Attempts to locate prisoners of war[edit]
During the early 1980s, as part of the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue, Gritz undertook a series of private trips into Southeast Asia, in attempts to locate U.S. prisoners of war who some Americans believed had been detained since the Vietnam War, by the communist governments of Laos and Vietnam, e.g., at Nhommarath. In his forays into Laos, Gritz worked with his fellow special forces veterans and with Laotian anti-communist guerrillas, one of whom was killed by the men of the exiled Laotian warlord Phoumi Nosavan who also abducted the American search party member Dominic "Zap" Zappone for ransom.[12][13] Initially, some abortive technical assistance was provided by elements of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 1981. The later adventures have been financed by high profile donors like Clint Eastwood and Ross Perot.[14][15] Operating out of Thailand, from where he was repeatedly deported by the authorities, Gritz used aliases such as "Richard Patrick Clark".[16] He also testified as a witness before the House committee headed by Stephen Solarz in 1983, but was unable to provide any evidence of the existence of the POWs.[17]

These activities were heavily publicized, controversial and widely decried as haphazard. For instance, as some commentators stated, few supposedly secret missions involved bringing to the border towns women openly selling commemorative POW-rescue T-shirts.[18][19] 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.[20] In 1983, Gritz (who had surrendered himself by walking into a police station) and four of his associates were tried and convicted in Thailand of illegally importing radio equipment during their "Operation Lazarus Omega"; one of them, a former Navy SEAL David Scott Weekly also known as "Doctor Death", was also later convicted in America of smuggling explosives.[21][22] Thailand authorities expressed concern that the Vietnamese forces in Laos would retaliate against them for cross-border armed intrusions and threatened to jail Gritz for 20 years.[23] Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach called Gritz's actions "a flagrant violation of the sovereignty of Laos that everyone should denounce."[