Ex-Soldier Who Sought POWs Acquitted

Retired Green Beret commander James (Bo) Gritz, best known for his unsuccessful missions into Southeast Asia in search of American POWs, was acquitted Thursday in federal court here on charges of misuse of a passport.

It was, however, hardly an exoneration. Judge Philip Pro said in making a directed verdict that Gritz had simply been charged with the wrong crime. Pro called his ruling “unfortunate” and noted that there was “strong evidence” that Gritz, who faced a possible five-year prison term, violated other passport laws in making a 1986 journey to Burma under the assumed name of Richard Patrick Clark.

Gritz, hardly chastened, said it was unfortunate that he never got the chance to tell the jury his story--an extraordinary tale of conspiracy in which Gritz contends that CIA officials have blocked POW rescue efforts to cover up drug-dealing by those same officials.

After chatting with the dismissed jurors, Gritz expressed confidence. “They (the jury) said to me . . . ‘You are in our prayers,’ ” Gritz declared. “And I think that’s the attitude of true Americans, not those bureaucrats in Washington.”

Dressed in his old Army uniform, his chest festooned with medals and nine rows of colorful service ribbons, the Vietnam veteran had been expected to tell a courtroom filled with friends and veterans that his missions had been secretly sanctioned by the Reagan Administration. Gritz’s attorneys said Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot, who has traveled to Hanoi to investigate the POW-MIA issue, was prepared to testify that he was present in the office of then-Vice President George Bush when Gritz got the assignment to search Burma.

Story Likened to Fiction

Bill Maddox, the U.S. attorney for the state of Nevada, had planned to call two Bush Administration officials, Richard Childress and Tom Harvey, who would disavow Gritz’s claims. Maddox, himself a Vietnam veteran, likened Gritz’s story of meeting with Southeast Asian heroin warlord Khun Sa to such fiction as “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings.”

Jurors heard 1 1/2 days of testimony that suggested how Gritz, who lives about 50 miles from here in Sandy Valley, Nev., obtained the passport for “Clark,” a fictitious person, and how a 22-year-old Canadian customs inspector’s suspicions led to the charges.

Before Gritz was called to testify, his attorney, Lamond Mills, asked Pro for a directed verdict. Federal prosecutors erred, Pro said, in charging Gritz not with falsely obtaining the passport, but with use of a passport “designed and issued for use by another.” In fact, Pro suggested, the prosecution’s case seemed to show that the bogus passport was indeed designed and issued for use by Gritz.

“He was speeding and you charged him with driving on the wrong side of the road,” Pro told Maddox. Maddox said he is considering whether to prosecute Gritz on other charges.

“It’s a bittersweet kind of thing,” Fran Masterson of Upland, Calif., one of Gritz’s supporters, said of the acquittal. She wears a POW-MIA bracelet bearing the name of her husband, lost over Laos 21 years ago.

Masterson said she had hoped that Gritz and government officials would testify, figuring someone would commit perjury.

“I wanted this on the court record, because if somebody’s lying about this, they should go to jail.”

Other Gritz supporters suggested that Pro’s decision itself represented another part of a government plot to muzzle Gritz--even though the acquittal was prompted on a motion by Gritz’s attorneys.