Bo Gritz

James Gordon Gritz was born on January 18, 1939, in Enid, Oklahoma. His father, Roy Gritz, was a serviceman in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II and was killed in action. After his father's death, Bo was raised by his maternal grandparents. His mother was Samantha Turby, and he had a brother, Mike Turby, who later lived in Tucson, Arizona.

His school years were unsettled. He was expelled from his local high school for reasons that have not been made public, and he then went east to Fork Union Military Academy in Virginia, where he graduated and set his course for the Army.

Gritz graduated from Fork Union Military Academy in Virginia after his expulsion from his hometown high school. He later attended Officer Candidate School after enlisting in 1957. Wikipedia lists him among alumni of American University in Washington, D.C. Over his life he also qualified as a commercial pilot and flight instructor, earned a 6th-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do, and, according to his family's obituary, spoke Mandarin and Swahili.

Gritz enlisted in the United States Army on August 20, 1957, and served until February 1979. During the Vietnam War he commanded detachment B-36 of the 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne), a MIKE Force of American soldiers and local Cambodian and Vietnamese irregulars operating in the III Corps area of southern South Vietnam near the Cambodian border. In December 1966 his unit recovered the black box from a downed Lockheed U-2 in enemy territory in Cambodia.

After six years in Vietnam he commanded Special Forces in Latin America (1975 to 1977), served as a desk officer for the Middle East, and was chief of congressional relations for the Defense Security Agency (International Security Affairs) in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (1977 to 1979). He retired as a lieutenant colonel. He later said, with video he presented as evidence, that he had trained Afghan mujahideen in the United States on behalf of the government. General William Westmoreland praised him in his memoir A Soldier Reports.

From the early 1980s Gritz led a series of private missions into Southeast Asia to find American prisoners of war that some believed were still held in Laos and Vietnam. The efforts were initially supported by elements of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 1981 and later financed by donors including Clint Eastwood and Ross Perot. Working mainly from Thailand, he sometimes used aliases such as "Richard Patrick Clark."

The missions were heavily publicized and widely criticized as haphazard. In 1983 Gritz and four associates were convicted in Thailand of illegally importing radio equipment during "Operation Lazarus Omega," and he told a House committee chaired by Stephen Solarz that he could not provide concrete evidence of living POWs. In 1986 he travelled to Burma to interview the drug lord Khun Sa, who named Reagan administration officials as allegedly involved in narcotics trafficking. That interview underpinned his book A Nation Betrayed (1988).

In 1988 the Populist Party put Gritz on its ticket as the vice presidential candidate with former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Gritz said he had accepted believing his running mate would be James Traficant, withdrew, publicly distanced himself from Duke, and ran instead for a Nevada congressional seat. In 1989 he founded the Center for Action and in 1990 organized the "Freedom Call '90" conference in Las Vegas.

In 1992 he ran for president as the Populist Party nominee under the slogan "God, Guns and Gritz." His manifesto, "The Bill of Gritz," opposed what he called global government and the New World Order, called for an end to foreign aid, and proposed abolishing the federal income tax and the Federal Reserve. He received 106,152 votes (0.14 percent), with 3.84 percent in Utah and 2.13 percent in Idaho, and more than 12 percent in Franklin County, Idaho.

In August 1992 Gritz acted as a mediator at the Ruby Ridge standoff in northern Idaho and helped persuade Randy Weaver to surrender to federal authorities on August 31, 1992. In 1996 he tried to negotiate an end to the Montana Freemen standoff but left in frustration. In 1998 he led an unsuccessful search for Eric Rudolph, the Centennial Olympic Park bomber, hoping to persuade him to surrender. On March 19, 2005, he was arrested for trespassing while trying to enter the hospice where Terri Schiavo was being cared for. From 2014 he hosted the radio programme Freedom Call on American Voice Radio.

Gritz married four times. In 1984 he and his then wife Claudia joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; he later resigned after his stake president declined to renew his temple recommend until he showed proof of paying federal income tax. In 1999 he and his fourth wife, Judy Kirsch, became associated with the Church of Israel. He was the father of four children, Jim, Jay, Mike and Melody, and had a grandson, James, and two great-grandchildren, Nathan and Sophia.

In 1994 he co-founded the Almost Heaven survivalist community in Kamiah, Idaho, leaving in late 1998 shortly after a suicide attempt by gunshot. He lived in Sandy Valley, Nevada, for more than 45 years, flying from its airport community, teaching karate to local children and taking part in the American Legion.

Gritz described the United States as a "Christian Nation" and argued that its laws should reflect "unashamed acceptance of Almighty God and His Laws." He opposed the 1991 Gulf War and linked it to New World Order conspiracy theories, and he spoke at events organized by Christian Identity pastor Pete Peters. The Southern Poverty Law Center described his views as a "relatively mild version" of Christian Identity, while he vehemently denied allegations of racism and later distanced himself from the movement. His books and speeches promoted claims about drug trafficking by government officials, a POW cover-up and the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Gritz is often cited as one of the inspirations for John Rambo in First Blood, and reportedly for Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, John "Hannibal" Smith in The A-Team and some of Chuck Norris's film roles. William Shatner bought the rights to his life story in 1983. To supporters he remained a decorated soldier who tried to bring POWs home and defused Ruby Ridge. To critics he symbolised the drift of a generation of Vietnam veterans into militia politics and conspiracy theory. After his death, writer John Griswold examined that tension in a long essay in The Common Reader.

Military decorations listed for Gritz include the Silver Star (three awards), Legion of Merit (two), Distinguished Flying Cross, Soldier's Medal, Bronze Star Medal (four), Purple Heart (two) and Air Medal (26 awards). A memo from his Vietnam service later suggested that he was personally involved in recommending some of his own awards and that some recommendations cited the same missions, which critics used to question the tally.

Books: Spycraft (c. 1984 to 1990); A Nation Betrayed (1988); Called to Serve (1991, autobiography); My Brother's Keeper (2003). He also wrote the foreword to Stan Krasnoff's Shadows on the Wall (2003).

Screen: he played Lt. Col. Steel, a fictionalised version of himself, in Rescue Force (1990). He was portrayed by Bob Gunton in The Siege at Ruby Ridge (1996) and by Vic Browder in the miniseries Waco (2018). He appeared in Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends (1998, "Survivalists"), Millennium Factor: The Truth About Y2K (1999) and Louis Theroux: Life on the Edge (2020), and was the subject of Andrea Luka Zimmerman's documentary Erase and Forget (2017).

Gritz's POW missions were criticised as poorly run and self-promoting, and former Delta Force operator Eric L. Haney wrote that two planned official rescue missions were scrubbed after Gritz drew attention to the issue. In 1984 he obtained the Air Force Academy ring of Medal of Honor recipient Lance Sijan and, according to author Malcolm McConnell, tried to persuade the Sijan family to hold a Las Vegas press conference while seeking reimbursement of his expenses. His 1988 nomination alongside David Duke, his links with the Christian Patriot movement and Christian Identity figures, and the Almost Heaven community all drew criticism. A 1992 report by People Against Racist Terror called him a "front man for fascism." Questions about his medal recommendations also followed him.

Gritz was taken to hospital on February 13, 2026. His wife Judy wrote on Facebook about a recent cancer diagnosis and said he was on a respirator as of February 24, when she said she would bring him home: "he wants to die in Sandy Valley, and he wants to be buried in Sandy Valley." He died peacefully at his home in Sandy Valley, Nevada, on February 27, 2026, at the age of 87. The New York Times reported that no specific cause was given. A military graveside service was held at Sandy Valley Cemetery on March 13, 2026.