Bo Gritz - Attempts To Locate Prisoners of War

Attempts To Locate Prisoners of War

During the 1980s Gritz undertook a series of private trips into Southeast Asia, purportedly to locate United States prisoners of war which as part of the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue some believed were still being held by Laos and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – e.g., at Nhommarath. Those missions were heavily publicized, controversial and widely decried as haphazard – for instance, as some commentators stated, few successful secret missions involve bringing to the border towns women openly marketing commemorative POW-rescue T-shirts.

In the book Inside Delta Force, CSM Eric L. Haney, a former Delta Force operator, claims that the unit was twice told to prepare for a mission involving the rescue of American POWs from Vietnam. However, both times the missions were scrubbed, according to Haney, when Gritz suddenly appeared in the spotlight, drawing too much attention to the issue and making the missions too difficult to accomplish.

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