappone, was captured. The men of
Operation Lazarus wanted to get him back, but Gritz--who finally
had a genuine prisoner to rescue--ordered a retreat. The men
took off at a dead run for Thailand. They encountered even more
trouble. One man impaled his foot on a tree branch. Others were
swept away and nearly drowned while trying to swim the Mekong
River.
Back in Thailand, Gritz and his men holed up at a house
owned by Tharaphant. There they learned that Zappone was being
held for ransom by troops loyal to Phoumi Nosavon. He would be
released in exchange for $17,500.
After another series of unfortunate incidents, Gritz returned
to the United States. He told no one of Zappone's capture but
instead began raising money for his next mission, Operation Lazarus
Omega. But Gritz was out of luck: this time the funds were
not forthcoming.
Then Litton Industries came looking for Gritz. There had
been some misunderstanding over the IDT boxes, and now Litton
wanted them back. The company sent one of its ranking executives,
former POW Leo Thorsness, to collect the boxes from
Gritz. The streetwise Gritz immediately realized that his luck had
been restored. He admitted he had lost one of the boxes in Laos
but said he would return the remaining thirteen for $50,000.
Litton balked. Gritz upped the ante. He placed an ad in the Los
Angeles Times, offering a "one-day only discreet sale" of the high-
tech communications devices. Litton caved in, paying $40,000 for
the IDT boxes.
Operation Lazarus Omega was in business. The Thailand
team now included the two MIA daughters, Standerwick and
Townley. When another team member, Vinnie Arnone, questioned
the wisdom of taking two blond females along on a covert
mission, Gritz responded that he could not exclude them. According
to a report in Soldier of Fortune magazine, Gritz told Arnone that
the two young women needed "Lawrence of Laos."
Lazarus Omega was yet another comedy of errors. Gritz used
part of the operational funds to hire a transvestite Prostitute to visit
Arnone in his hotel room. He also ordered another mission participant,
"Dr. Death," to make poison darts for the rescuers to use.
In addition, he forced one of his Laotian operatives to take a
polygraph test over the misuse of $700 and staged what may or
nay not have been a fake attempt on the man's life.
One of the mission's most bizarre episodes was a ceremony
held in honor of Loh Tharaphant. On this occasion, Gritz awarded
Tharaphant the Legion of Merit. To authenticate the award, Gritz
gave Tharaphant a certificate signed by President Richard M.
Nixon and General Creighton Abrams. Theraphant did not seem
to notice that his 1983 award had been signed by a president who
had left office a decade earlier and a general who had commanded
ground forces in Vietnam in 1968.
Zappone, meanwhile, was released from captivity, not because
Gritz paid his ransom, but because Zappone found an explosive
device, hung it around his neck, and threatened to kill himself
and his captors if he were not freed.
All these antics notwithstanding, Gritz was single-minded in
his intent to carry out the plans for Lazarus Omega--or so it
seemed.
After much fanfare, Lazarus Omega finally got under way
when Gritz departed Thailand, allegedly headed for a secret site in
Laos. But Thai military authorities have reported that Gritz and his
small band of mercenaries actually hid in a series of houses owned
by Tharaphant. The day the men supposedly crossed into Laos,
they were in reality holed up in a rock quarry owned by Tharaphant.
While the team was in hiding, the Bangkok Post ran a front page
story describing Gritz's mission in Laos. Other stories followed
in both the Post and other Thai newspapers . Based on information
contained in the articles, Thai authorities believed that
Gritz had smuggled in illegal radio equipment. Thai agents raided
one of Tharaphant's "safe houses, " where Lynn Standerwick and
another mission participant, Lance Trimmer, were staying. The
agents found spy-quality radios and arrested the two Americans.
Tharaphant posted bond on the promise that the two would turn
themselves in a short time later.
Still at the rock quarry, Gritz then wrote a letter announcing
that he had uncovered evidence of POWs. In the letter, Gritz
confessed he had been working covertly with both the DIA and the
despised CIA. Gritz gave the letter to a native courier and told him
to deliver it to the Bangkok correspondent for the Los Angeles Times.
Gritz told the courier to say he had brought the letter all the way
from the secret camp in Laos.
On the day when Standerwick and Trimmer were supposed
tn surrender in Bangkok, Gritz himself showed up. Gritz was
allegedly just in from a treacherous journey through Laos; but
photographs taken of his surrender depict a freshly scrubbed,
pressed, clean-shaven man.
Jim Coyne, who was on assignment for Soldier of Fortune, was
there when Gritz was booked for illegal possession of high-powered
radio equipment. "He was very pale, and his arms weren't
scratched," Coyne told me. "He looked like he had been inside
a house for a year."
The trial was a showcase for Gritz. He had his old Class A
Army uniform, with its dazzling array of ribbons and badges, flown
in from the United States. When the Thai police would not permit
him to wear it, Gritz arranged for Tharaphant to carry it into
court.
Gritz and his crew were found guilty but received suspended
sentences on the understanding that they would leave Thailand
immediately.
Back in the United States, Gritz became the center of a media
whirlwind. He appeared on national television, stirring excitement
with his promise to produce pictures of POWs held captive in
Laos. Gritz said the pictures were contained on some undeveloped
rolls of film.
Suddenly, Gritz was a national hero, the only man alive
willing to rescue America's POWs, even though he had abandoned
the one man he knew for a fact to be a captive in foreign hands,
Dominic Zappone. Nor was it widely known that among his peers,
Gritz, the "consummate Green Beret," was viewed as a bumbling
fool. He had already been expelled from the Special Operatives
Association as a result of his slapstick private forays into Southeast
Asia.
While the hoopla was at its most frenzied, Gritz was invited
to Washington to present his POW evidence at a hearing before
the House Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs. It was to be
Gritz's finest moment.
The first to discredit Gritz was the State Department's Richard
Armitage, who testified on the contents of two bags of bones
recovered by the Lazarus team . The team had given the bags to the
U.S. embassy in Bangkok, saying they contained the remains of
American POWs. Laboratory analysis had shown that the bags held
animal bones and the remains of two Indochinese.
The worst indictment came from Gritz himself. Under intense
questioning by committee members, most notably the chairman,
Congressman Steve Solarz, Gritz finally admitted that he had
no POW evidence. The photographs had not turned out. He had
used the wrong camera setting.
In the end , though, the Lazarus Omega debacle was nothing
more than a temporary setback. Gritz continued to make his case
to the families, persuading many that he had proof their loved ones
were alive. He vowed he would return to Southeast Asia. He
would eventually make good on the promise, but not before his
failed forays would inspire others who viewed him only as Bo
Gritz, American hero .
Gritz's escapades should have served as object lessons in the
futility of private-sector forays. Instead, they fulfilled a folkloric
purpose, underscoring the notion that if the system was corrupt, man
himself was still noble. To the activists, this meant that if the U.S.
government was willing to abandon POWs, citizen heroes would
have to retrieve them on their own, even if they did so in violation
of the Neutrality Act.