Because: A CIA Coverup and a Son’s Odyssey to Find the Father He Never Knew
I’ve spent decades of my professional life as a researcher, involved in dozens of federal and state grants, seventy-something research projects, and this project has been conducted with the same degree of scrutiny and exactitude. It just happens to be deeply personal and the most detailed, most incredible research I’ve ever done. A synopsis of my investigative memoir follows:
Because: A CIA Coverup and a Son’s Odyssey to Find the Father He Never Knew is an investigative memoir about a son’s thirty-three-year odyssey to uncover the truth and meaning of his whistleblower father’s covered-up and still CIA-classified death in Vietnam.
Twenty-six years after the CIA Air America plane his father is a passenger in is reportedly brought down by hostile fire in South Vietnam, his youngest son James discovers hundreds of letters his father, Major Jack J. Wells, wrote his mother, Betty, over two wars and a career in the U.S. Army and State Department. The letters compel James to learn more about the father he lost as a child. When he discovers his father was a whistleblower and the details of his death are inexplicably classified, an Odyssean journey for the truth begins.
Through archival and field research across two continents, James not only learns about events that shaped his father’s love for God, family, country, truth, and duty but also a government lie and a CIA coverup of his death. As the details of a love story about moral injury, post-traumatic resilience, and the consequences of truth-telling evolve, a son connects with the man he barely knew and finds himself along the way. After completing most of his research, where multiple sources corroborate what may be the actual circumstances of his father’s death, James seeks spiritual answers that attempt to bring him peace with what he’s learned and what he may never know.
James B. Wells 