35 lines
4.1 KiB
Markdown
35 lines
4.1 KiB
Markdown
---
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category: "Military"
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tags:
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- Person
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relations:
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- type: partner_of
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with: "[[United States Army Intelligence Support Activity]]"
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start: 1982-11
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role: "unit contacted Gritz to aid his 1982 Laos POW mission, per the Washington Post (1985) and a CIA memorandum"
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fn: 4
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summary: "Gritz was indicted in May 1987 for using a false passport in the name of Patrick Richard Clark from Vancouver, Canada."
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born: 1939-01-18
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died: 2026-02-27
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location: "Enid, Oklahoma"
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---
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[[Bo Gritz]] was a highly decorated Special Forces Green Beret soldier in [[Vietnam]]. He became known for his expeditions to [[Laos]] in search of missing POWs, during which he reportedly uncovered a "massive drug network in Southeast Asia" intertwined with American POWs.[^1]
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[[Danny Casolaro]] was investigating Gritz's expose of [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] drug trafficking in the [[Golden Triangle]]. Casolaro had requested to meet with a former police officer who had information on Laotian warlord [[Kuhn Sa]]'s Golden Triangle drug trade proposal to the [[United States]].[^1]
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Gritz was indicted in May 1987 for using a false passport in the name of Patrick Richard Clark from Vancouver, [[Canada]]. However, at his arraignment in [[Las Vegas]], he claimed to have "proper authorization" for his travels and was subsequently acquitted of the charges.[^1]
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[[Patrick Moriarty]], the Red Devil fireworks magnate, was subpoenaed to testify on behalf of Gritz at his trial. Moriarty's lawyer, [[Jan Lawrence Handzlik]], stated that Moriarty had paid Gritz to make business trips to [[China]], [[Singapore]], and other parts of [[Asia]]. Gritz claimed his July 1989 trip to Asia was to negotiate an oil interest he and Moriarty had set up between the [[People's Republic of China]] and [[Indonesia]].[^1]
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### Army intelligence contact, 1982 to 1983
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[[Steven Emerson]] wrote that Gritz later told Congress that in June 1981 he was advised that "the 'Activity' shortly hoped to obtain the charter for the rescue of American POWs and was invited to participate in its operation," code-named Grand Eagle.[^2] Gritz's public statements about his 1982 mission into Laos named the [[United States Army Intelligence Support Activity]] as his point of contact, according to a CIA memorandum and the Washington Post. [[Time (magazine)|Time]] reported that the raid began on November 27, 1982, that a band of guerrillas ambushed the party after three days, killing two Laotians and capturing an American, and that Gritz paid $17,000 to ransom the captured colleague before he surrendered at a police station in northeastern [[Thailand]].[^3] [[Caryle Murphy]] and [[Charles R. Babcock]] wrote in the Washington Post in 1985 that the unit had made contact with Gritz to aid his unofficial mission, according to [[Edward C. Meyer]] and others, and that after Gritz publicly disclosed the help he had received from "the activity," the Army investigated the unit.[^4] An undated CIA memorandum recorded that the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence had learned of the unit largely from Gritz, who identified it as his point of contact within the Army, and that the unit supported the Gritz collection operation in Southeast Asia without informing the Defense Intelligence Agency or the committee until several months afterward.[^5]
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---
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: Seymour, Cheri. *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro’s Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal*. First Edition. TrineDay, 2010.
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[^2]: Steven Emerson, *Secret Warriors: Inside the Covert Military Operations of the Reagan Era* (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1988), p. 79.
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[^3]: "Colonel Gritz's Dubious Mission," Time, April 4, 1983, https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,923455-1,00.html.
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[^4]: Caryle Murphy and Charles R. Babcock, "Army's Covert Role Scrutinized," Washington Post, 1985, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-00965r000504650029-4.
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[^5]: Undated CIA memorandum, "HPSCI 'Discovery' of the Army's Intelligence Support Activity (ISA)," CIA-RDP83M00914R000700040105-9, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp83m00914r000700040105-9.
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