Because: A Conversation with James B. Wells

James B. Wells, author of "Because: A CIA Coverup and a Son’s Odyssey to Find the Father He Never Knew," will read from his book and join in conversation with Prof. Andrew Feight, Director of the SSU Center for Public History.

"Because" 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.

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