Bo Gritz, a Vietnam veteran who fabricated POW stories to fund the failed Operation Velvet Hammer, recruited mercenaries like Terry Smith for an ill-fated Laos infiltration that ended in ambush and teammate capture. Despite raising funds from Clint Eastwood and William Shatner, his fantasies inspired films like Rambo but led to a Populist Party run alongside David Duke and later militia involvement. His "Almost Heaven" land project collapsed after a partner embezzled millions, causing lawsuits and the departure of his wife Claudia, while Gritz survived a 1998 suicide attempt amidst accusations of racism and financial mismanagement. Ultimately, Gritz's life illustrates how delusional grandeur and unchecked ambition can destroy personal relationships and communities. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Trust Your Girlfriends00:02:44
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When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He is not going to get away with this.
He's going to get what he deserves.
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On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ago Modern.
My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
He goes, just give it a shot.
But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of life.
Listen to Thanksgiving on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Greg Gillespie and Michael Mancini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trapped.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
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10-10 shots five, City Hall building.
How did this ever happen in City Hall?
Somebody tell me that.
A shocking public murder.
This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
They screamed, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
A tragedy that's now forgotten.
And a mystery that may or may not have been political.
That may have been about sex.
Listen to Rorschach, Murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Cool zone media.
Mystery at City Hall00:14:04
Okay, like a grown-up.
I'm going to sit normally now and sit like a grown-up.
Let's give a hands up to a.
I feel like that was for you.
You don't fucking control me.
I feel like I...
I booed you turning the chair around.
No, they don't control you, but clearly I do.
Yeah, well, yeah, yeah.
There you go.
There's never been a question about that.
You control us all.
Also, shout out us at graduating our booze.
Yes, yes, we've moved up to hard liquor.
We've moved up.
You're on to bourbon.
Brown is the brown brown.
Because I gotta walk in the crowd later and I'm very afraid of falling.
Oh, that part's gonna be fun.
So, shall we return to the story of Bo Greitz, right?
So, when we last left off, Bo was touring the country, telling lies that he didn't need to tell about Vietnam, and raising money to try and send a bunch of goons back to Southeast Asia to rescue a bunch of guys who were not in Southeast Asia.
Is he bored?
Like, I mean, this seems more fun than like getting a job.
Yeah, like what would you rather do, lie to television about Vietnam and take a bunch of money to go vacation in Thailand or work?
I mean, yeah.
Yeah, look, I'm lying about I don't think I would like to actually do the gun, like I would just go vacation.
That's the part of it.
That's what I'm saying.
Like, I was like, yeah, I'd go and check it out.
And I'm never going to.
Unfortunately, Bo does not have that governor in his head.
No.
No, when you and I start our Vietnam grift, it's going to go a lot better.
It's going to go a lot better.
There'll be a lot of timeshares involved.
It's going to be hard convincing people in 2040 that there's still U.S. soldiers trapped in Vietnam.
Yeah.
You can't tell me I'm wrong.
Deep down, Bo is just a podcaster.
So, Bo's touring the country.
He's speaking on different TV shows.
He's talking at churches, at veterans' organizations.
He's telling all these stories.
And yeah, after months of raising money, he launches what he calls Operation Velvet Hammer in 1981.
Okay, that's a good one.
That's a good one.
Where I draw the line, fam.
I would use that title.
If I was writing a screenplay called Operation Velvet Hammer, it would be about a strip club that had to arm themselves.
Yes, I was like, this is a porn.
Yeah, in order to carry.
No, not a porn.
What?
Velvet Hammer?
Yeah.
One of the employees at the strip club gets kidnapped by a mafia, and the others have to form a commando unit to rescue them.
So it's like a stripper escape room.
Yes, kind of.
Yes.
It's Portland.
We probably have.
That exists.
No, no, it's like taken, but instead of there being one Liam Neeson, there's a bunch and they're all strippers, right?
That's the story.
That's not a bad idea for I'm just gonna, yeah.
Greenlit.
I do think an adult escape room might actually be a viable business.
Yeah, yeah.
A viable business that will immediately get like the lawsuits.
The lawsuits.
Oh my God.
Immediately.
So, yes.
He launches Operation Velvet Hammer in 1981.
Writing for Time magazine, Pico Eyer reports that Bo gathered up, quote, 21 drifters, dreamers, and desperados, recruited a psychic, a hypnotherapist, and some reporters, and began practicing.
Okay, okay, I might be here for this one.
I'm kind of on his team now.
If I'm putting together a platoon of veterans in order to rescue guys, what do you need?
Well, you need some drifters, obviously.
You're going to need some dreamers, some desperados, a psychic, clearly.
Psychic.
You're not going to get far without a hypnotherapist, and of course, some reporters.
I might be on his team for this one.
And so they start training together to go into Laos and to rescue, or at least find proof that there's men being held prisoner across the border in Vietnam.
Now, prop.
If you're training roughly a platoon's worth of guys who are already combat veterans, but if you're training them to insert themselves without any support into some of the most dangerous terrain on earth in order to rescue prisoners from a heavily guarded camp, where would you do that training?
I mean, caveat would be, I wouldn't be doing this training if you were.
If you were the first thing to do, I promise you, you don't have the right answer.
Oh, I know.
Where would I do this?
Yeah, where would you train these guys to go into Lao?
Somewhere similar to Laos.
That's a good answer.
It's close.
But no, If you're Bogrites, the place you pick is the American Cheerleading Association Academy in Leesburg, Florida.
Obviously!
Where would you guys go?
Right?
You made that.
That's not what that's saying.
Boys.
Nowhere in the world, that's what your script says.
Sun Tzu says, know your enemy and know yourself, and you need not fear the result of a thousand battles.
I think he knows the North Vietnamese.
I think he also said, Burt, it's holding.
Wait, Burt, Burt.
Sophie, I was going to do a bit about how North Vietnam based all of their fighting strategies on cheerleading, but you already took it from me, so we're good, we're good.
I was one step ahead.
Oh, you were just like the cheerleader.
Just like the cheerleader.
The cheerleader's middle name is Lynn.
So, one of Bo's, to give you an idea of the caliber.
That was a throwaway joke.
Y'all catch that one?
Y'all catch that Joe A joke?
The middle name is Lynn.
She's Kaylee Lynn.
You know what I'm saying?
Dang, sorry.
I can't.
I literally.
So, I apologize.
I should give you an idea of the kind of men that Bo's working with.
So, one of his volunteers is a guy named Terry Smith.
Now, Terry is a former Green Beret, so that's good, right?
Probably want someone with that kind of experience on the team.
Now, before getting involved in Velvet Hammer, Terry had been training to become a college football player, and he quit spring training to go to Laos with Bo.
He told Time when they asked him why, I gave up something I've always wanted, but there were at least a dozen Green Berets on operations in that area in Laos who never got out.
When I shoot the first commie, I'm gonna have an orgasm.
I'm gonna come out.
Wait, this has gone off the rails.
Okay, I'm gonna come out with a POW or die trying.
I figure we'll either go down in history or start World War III.
That's a beautiful mind.
That's a beautiful mind.
I'm sorry.
You need to stay home.
You need to not have a gun.
You need to not have a gun.
Look, you know, we could talk about the Second Amendment, but that should get your guns taken away.
I feel like.
Nope, nope, nope.
Hand him over.
I'm sorry.
Yes, absolutely not.
This person is unwell.
Yeah, very.
Oh, you haven't even, we have not finished with Terry Smith.
So that's the name.
Terry Smith.
That's very Terry behavior.
Yeah.
Sorry if there's any.
Are there any Terries in the audience?
Thank God.
Wow.
Thank God.
Thank God.
It's a Terry Freezo.
Because I can't stand those motherfuckers.
Now I'm all.
There's 500 people in this room, and none of y'all are Terry.
It's not a real name.
That's an interesting stat.
Yeah, it's a fake name.
I think Terry was a CIA plant.
Anyway.
Especially with that type of talk.
Right, right, right.
That's very much some like Black's Rule energy.
You know what I'm saying?
You know, we don't call ourselves that, right?
Like, we would never write Black's Rule, okay?
I'm just.
Bose.
Roughly two dozen guys, right?
Smith, you know, this guy we quoted from, purportedly a combat veteran, but no one's checking up on that.
I say he said he was a Green Beret.
All these guys say that they had been involved.
No one's checking.
Wait, was he not?
Was he not?
I don't know.
No one knows.
No one looked.
No one asked.
Terry.
These are men who showed up at a cheerleading academy in Florida and said, I'm willing to travel to Lao to kill strangers.
Oh my God.
That's what they did for us.
There might be one of our friends there.
Maybe our buddy's there.
I'm just saying Eric Prince is foaming at the moment.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, beyond foaming.
And not just at the mouth.
So.
My mom is here.
Hi, Sophie's mom.
Hi, Mom.
So Terry told reporters a lot of beautiful nonsense.
Not beautiful nonsense.
A lot of nonsense.
One of his stories that he would tell the news was that when he was in Vietnam, he watched a whole platoon of NVA soldiers stop and cut up a pregnant woman together.
Quote, I wanted to rip their heads off, but I couldn't do nothing about it.
Now, look, no side in any war has a monopoly on war crimes.
But 30 guys all stop to cut up a single pregnant woman is just not the sort of war crime I'm going to believe happened unless you have some evidence, right?
That's just a weird move, right?
What was the situation?
What was the situation where you couldn't do anything?
These guys are all occupied and you're just what?
Like, what are you claiming was going on here, Terry?
I don't know.
That said, do drink because it is a war crime.
So, get on it, folks.
Now, I think that this is the kind of nonsense that fits in less with what actually happened and more with the fact that all these guys are now telling tall tales about the things that actually happened in order to express their fantasies.
They're trying to justify the fact that they want to go murder a bunch of strangers in the jungle, right?
Like, so you have to tell, like, what's the worst thing I can imagine?
Well, this would justify me doing whatever, right?
This summary of that Florida gathering by Time magazine really says a lot.
Quote, they were just high on the idea.
Adrenaline and the ballad of the Green Berets blaring over the loudspeaker at all of them.
An ex-special forces sergeant still embittered about losing his son in Vietnam.
And Terry Smith humping a rucksack, urging them on, suck that clean Florida air.
Just a maniac.
All these guys, maniacs.
Their plan, the plan that they're training for is nuts from the jump.
Bo's idea, we're all going to fly in to Lao as tourists, and then we'll rent a house on the Mekong Delta across from Vietnam, and we'll pretend to be providing humanitarian aid to Cambodian refugees.
We'll get smuggled a bunch of machine guns, which should be easy, obviously.
And then we'll embed with friendly anti-communist guerrillas fighting the Vietnamese state across the border, right?
And they'll help us find these POWs.
If we're captured, we're going to travel with gold so we can pay our ransoms.
And we're going to bring with us, just in case, what they called get out of jail free cards.
These were self-printed IOUs promising $1,000 if someone took them and the bearer to a U.S. embassy.
The embassies had not agreed to validate this.
First of all, these are just, I carry one of those in my pocket now.
Yeah, first of all, America didn't send you, number one.
And number two, you are going to be robbed immediately.
Immediately.
Oh, you've seen where this is going.
Yeah.
So, the next part of the plan is, once they find a POW camp, we will either break everyone out or we'll take pictures, depending on the situation.
And then we'll send the proof back to DC, and that'll convince the president to send air support from the 7th Fleet in, right?
We will start the war in Vietnam right there.
He's going to immediately call in an airstrike and we'll free these guys.
Now...
Bro, this is like pre, like, this ain't no internet.
Like, how long?
You going to call the president from Laos?
Yeah, you're going to call the president from fucking Laos and you're going to get him to send the Seventh Fleet to bomb Vietnam again.
Again.
10 years after the war ends.
Okay.
Great, great idea, guys.
Amazing.
And Bo's plan is that, like, obviously we'll win a second time, right?
Like, you know, it's like when you're playing your brother or something at Smash Brothers, and like he gets you, but he just like, he just mashed buttons, you know?
He's not going to mash those buttons the same way again.
Vietnam was like that, right?
Maybe you pick Samus the next time.
That was Bo's.
That was Bo.
Your brother beating the brakes off you every time.
Yeah, got it.
So, unfortunately, the money that Bo raised telling pointless lies about his time in Vietnam did not extend past partying in Florida.
One member of the group, because so they run out of money at the cheerleading academy.
Really?
And one member of the group, Terry fucking Smith, suggests, hey guys, I know how we can get some extra money.
We're in Florida.
It's the 80s.
Let's go murder a bunch of Coke dealers and take their money.
I was like, I will fund our trip to Vietnam.
Well, allow with Coke dealer money.
I said to myself, They're gonna say they're gonna sell Coke.
And I was like, no, that'd be dumb.
No, that'd be dumb.
They're gonna take money from Coke dealers.
I was like, oh, you're gonna rob Coke dealers.
Oh, yeah.
We're gonna start an independent war with the cartels so that we can start an independent war with Vietnam.
You know, at their base, at the cheerleading camp.
At the cheerleading camp.
At a cheerleading base.
Now, Terry Smith told Time magazine, if I gotta kill 20 American bad guys to get 100 POWs out of Vietnam, I'll do it.
Of course, Terry, absolutely.
Terry said, go fight Roar.
War with the Cartels00:04:29
That was good, Sophie.
Thank you.
Thank you.
There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
We always say, trust your girlfriends.
I'm Anna Sinfield.
And in this new season of The Girlfriends...
Oh my God, this is the same man.
A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
I felt like I got hit by a truck.
I thought, how could this happen to me?
The cops didn't seem to care.
So they take matters into their own hands.
I said, oh, hell no.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He's going to get what he deserves.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ago Modern.
My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
It's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
Yeah.
He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
And he's like, just give it a shot.
He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of luck.
Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.
The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.
This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.
I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.
Sunlight's the greatest disinfectant.
They would uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Greg Gillespie and Michael Marancini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trap.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.
This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona.
Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
10-10 shots fired in the City Hall building.
A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios, this is Rorschach, murder at City Hall.
How could this have happened in City Hall?
Somebody tell me that.
Jeffrey Hood did it.
July 2003, Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
Everybody in the chamber's docks.
A shocking public murder.
I scream, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
Those are shots.
Get down.
A charismatic politician.
You know, he just bent the rules all the time, man.
I still have a weapon.
And I could shoot you.
And an outsider with a secret.
He alleged he was a victim of flat down.
That may or may not have been political.
That may have been about sex.
Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app.
Shocking Public Murder00:11:23
Apple Podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts.
So, Operation Velvet Hammer worked out about as well as an actual Velvet Hammer.
After this, Bo doesn't give up.
That's one thing the military taught him.
How to stay, the military taught him two things.
One is how to stick to a plan, and the other is how to not win a war in Vietnam, right?
Those are the two things he learns from his service.
So, Bo organizes a smaller group to hunt for clues in Thailand.
And I have to assume that the word hunt here means smoke, and the word clues here stands for tie sticks.
Anyway, they find no information about any POWs hunting in Thailand.
He's just shooting out arbitrary countries that are like close to where.
Look, you know what?
You say that.
Actually, prop, if you guys want to donate some money, you know, really, really coffin and give deep, I think we could find some POWs in Thailand.
I'm pretty sure we could.
We're going to need like six weeks at La Meridian in Bangkok, and I think we can knock it out.
I really think we can knock it out.
That was a little specific.
Yeah.
It's just one boat.
It's just, it's just, look, it's just one bus into the bush.
Right.
But we could stay out there and based in the La Meridian.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Do some, do some like mental health work and look, massages.
This podcast is not sponsored by Law Meridian.
You guys aren't all in Intel, but let me tell you, as a CIA man, all of the good, all of the real information comes from massage artists.
So my plan is to get like eight hours of massages a day, right?
And that, then I'll figure out where all of the prisoners are.
Sophie, it's a good idea.
And most of them, most of them speak English, right?
I don't know.
Also, as a side note, as I've been sitting here, I thought Velvet Hammer also sounds like a Prince album.
Yeah, that would be a pretty good name reference album.
Maybe a Prince album.
Anyway.
Yeah.
Also, not a bad band name, anyway.
How are they not out of money completely at this point?
Well, they're continuing.
Actually, we'll talk about who's giving them money because that's fun, Sophie.
That's really fun.
So, Bo keeps raising money and public awareness of US POWs that are definitely still trapped in Vietnam.
He succeeds in securing several high-profile celebrity donations.
Wait, who do you think it is?
Yeah, give me two names.
Kissinger.
No, celebrities.
Celebrities.
Like movie stars.
Movie star.
Movie star.
Movie or TV.
I was like John Wayne, Robert Redford.
Ollie North's not a TV star or a movie star at this point in time.
You're all getting very close, but you're not there yet.
No.
Yup.
Who said that?
Someone said Eastwood.
Clint Eastwood sends $30,000 and allegedly promised to get Ronald Reagan's blessing.
Allegedly, Bo says, Clint said, if you can find proof of a POW, I'll make sure Reagan sends in an airstrike, right?
I don't know if Clint Eastwood did clinch, other than he definitely sent the money, right?
And then no one's going to guess this.
William Shatner donated $10.
To be fair to our boy, Bill Shatner sends $10,000 if in exchange for the rights to Bo Greites' life.
Okay, right?
Bill's got an angle.
We know ours.
I see the play.
I see the play.
Captain Kirk knows what he's doing.
Respect, right?
Actually, respect.
You know what I'm saying?
I think 10K is a hilarious amount for his life, right?
Yeah.
So the money that they raise is enough that in November of 1982, Bo finally succeeds in taking a commando team to Laos, where the most obvious thing happens.
And I want to quote from Bruce Franklin's book, MIA here.
Almost as soon as they arrived in Lao, they were ambushed, routed, and forced to flee as fast as they could back to Thailand.
The ambushers, contrary to their initial assumptions, were not even treacherous communists, but a rival anti-communist Laotian group whom Greitz's men had offended in Thailand, and to whom Greites, ironically enough, reportedly had to pay $17,500 ransom to recover a captured American teammate.
The raiders, of course, encountered no POWs.
Now, there's a couple of things about this.
First off, they did kind of succeed in rescuing a POW.
Yes.
Touche!
Did they bring that POW with them?
Yes.
But they did save him.
Second, it's time for another drink because also two of his local Laotian guides die in the ambush, which is very sad.
Although you have to imagine the guys who are taking him into the jungle, probably not great.
Right?
The dudes who were working with this guy, I don't know.
Anyway, that said, still sad.
Take a drink.
That is so funny.
Not the debts.
Not the deaths.
But the fact that they immediately get ambushed, robbed, and ransomed, super funny.
Now, if you're keeping track, the only American captive they've encountered is someone they brought with them.
But the very next month, Bo tries again flying to Thailand and renting a $1,000 a month safe house.
And $1,000 a month in the 1980s, that is a nice fucking safe house.
That's a lot of money.
Again, prop, we could find some information in $1,000 a month safe house.
Some of y'all could don't have money today.
You're staying in a nice, well, a thousand a month, I don't know.
Yeah.
We'll see.
Safe houses, you know, they're on a sliding scale.
So one of those comrades claims to have totally seen bad guys across the border drilling with weapons.
Sure, maybe.
Like, it's Vietnam.
They have an army now.
Like, they're their country, right?
Like, they're allowed to do that.
He's like, I was so angry I couldn't fight them.
It's their country.
What are you doing over there?
You came.
Yeah.
You flew all the way from Florida.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, presumably from Florida, yeah.
So, Bo's last attempt was in the spring of 1983, and it ended when Thai police immediately arrested two of his commandos for possession of illegal radio transmitters.
So.
Did nobody ask y'all to come, fam?
No one wants you here.
Did not need to be here.
Okay.
This is not a success by any definition, but it got attention.
People do pay attention to what Bo is doing.
He gets hauled before Congress in March of 1983.
Now, Congress had concluded, as I said, in 1976, that there were no more POWs being held by Vietnam.
So Bo is asked, What evidence do you have to counter these conclusions?
And Bo answers, I have the same evidence that might be presented to a convention of clergymen that God exists.
So, like, none?
Wait.
So, like, none of that.
That's not a bar.
So, like, no evidence.
That's not a bar.
I'm not anti, you know, faith or whatever, but we don't invade countries based on, well, we do actually a lot.
You know, all the time.
That's actually often why we invade.
Okay.
Point to Bo.
Now, in another interview, one of Bo's former volunteers, Tom Smith, said of Greites, I wouldn't cross the street with this guy.
He's suffering from the early stages of burning a bush complex.
Which, first off, it's not burning a bush.
I don't understand why you said it that way.
No, it's not a bad thing.
That's a real lie.
It's a burning bush.
Yeah.
You're not burning.
Maybe he's saying he was lighting a bush on fire to like fake it.
I guess that could be good.
I don't know.
Maybe it's some slang.
We just don't know.
Maybe, yeah, yeah.
This is some old.
There are more important things here.
Continue.
Sure.
Yes, ma'am.
Now, the attention that Bo drew mattered, though, to someone.
Well, to a group, Hollywood.
Bo's story inspired and did legitimately inspire Rambo First Blood Part 2, in which John Rambo is sent to a secret U.S. base in Thailand to invade Vietnam on his own and rescue POWs.
There's other movies that were inspired by Bo's story: Chuck Norris's Missing in Action series and the Gene Hackman film Uncommon Valor, R.I.P. Gene, were also inspired by Bo's fantasies of rescuing POWs overseas.
And here's my favorite side fact: the character Hannibal Smith on the A team, inspired partly by Bo's.
Serious?
Yeah, I know.
Hannibal!
And the real, number one, the real Hannibal would have found those POWs.
Absolutely.
And number two.
I would pity them fools.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Sorry.
I do love the A team.
You can tell Brab said it had the drink.
This was like, this was like, he poured this like a glass.
It was a thick pour.
Like, shout out, whoever, like, you trying to put me up.
It was as thick as the C4 necklace around that guy's neck.
So, what?
I didn't do it.
You're supposed to say no.
Yeah.
No.
All right, everybody, do your drink.
So, after 1983, Bo seems to have largely and quietly given up on his plans to rescue these totally real U.S. POWs in order to become an influencer in the growing militia movement.
He joined the Mormon church, started in a directed direct-to-video rip-off of Charlie's Angels called Rescue Force.
I know what everyone's watching tonight.
And in 1988, agreed to run as the vice presidential candidate for the Populist Party.
Anybody know the Populist Party?
Anybody heard of these guys?
Well, they were the political party of a group called the Liberty Lobby, which was founded by a guy we've talked about on Behind the Bastards, a Holocaust denier and Hitler fan, Willis Carteau.
Right?
There we go.
Yeah.
Big Willis.
Willis Cartow is like, I mean, he is like the grandfather of American fascism as an organized political movement that is like working within like mainstream conservatism and attempting to radicalize and influence mainstream conservatism, right?
Carto is the guy.
He was the dude who was a lot smarter than like the neo-Nazis.
He was like, no, you gotta, you gotta dress this shit up a little bit if you're gonna do it.
And Carto sees Bo and he's like, charismatic, war hero, good at getting media attention.
And Carto kind of scouts him to be the VP candidate, right?
Bo says that he was poached directly by Willis Cartow.
Although, Bo would then later claim that he was shocked and appalled when at that year's convention for the Populist Party, the presidential nomination was won by another fellow you might have heard of, David Duke.
I tell you what, man, this Carto guy must be really smiling in hell right now.
Oh, he's having a great time.
He's having a great time.
Oh my god.
Yeah.
Bo Poached by Willis Carto00:03:31
There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
We always say, trust your girlfriends.
I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends, oh my God, this is the same man.
A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
I felt like I got hit by a truck.
I thought, how could this happen to me?
The cops didn't seem to care.
So they take matters into their own hands.
I said, oh, hell no.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He's going to get what he deserves.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ego Modern.
My next guest, you know, from Stepbrothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
It's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
I'm working my way up through it.
I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
Yeah.
He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
And he's like, just give it a shot.
He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of luck.
Listen to Thanksgiving on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.
The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.
This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.
I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.
Sunlight's the greatest disinfectant.
They would uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Greg Gillespie and Michael Marancini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trap.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news out of Maricopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.
This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona.
Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
10-10 shots fired, City Hall building.
A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios, this is Rorschach.
Murder at City Hall.
How could this have happened in City Hall?
Fraud Charges in Arizona00:04:56
Somebody tell me that.
Jeffrey Hood did it.
July 2003.
Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
Everybody in the chamber's ducks.
A shocking public murder.
I screamed, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
Those are shots.
Get down.
A charismatic politician.
You know, he just bent the rules all the time, man.
I still have a weapon.
And I could shoot you.
And an outsider with a secret.
He alleged he was a victim of flat down.
That may or may not have been political.
That may have been about sex.
Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Now, I will say this.
In interviews, because Bo Brites, as with other parts of his life, gives two different stories.
The one that he gives at the time and the one that he gives years later.
When people ask, years later, he will be like, oh, I was horrified.
The instant I heard that David Duke was the presidential candidate, within 48 hours, I'd resigned.
I would absolutely never have worked with such a racist.
At the time, in news articles written immediately afterwards, Bo said he was okay with working with Duke because he met with David Duke and made him promise, a solemn promise, not to be a racist in the campaign.
In the campaign, not to have a racist campaign.
And David Duke said it wasn't going to be a racist campaign.
What more can you ask?
You know?
He said he wasn't going to do it.
Sounds fine to me.
He promised a Klansman's promise.
Okay, well, you know.
All right.
Jesus Christ.
So the good news is that after they lost, Bo complained to Carlos.
You could stop that sentence right there.
The good news is that they lost.
For now.
Yeah.
I know, right?
Let's not think too much about what's happening on LI.
Yeah, yeah.
So the good news is that Bo complained after they lost to Willis Cartow that David Duke did, quote, more harm to the populist party than Hitler would have.
Now, okay.
This, this, I'm going to give you a second.
This kind of insinuates to me that Bo would have been okay with running as the VP for Hitler.
Literally.
That might make anybody say it a little bit.
At first, I was like, okay, let him cook.
Let me like, what are you trying to say here?
Like, help me understand.
And get, because my first thought was, yeah, like, so you'd have beautiful.
See, you might have run with Hitler if he promised not to run a racist campaign.
Is Hitler don't do a racist campaign?
Hitler's on his best behavior.
We can go to Olive Garden.
Sorry, I don't know why.
Or Golden Correct.
Are you hungry or something?
What's happening?
I just think Hitler in Olive Garden is a funny image, Sophie.
Because when you're there, you're family.
So.
Bro, you are on a roll today.
You think he was a super salad guy?
I think salads.
He was a salad guy, canonically.
He's salad and unlimited breadsticks.
Definitely unlimited breadsticks.
Killing his breadsticks.
That man is not ordering a plate.
I'm actually in the audience is a very dear friend of mine who we decided at one point, I'm not really sure why, to come in at Olive Garden one day on a Tuesday, the very minute they opened at 9 or 10 in the morning.
Now, we were both wearing skirts that we'd sewn each other, and we both had t-shirts that had our favorite conspiracy theory on them.
I do forget what mine was, but Hidde just said Michael Jackson was murdered written on the front of a white t-shirt and Sharpie.
And we proceeded to sit down.
Now, Olive Garden.
Who are you, bro?
The reason why we showed up is Olive Garden sells three liter bottles of wine.
So we ordered two of them, and then we nothing but six liters of wine and breadsticks.
And the experiment, because we also brought with us a big roll of butcher paper, and we started outlining the conspiracies that we like believed ruled the world.
So we were drawing like a big flowchart, talking about the Freemasons and all of these different conspiracies.
And the goal was, when will they stop serving us breadsticks?
And eventually it did get to the point where we got half a breadstick on a plate and I was like, yeah, it's probably time to bounce.
Hey, let me ask y'all this.
Let me ask y'all this.
As fans of this show, how many times have you thought to yourself, how has this man survived?
Like, are you still alive?
I'll be thinking that, like, how are you still alive, fam?
Conspiracies Over Breadsticks00:14:41
Yeah.
I will say, as soon as we got back to my house, my friend who was in the audience vomited so much on the floor.
I almost made it to the toilet.
So I'm just bragging a little bit.
Pretty close.
Not at all.
Not at all.
Like, literally, like, three and a half feet further.
Anyway, back to the story.
So the good news is, well, not the good news.
He runs again in 1992, this time as the presidential candidate for the Populist Party.
And he does twice as well as David Duke, winning 0.1% of the national popular vote to Duke's 0.05.
So, you know, not bad.
That same year, 92, Bo played what would be arguably his one positive role in U.S. political culture, which is when he kind of ended the Ruby Ridge standoff.
So if you're vaguely familiar, there's this guy, Randy Weaver, and his friends in the Aryan nations.
He gets paid by a dude who turns out to be an ATF agent to saw off some shotguns, and then they raid his house, and an agent is shot dead by, I forget which member of his group killed the agent, but an ATF agent's killed, and the ATF kills his young son, who's a child, and his wife, right?
And a big state, this is called Ruby Ridge, huge standoff.
This is like this big in the fucking militia movement.
It's a big deal.
And because Greitz is a really famous figure in the militia movement, he gets like the, he basically, I think he reaches out directly to the feds, actually.
But anyway, he winds up flown in and talks to Randy Weaver and talks Weaver down.
And the siege ends without further loss of life.
This is a legitimate thing that Bo did, and it's good, right?
It's good that more people, because Bo had, or Randy had his kid.
Like, I'm not, I don't care that much about Randy, but he had another kid, right?
Like, you don't want them to die.
And that's good.
This is the only good thing that Bo does.
But he did do that.
Now, because Randy Weaver had some close ties to the Aryan nations, and because Greitz's 1992 campaign was seen as a watershed moment for white supremacists in the U.S., Bo was accused of himself being a racist.
Can you believe it?
Now, Idaho State University professor James Aho told the SPLC, the Southern Poverty Law Center, that as far as he could see, Greites wasn't, quote, an out-and-out racist.
And Greites himself repeatedly emphasized that he had two Asian American children, so he couldn't.
He was racist.
Now, of course he did.
He was in them huts.
He was in that hut.
He was in them huts.
Yeah.
You can't be racist.
You in them huts.
The hell are we talking about, man?
Now, I think it's accurate to say that Bo's primary motivation wasn't white supremacy.
But it's kind of weird to say that he wasn't an out-and-out racist, given some comments he made about people of the Jewish faith.
Per the SPLC, earlier this year, this is 2005, I think, in a lengthy diatribe, falsely alleging Jewish control of the media and financial institutions, he wrote, why is there such an intense effort toward Jewish control?
I don't think it is right for such a small special interest group to control our nation.
2005?
Yeah, he's still alive.
God.
Yeah, I know.
It's a bummer.
Dang it, man.
Elsewhere he wrote, do you see the sign, the synth, the stain, and mark of the beast on America today?
Are you willing to submit and join this seed line of Satan?
Look to those who are openly Antichrist.
Who in the world is promoting abortion, pornography, pedophilia, godless laws, adultery, new age international banking, entertainment industry, and world publishing?
Wherever you find a perversion of God's laws, you will find the worshipers of Baal with their roots still in Babylonian mysticism.
What the hell?
What are you talking about?
He's not an out-and-out racist.
This man named...
It just even is racism being just broken, this man naming all the enemies of the Israelites.
You know what I'm saying?
Look, I grew up in church, y'all.
Well, he is arguing that that's Judaism is worshiping Baal.
That's what I'm trying to say.
I'm like, bro, that's the opposite.
Never mind.
We don't need to argue with Bo Greites on theology.
But the point of it is that, like, I mean, to be fair, in rural Idaho, that is kind of middle-of-the-road racism, right?
Like, he's not an extremist for rural Idaho.
He's a free trial man.
Yeah.
In January of 1993, after losing his second presidential election, Bo pivoted to a new grift.
He started Spike, S-P-I-K-E.
Stop letting him name things.
I know.
He's so annoying.
Spike was a training program that stood for specially prepared individuals for key events.
That means nothing.
Bro, I swear I was so worried you was about to say like Spike TV.
No, yeah, he found it Spike TV.
He's got a Spike TV.
I was like, yeah.
So the idea was he was bringing in experts to teach classes that would turn regular.
You could like order VHS tapes off the internet and it will turn you into a special forces operator if you watch enough of them, right?
That's all that's standing in between you and being a Navy SEAL is watching enough VHS tapes.
That's actually true.
Buy the VHS tape cassette series I've got going on.
I don't know what to call it.
I didn't think of an acronym.
Sorry.
Anyway, Spike winds up ultimately building a video library of about 100 hours of content that they would ship to anyone willing to pay.
Now by the early 90s, Bo had also relocated to the Pacific Northwest.
Where we all call home.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, because this is coincidentally right around the same time as the so-called Northwest Imperative really gets going.
This is the idea of moving white people en mosque to this part of the country in order to create a new white homeland.
Now, it starts to really pick up.
Doesn't start at this, but it starts to really pick up steam in the 90s, right?
And coincidentally, this is also when Bo launches a new business venture.
What is it called?
I'm telling you.
He sells parcels of land in an intentional community for members of the militia movement called Almost Heaven.
Stop letting him name things.
Built as a constitutional covenant community, Almost Heaven was a way to take the underlying ideology of the Northwest imperative and extend it beyond stock Nazism to something palatable for a wider, but still far-right, audience.
He claimed to have picked the location by studying maps of nuclear fallout and military bases to determine the safest place in America.
Wow.
Hang it's where the land was cheapest.
He announced the start of this new venture by crashing a Camia town hall meeting in 1994 and declaring the public school system a cesspool and accusing the local government of being run by, and then he uses a slur for gay people that starts with F. Local resident and activist Larry Nims later claimed, Greits came here and made a lot of noise.
He told people that if they didn't like him, then get out of Dodge.
And I'm thinking, who is he to tell people around here to get out of Dodge?
He didn't even live in Dodge yet.
And Nims, my heart goes out.
Nims is like a progressive activist in rural Idaho in the early 90s who's like, we'll talk about it, like, Bo is the one who brought a lot of guys with guns out here, right?
Like, this has not been a problem before him, but he really makes, like, the current state of affairs is seriously influenced by Greites, right?
Amazing.
Yeah.
So I'm just learning.
Yeah.
The Aryan nations had been out in Hayden Lake previously, so it's not entirely undergrights, but he does play a significant role in this because of how famous he is, right?
I still just wonder, and it's like, this sounds like a joke, but I'm like, dead serious.
I'm like, man, what do they eat?
I'm like, Nazi?
Oh, no, guys.
Well, like, if you were going to make an almost heaven, because I'm like, you can think about it.
So, yeah, so I used to live in Portland.
I lived in Portland a while back.
You know what I'm saying?
But like, I mean, this is like the double dragon joint with the like the pong pok.
Like, I'm like, there's so many good places to eat here.
I'm like, you don't want that?
Like, no, no.
He's living in the woods eating dried food that he bought off of, what's his name?
Baker, the fucking weirdo.
Yeah.
Jim Baker.
Jim Baker, thank you very much.
I recently watched.
Why a movie, by the way, about him that came out recently with Andrew Garfield?
Good.
Why your heaven got no like old bay?
Like, just season some good.
That's why it's almost heaven.
Almost heaven.
It's almost heaven.
They forgot the season.
Low sodium.
Yeah.
Wow.
Almost heaven worked for a little while.
Unfortunately, Bo and his business partner made the bad decision to buy their land as a common law trust.
And I don't know a lot about this, but the way in which they did this made it very difficult for their customers to get titles.
It's basically impossible.
They couldn't get titles to their property in their names, and they couldn't get property insurance in their own names, which is a problem.
A flurry of lawsuits followed by people who thought that they had been conned.
Pretty true, accurately.
And problems escalated as contractors started suing Greites and his business partner for failing to pay for road construction and other infrastructure work.
They kind of took a leaf out of the Trump book.
Yeah.
The slow collapse of Almost Heaven was escalated both by incompetence like this and the fact that more than anything, Bo wanted to make money, not fund a right-wing revolution.
And a lot of his critics on the right are like, Bo, aren't you making the army that's going to like liberate us?
No?
Oh.
So the other problem is that Bo keeps taking calls throughout the late 90s from the FBI to try and talk down militia groups like the Montana Freeman, which ultimately alienated his third wife, Claudia, a former karate instructor.
Did I miss the second wife?
Yeah, that was the lady he met.
The sex worker that he had.
Shockingly, it didn't last.
No.
Who knew?
Marriages that start in Vietnam.
Yeah.
Stay at Vienna.
That's a good one.
So, like all those POWs, by the end of 1998.
That was good.
That was very good.
By the end of 1998, Bo's business partner had stolen nearly all of the money made by Almost Heaven.
And Claudia left him after 24 years of marriage.
Claudia did 2040.
She did 2040.
Girl.
She stuck it out.
Bo attempted suicide by shooting himself in the chest in December of 1998, but he survived and is still alive today.
God.
I don't have a happy ending here.
He did shoot himself again.
For whatever reason, a through line in this guy's story is people shooting themselves in weird ways.
The chest?
I'm sorry.
I'm not trying to backseat Kill Bo Greites to Bo Greites, but however.
However.
Yes.
All right.
That concludes the Behind the Bastards episodes.
Jeez.
Behind the Bastards is a production of CoolZone Media.
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New episodes every Wednesday and Friday.
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When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He is not going to get away with this.
He's going to get what he deserves.
We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ago Mona.
My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
He goes, just give it a shot.
But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of life.
Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Greg Gillespie and Michael Rancini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trapped.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Listen to Love Trapped Podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
10-10 shots fired in City Hall building.
How could this have happened in City Hall?
Somebody tell me that.
A shocking public murder.
This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
I screamed, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
A tragedy that's now forgotten.
And a mystery that may or may not have been political, that may have been about sex.
Listen to Rorschach, Murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.