Vignettes 17

POCKET ANGEL

Since Vietnam, I have been blessed with an abiding small voice that remains silent until extreme danger is near. Deep within enemy secret zones in the dead of night, I’ve listened as it instructed me to get up and move! Always it was right and I learned to love and trust my tiny "Pocket Angel." Surrounded by thousands of Communist regulars in War Zone-D, my teammate Jim Donahue, meticulously plotted the 10-digit coordinates for four boxing B-52 Bomber "Quick Runs." It was the only logical way our guerrilla force could be saved. My voice assured me that all would be well without the bombers. Like a ghost army we walked clear of the encirclement. Time and again the voice was always there when I was out of answers.

My mind screamed in anger at God when a tiny girl’s foot was blown off by a mine placed along a rice paddy dike. The voice of comfort assured me that it was not God’s war, but ours, and His pain over the suffering children was greater than my own: "Innocence must sometimes suffer, that the guilty may be punished." The voice assured me about the outcome of the Weaver siege at Ruby Ridge; spoke to me about our Spike Training, and the formation of Almost Heaven. It inspired Task Force Cross in the case of Eric Rudolph and remains my treasure within.

At 2:00 A.M. the morning of Ash Wednesday, I awakened fuzzy-headed from a NyQuil induced sleep. Both Judy and I were enduring the worst-side of a ravaging flu. I thought my voice had abandoned me, as it seemingly had on 23 September 1998, but there it was clear as a bell - with no Oklahoma accent. "All will be well. The five are for you and the one will join them tomorrow morning in your innocence." I returned to an uninterrupted sleep. As I was able to do on the last day of Ruby Ridge, I announced on the radio what was going to happen - just for the record. I then informed Judy, Sheldon, his Mom, and Heath, Sheldon’s 15-year old son, as we prepared for court.

At GA-13, the lawyers pulled Sheldon and me aside in a small anti-room for a conference. "It looks terrible and you should prepare for the very worse. The one hold out will join the majority for conviction as soon as the judge invokes the ‘Chip Smith’ option." I told both Wendy and Dave Kritzman to stop fidgeting, I had it on the best authority that we were going to be exonerated. Both of them lamented that it was too late to take a plea-bargain. The word had gotten around and the courtroom was like a funeral parlor. Jack, a supportive deputy sheriff and former submariner, gave me a new "lucky penny." The jury was in shortly after 10:00 and retired to a small room just off the court after listening to Rubinow‘s instructions. Less that one-hour after beginning, they knocked on the door and handed the bailiff a note: as expected, a unanimous verdict had been reached.

None of the jurors had looked our way since starting their work two days before. The foreman, a black associate pastor and engraver, Alton Williams, was told by Rubinow to stand and face me. I stood with my attorney, looking straight into his slightly bowed face. "Madame clerk will read each of the charges, to which the foreman will deliver the verdict." And so it began: "To the charge of criminal attempt to kidnap in the second degree, how do you find defendant James G. Bo Gritz?" "NOT GUILTY!" "To the charge of custodial interference in the first degree, how do you find?" "NOT GUILTY!" etc, and et al. Wendy, with ashes still on her forehead from an early mass, assented that she now believed in small voices! The most liberal, pedophile defending Mr. Kritzman, Esq. acknowledged that he felt his throat swell in emotion as I offered my salute to the jury. The jury explained that not one of them had ever doubted our complete innocence. They were confused by the judge’s 49-pages of single-spaced legal instructions they were ordered to follow. After struggling for two days to make sense of the legalese, they sat the bulking mess aside and voted their heart! PRAISE ALMIGHTY GOD FOR AN INFORMED JURY - even if their real instructions came from a small voice within, rather than Rubinow’s verbal and written court admonitions. Seek the small voice within your own soul. Don’t expect long conversations, question and answer sessions, or even suggestions on what to have for breakfast - just true communications from the Holy Spirit when you need them the most!

The Hartford Courant ran a front page photo story in their March 9th, Thursday edition. For the first time since September 1996, I was described not as a vilified militia leading, right-wing survival extremist kidnapper, but as "Vietnam War Hero Bo Gritz." The banner headline read "GRITZ CLEARED ON ALL CHARGES!" Sheldon, Judy, and I were free from Connecticut clutches to rebuild our lives. The secondary headline accurately said: "Urges Fugitive Mom To Resume Battle Over Child Custody." Like Vietnam, we had just won a major battle, but if Linda Wiegand wouldn’t now come in, the war for her boys could be lost. Outrageously, Prosecutor John Malone’s only statement was his disappointment the system had not done more to protect the pedophile in this case! He didn’t express a single word of concern for Jon or Ben Wiegand.

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