Alfonso Riate was interned as a Prisoner of War in Southeast Asia after he was captured in South Vietnam on April 26, 1967 and was held until his release on March 16, 1973. During his internment in a North Vietnamese POW Camp he made headlines in the United States in 1972 when a letter was released in which he attacked the Nixon Administration saying he would have been home by Christmas were in not for President Nixon delaying any settlement of the war.