Army veteran and author Marcus Farris sits down with criminologist James B. Wells to unpack his three-decade investigation into his father Jack’s mysterious 1965 death in Vietnam. What began with 400 hidden letters became an odyssey of archives, fieldwork, and personal reckoning—raising hard questions about truth, integrity, and the costs of speaking up.
Mission 22: www.mission22.org
James’ site & tour: www.jamesbwells.com
Book: Because: A CIA Coverup & A Son's Odyssey To Find The Father He Never Knew — available at independent bookstores, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble
00:00 — The “official story”
The family is told it was a civilian crash; next day it’s “Air America shot down.”
00:30 — Welcome to Season 3
Marcus introduces James and the memoir Because; Mission 22 shout-out.
01:14 — “Speak the truth and what happens is good”
Marcus reads the prologue: bullet holes that appear to come from inside the aircraft.
03:31 — Why open with the crash scene
James on storytelling structure and framing the investigation.
04:32 — The drawer of letters
1991 move uncovers ~400 letters; the hunt begins.
05:55 — Decoding damaged letters
Ink bleed, mildew, and the one nearly-dismissed letter that proved pivotal.
06:40 — Who was Jack Wells?
SF/CIA work in ’62; counterinsurgency, CIB, early civil-rights era investigations stateside.
09:58 — Back to Vietnam with USAID/OPS
Training national police; immediate run-ins with corruption and edited reports.
10:45 — A lifelong whistleblower
From Nuremberg to Vietnam—patterns of telling the hard truth.
12:21 — The 16-year-old who defended others
Character backstory and a combustible sense of justice.
14:31 — The cost of doing right
Moral injury, integrity, and echoes of the father in the son.
17:05 — James’ toolkit
Criminology, statistics, MFA in creative writing, meticulous field notes.
20:09 — Poking holes in the narrative
Lack of fuselage hits; seats showing inside-out bullet paths.
20:34 — What likely happened
Unauthorized passengers, a gunfight in-flight, and a missing crash report.
27:00 — Why small arms fire doesn’t add up
Aviation experts and the C-45’s resilience.
28:56 — Living with incomplete answers
Therapy, faith, and chasing peace without closure.
32:22 — Moral injury & shattered stories
When institutions fail and meaning must be rebuilt.
33:56 — Finding the crash site
FOIA wins, missing log pages, and… directions from a former NLF official.
38:30 — Eyewitnesses on the ground
The house it hit, the bamboo, the immediate cordon—and no smoke before impact.
41:10 — Another official claim falls apart
Local accounts contradict “7 policemen killed in rescue.”
41:42 — The “smoking gun” colonel
Embezzlement, ruthlessness, minimal punishment, and realpolitik tradeoffs.
45:32 — Lessons for veterans & anyone with trauma
Talk, seek community, and tell the truth to enable forgiveness.
48:55 — Throw yourself under the bus
Radical honesty as a writer’s duty.
51:33 — Where to find Because + tour dates
Independent bookstores, Amazon/B&N, and JamesBWells.com.
53:20 — The odyssey continues
Close and thanks to Mission 22.
Speaker 1 (00:00)
The day he's killed, we're just told he was in a civilian plane that crashed. The next day, the official story told us and the media was that he was the only passenger in an Air America plane that was shot down by small arms fire as it's approaching a small airstrip 22 miles northwest of Saigon. And that's what we've generally believed for 26 years, I guess, till I found the letters.
Marcus Farris (00:30)
Welcome to season three of the resiliency podcast. I'm Marcus, an author, coach, and army veteran, and I'm joined today by James Wells. James has spent more than three decades uncovering the truth about his father's mysterious death during the Vietnam war. What began with the discovery of hundreds of hidden letters grew into an Odyssey of archival digging, field research, and personal reckoning. His memoir, Because, blends investigative rigor with a deeply personal journey, raising powerful questions about integrity,
justice and the cost of speaking the truth. Following our show, you can keep up with everything Mission 22 is up to at www.mission22.org.
Speaker 2 (01:14)
There's a quote that says, speak the truth and what happens is good, no matter what happens. And today's guest has a story that's really going to put that to the test. A story about his father in Vietnam with unanswered questions with ⁓ half his life spent trying to figure out what exactly was the story behind his father, Jack, and everything that occurred in his life.
That left him with unanswered questions with many things that went unresolved with questions about what is the price to maintain integrity the opening section of the book starts out like this Nguyen suspected the smoldering body directly behind the cockpit was his friend and when he saw a melted mass near the body that smelled like butterscotch candy He knew it was Jack
He bent over to examine the remains of his friends more closely and was surprised by three small round spots of light shining on his shirt. Nguyen turned toward the light sources and discovered two small bullet holes in the aluminum back of the aft-facing seat. He removed a pin from his pocket and carefully inserted it into one of the small holes in the seat back, then the other to check the calibration of the bullet that made it. Toward the cockpit, he saw a couple of similar-sized holes in the pilot's seat.
While retracing their projected paths, he noticed two bullet holes in a portside seat near the first row of seats. He checked those and found the calibrations were slightly smaller. The shape of the holes in the trajectory of the bullets made them look as though they were shots fired incredibly from the inside of the plane, not the outside. He stood up to look for more holes in the remaining aircraft seats and discovered two more badly burned bodies between the first and second rows.
and between them a blackened M3A1 submachine gun. He removed a notepad from his left shirt pocket and scribbled a few notes as he walked away from the plane's ashen remains. That's from the prologue of James's book, Because, a memoir about his father. So James, tell us about what happened next. Why start the book in this way?
Speaker 1 (03:28)
Well, I wanted to ⁓ set the stage for what was going to happen throughout the rest of the book. I did reveal for the reader a lot of what I got out of my research, which I described later in the book to piece that together. But I thought it would be a great way to start the story with
what happened at the end of the crash and also to end the story in my book with the details of the crash leading up to my father actually getting on the plane, Air America plane at Tan Sonet Airport in Saigon. It just worked out really well, I thought. And again, I've had years to work on the format of this, but.
I thought it worked out really well.
Speaker 2 (04:28)
Yeah. So this whole sort of odyssey as you described it, which I'm curious about why you chose that particular term started when you found a drawer of letters. Was it in your mom's house? Is that right?
Speaker 1 (04:40)
Yeah, yeah, it was 1991 and she was already suffering from some dementia and she was a widow at the age of 38 and just put all her energy into educating all three of us kids and when we left home things started to go downhill a little bit quicker for us. So I was a professor at North Georgia College and
There was a house for sale in our same subdivision. So we were moving her from my childhood home to this same subdivision where we lived literally within a quarter mile of each other. And that's when I found most of these 400 letters that my father had written her over his US Army and State Department career. And prior to that, I had no knowledge they even existed.
Speaker 2 (05:36)
Hmm. Yeah. So starting from there and then publishing your book within the last year, it's been over three decades now of work that you've been putting into this. can imagine with 400 letters to sift through trying to figure out what's the through line of the story was no small task.
Speaker 1 (05:51)
Right, and many of the letters were in bad shape too. My father often wrote, went in Vietnam with a Parker 51 fountain pen, which is a very popular fountain pen. The surrender documents from World War II were signed with it, but ⁓ the ink bled through both sides of the pages oftentimes, and a lot of the letters suffered from mildew and mold damage. So I literally spent months on one letter.
which I almost was tempted to dismiss, but I'm glad I didn't because it was a very key letter.
Speaker 2 (06:29)
So prior to that fateful day in 1991, what was your understanding of what your father did in Vietnam?
Speaker 1 (06:37)
Well, you he did two tours. The first tour was in 1962. He was a captain and he's working with special forces and the CIA in the central highlands with the Hmong tribal people. And my father's actually working for South Vietnam's 24th Civil Guard Battalion as a counter insurgency expert and a battalion.
weapons advisor. Now get this, we're not supposed to be there. We're violating the Geneva Accords prohibiting free elections. So it was all CIA run. And that first tour, he did get a second combat infantry badge, the first one from World War II fighting the Japanese. ⁓ And he was in several, I guess, battles where they had to repel Vietnamese.
North Vietnamese troops in Viet Cong from their outposts in the central highlands. He came back, made major, ⁓ and was then a provost marshal for Southeast South Atlantic Army Corps of Engineers. And ⁓ did some interesting work then. This was early 1960s, and this is pre-voting rights act, pre-civil rights act.
And so his office investigated any crimes occurring on coral property, including moonshining, bootlegging, and KKK lynchings of African-Americans. if I ever get a chance to write another book, it'll be about these exploits. It's even rumored that Dixie Mafia took out a contract on him because his investigations were interfering so much with their operations. But.
After he retired, he went back with USAID's Office of Public Safety. given USAID's focus on humanitarian assistance, which has been in the news a lot lately, he viewed this as an opportunity to pursue his true passion. As you read from his letters and from a book, he was always more of a humanitarian than a warrior.
So he went back with Vietnam to help improve public safety, public service, public health, et cetera. And his primary duties there were managing and helping train the South Vietnamese National Police. And while there, he wrote several letters where he's disappointed in the corruption he's seeing and how we're fighting the war.
And he's put in charge of a, ⁓ actually he volunteers and gets a nationwide census of the refugee ⁓ processing program in Vietnam. And he exposes a lot of corruption in that program and writes my mother about that. And that becomes a key point later on in the book.
Speaker 2 (09:55)
Yeah. So what I remember from that story was as he's starting to figure out some of the things that are going on behind the scenes with some of it was something like embezzlement and basically just the funds weren't being used the way that we're supposed to. Um, nothing's new under the sun, right? He started providing basically evidences of what was going on there through these letters, but there really were no other major channels that you could at least find after the fact.
that sort of was him exposing this like writ large. ⁓ And so was there like how long of a period of time was it when he first sort of was starting to get a hint of like, ⁓ this operation, this refugee effort is not everything that I thought it was gonna be.
Speaker 1 (10:41)
Well, keep in mind the book lays out and provides evidence. He was a whistleblower throughout his career, you know, even as a 21 year old provost sergeant at the Nuremberg war crimes trials. And even in his first tour in 62, he's writing about corruption and the Ziem regime and how they discriminate against the majority Buddhist population. But it was only a very short time because he was only in Vietnam.
his second tour with USAID's Office of Public Safety three months before he was killed. So almost immediately he's exposing this corruption and he's putting it in his reports and his superiors are telling him stuff like, can't put that in your report, you got to take it out. And he says, you know, I'm not taking it out. ⁓
his superior say, we're removing. He says, well, go ahead. But it's too late to take it out of the copy of the report I sent my wife. Now, were there not he actually sent my mother a copy of that report. I don't know. It wasn't amongst his letters that I found. But ⁓ yeah, it was it was shortly after his arrival where he began complaining about all the corruption.
Speaker 2 (12:03)
And you give a little bit of background and character development earlier on in his life, even when he was much younger. There was a particular story when he was 16 where he had a bit of an altercation with one of the teachers at his school. Can you tell that story?
Speaker 1 (12:18)
My father's youngest ⁓ sister told me that story and I actually had it validated through other high school ⁓ friends of theirs. ⁓ my father always had a crush on my mother, but she was always more interested in her studies than boys. And my father was well liked, very popular, not much of a student and such, but...
At the time of this incident, he's dating Rosemary Glenn, who was one of the prettiest girls in school and captain of the drum majorettes. And the way my aunt tells the story and others tell me that Rosemary ran down the hallway one day complaining about how their science teacher, Tom Bennett, embarrassed her and humiliated her in class. And my father had a bad temper.
like my grandfather, his father too. And my father went to her locker, got her a drum major baton and went in that classroom and beat the hell out of Tom Bennett, the teacher.
Speaker 2 (13:28)
⁓ And apparently what the principal wasn't particularly surprised or something like that.
Speaker 1 (13:35)
Yeah, the way my aunt told the story was that the principal more or less thought the teacher deserved it because he was not well liked by anybody.
⁓ But my father had a sense, you know, even at a young age of defending those who can't defend themselves, you know, and, and, ⁓ and when I first found the letters, the first thing that came across was, you know, even at a young age, he was a very moral, righteous and religious man, obsessed with the truth, committed to doing the right thing and intolerant.
of those around him who were not doing their jobs as they should. And this was throughout his career.
Speaker 2 (14:27)
Yeah, there's a very interesting kind of scarlet thread through the entire book of that particular theme of what is the cost of doing the right thing. And a lot of times as well, like whenever we have a very strong sense of justice, where that's one of our key values to see happen in the world, often when we try to do the thing that is just what the outcome ends up being, sometimes we like mess it up. Sometimes we aren't the...
the best arbiters of truth. But every once in a while, as is the case with your father, you come across something that's so egregious, that so obviously this should not be the case, that you are so compelled to take action. And it sounds like you've done that in large part yourself. And I see like echoes of your dad in what you've done with this book. Can you speak a little bit to that and the kind of cost of saying what needs to be said when it needs to be said?
Speaker 1 (15:21)
Yeah, it's interesting. And that really didn't become apparent to me till I was engaged in group therapy counseling sessions where it was revealed to me that I'm very much like my father. And I too am a whistleblower speaking out against injustice and corruption. And I don't think I'm taking the risk he was taking, but by golly, know,
The CIA has turned down all four of my FOIA requests. And in some regards, I think I may know more than what they know about this crash investigation and why it's not being released. But ⁓ it's very frustrating. But yeah, there's many, similarities, I guess, between my father and I. I've often thought throughout my life I could never.
grow up to be the man he was. mean, when I was in my twenties, I was making plenty of mistakes that I regret. And I'll talk about some of those in the book. But I guess it's never too late to start, right?
Speaker 2 (16:38)
There's hope for us yet.
Speaker 1 (16:40)
Hahaha.
Speaker 2 (16:42)
James, the way that you wrote the book, found that the kind of character arc and development of it was just like it was very clear that you'd put a lot of heart and effort into making this what it was. Give us a little bit of an idea of your background, what gave you the specific skills to be able to do this investigation.
Speaker 1 (17:01)
Yeah, that's a good question. So I recently retired as a criminologist after 30 years. My PhD wasn't in criminology. It was in research, measurement, and statistics. All my other degrees were in criminology and criminal justice. And throughout most of my career, both scholarly research and in consulting research and such,
always made it a point to be an objective, good researcher and evaluate things thoroughly and show both sides of an argument and such. So I tried to do that through my investigative memoir as well. ⁓ My publisher was great. I say some very negative things about real people. They're all deceased now, but nonetheless, I wanted to cite
my sources, both from my archival research and field research. I think I have like over 9,000 words in my content notes. But this was a hindrance too, because how do research scientists, social scientists with advanced degrees write? We write long, complex sentences, always in third person, for audiences more knowledgeable than we are perhaps.
So that was a problem, I knew that. So several years ago, at my university, I started my MFA in creative writing, so I could learn how to be a creative writer. And my thesis chair, who was also the program director, he had to remind me several times, James, you can't go into this much detail. I hate to say it, dumb it down.
make it more user friendly and such. But it was great because the skills I learned as a researcher helped me to be a better creative writer. ⁓ For example, throughout my trips in Vietnam, I had a journal with me the entire time. I would take detailed notes, what I saw and such. I often video recorded what I saw. I video or audio recorded all my interviews.
And just as when I was a professor doing research or consulting work after being in the field all day, I would stay up half the night going over my notes in my journal, detailing them, adding things, you know, and just little details that make the scene that much more vivid for the reader. So in a sense, I take a lot of pride in combining
both my research skills and my creative writing skills to try to put a really good story together for the reader that they can pretty much believe this is what happened.
Speaker 2 (20:05)
Yeah, and it definitely shows as I was reading through it. getting back to the specifics of the story itself, you open with this detail about bullet holes within the plane and the, like, tell us kind of what the official narrative was. And then when you started, you know, literally poking your own holes in what you saw between the discrepancy of the evidence versus what you were told.
Speaker 1 (20:30)
Yeah, so the official story put out by the government was, well, I'll back up. The day he's killed, we're just told he was in a civilian plane that crashed. The next day, the official story told us and the media was that he was the only passenger in an Air America plane that was shot down by small arms fire as it's approaching a small airstrip.
22 miles northwest of Saigon. And that's what we've generally believed for 26 years, I guess, till I found the letters. And when I found the letters, I'm fascinated with the letters because I didn't know the man. I was nine years old when he's killed.
And as you know for yourself, when you read the book, my father had a great habit of writing my mother as if she's sitting across the table from him. And I get caught up in that. And he provides details in his letters that provide clues for me as to what happened to him. And my mother does too. Literally three days after my mother's death, I'm going through her important papers.
insurance papers in a box such that I know the page number right here. And I found a note from my mother and my mother was losing her memory. And so she would get a little scraps of paper and write notes just to remind herself that she'd written on this piece of paper I found in their insurance papers and such.
Jack had written about how furious a certain Vietnamese colonel was at whatever Jack had said to him. I couldn't help but wonder at the time when Jack was shot down if that colonel might have had something to do with it, might have had connections with the Vietnamese communists or somehow been involved. Yes, of course, perhaps not. Well, get this. I spent, you know, two months off and on in the archives.
in Saigon and I find with 99 % certainty the Colonel she's referring to and come to find out he was the most corrupt, ruthless province chief in Vietnam or warlord who embezzled US funds and made contractors lie about getting paid ⁓ for ⁓ robes they never built. me, my dog just barked. ⁓
And he even had his captains get involved in doing his dirty work, including murdering other officials who might be investigating him. But, but just like my father, my mother provided these clues. I spent, let's see, six weeks at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland. I spent weeks at other archives in the U S including Air America archives at the university of Texas at Dallas.
And I spent two months in Vietnam at the archives, both in Hanoi and in Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City. And I have corroborated evidence from multiple sources, not to mention my field research where I interviewed Air America officials and CIA and special forces people that reveals that my father was killed the day he was piloting his program.
to reduce corruption in this refugee processing program. And this province chief I just referred to was the worst one who was lying about the number of refugees in his province. I've also uncovered documents. He was not the only passenger on the plane. I've also uncovered evidence there were unauthorized passengers on the plane. And I've also...
uncovered evidence from multiple sources from different branches about evidence in the plane wreckage about gunfire from within the plane, not at the plane. And although the plane was burned up, the aluminum back seats, you know, survived the fire and there apparently bullet holes in these aluminum seats. So that's just just a sample.
of some of the evidence I've uncovered that led us to believe that something nefarious is happening. And then in my field research, I went to, I've gone to ⁓ multiple ⁓ Air America reunions and I've spoken with the chief pilot. I've spoken with ⁓ the flight manager at the time. And they told me that this was the most mysterious covered up air crash of the war. We normally have
are able to review the crash investigation report, study them. Nobody ever saw this crash investigation report. So that's just a sample.
Speaker 2 (25:56)
Wow. Yeah. So not only was the presiding Colonel known for embezzlement and basically the existing refugee assistance program was lying about the number of individuals because the more people you have, the more money you get. so it turns out that there's only a thousand, but you report 10,000. There's not a whole lot of oversight in terms of, you know, other people checking your numbers. And with everything else going on in the war,
You can see how profiteering becomes a viable thing you could do, at least for a little while. And then the idea that it was shot down by small arms fire, I also didn't see anything in the book about bullet holes in the fuselage underneath the plane. Because if small arms fire are taking down a C-45, that's going to require, with 7.62 caliber rounds or something similar, quite a lot of bullet holes to take that thing down. But then,
What do you suspect actually happened within the aircraft?
Speaker 1 (26:56)
Well, just to add further to what you said, I've talked with several aviation experts who are very familiar with the C-45. Twin engine plane with two pilots, it's going to be impossible for small arms fire to bring it down. ⁓ But, you know, what I suspect happened, ⁓ I kind of provide evidence in the book for that last chapter where I piece everything together. ⁓
that ⁓ unauthorized passengers were allowed on the plane at the last minute. And Air America pilots have told me that this happened all the time, literally as they're taxiing somebody would ⁓ want to ride and they let them in, no questions were asked. And ⁓ for whatever reason, which I talk about in that chapter, a gunfight, gun battle broke out inside the plane.
⁓ As I reveal in the book, my father had a very hot temper. ⁓ And maybe there was an argument which led to a gun battle on the plane. ⁓ And I know ⁓ as I reveal in the book, there were ⁓ evidence and rumors of the pilot's head ⁓ indicating, the top of his head was shot off. ⁓
from within the plane too. It's all hush-hush. ⁓ I can't even get the CIA to admit they have the crash investigation report, which I know they do. ⁓ But ⁓ they've turned down all four of my freedom of information at requests, including the last one they took eight years to respond to, but I got their response this past April. yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:53)
Wow. Yeah. So definitely a lot of circumstantial evidence, a lot of other investigative evidence, and it seems like you've been about as thorough as any criminal investigator could be with this particular case. So suffice to say the official narrative simply doesn't jive with the evidence that's there. But at the same time, there's this, I imagine kind of lingering sense of like, well, I'll never truly be able to find out what happened. I'll never truly be able to implicate.
you know, that, that sense of justice needing to be done. What, what has then that been like for you to be able to kind of reconcile with all of this?
Speaker 1 (29:30)
You know, it's been really, really tough. And as I reveal in the book from my counseling sessions, you know, I'll learn, James, you've you've learned so much. You've you've you've come up with lots of details that explain what happened. But there's no way you can ever put yourself on that plane and know for sure what happened. And and so it's been really, really tough. And
You know, the book would have been a hundred pages shorter if it had ended at the end of the burial service we had in Vietnam when I found the classified crash site and my siblings came over and we held a burial service. ⁓ It would have been a great ending right there. I'm at peace, but I wasn't. And I think one reason I wasn't at peace was because of all the unexplainable
miracles we experienced while we were in Vietnam. And there's several of those that are mentioned in the book. So that's why I came back home and engaged in counseling with ⁓ our priest and the church's pastoral care team, who was fantastic. ⁓ And so, you know, I can't tell the reader I'm at peace now.
but I can tell the reader I'm at peace knowing that at some point I think I will be at peace. I'm there, but just not quite there. And I guess there's lots of reasons for that. One reason was this book was just released this past Father's Day weekend. So it needs time to get out there and I don't know if anything else will come out as a result. ⁓
You know, I don't think the CIA is ever going to release what they know, but I do want to, I do want to sit out there with the reading public for a little bit and, and, and, and, and see if anything comes up as a result. But you know, one thing I do hope and pray is that at some point I can return to my father's grave site at the Marietta National Cemetery and. I say, dad, I'm over it. I'm ready to move on, but I'm just not.
quite there yet and that makes it tough. And I suspect there's a lot of veterans out there who may be dealing with similar stories about how do you find peace with what you know and may never know and such. But anyway, we'll probably get into that with another question here in a minute.
Speaker 2 (32:19)
Yeah, I think that's definitely one of the areas where really everybody has some sense of an unanswered question. Why did I have to deal with this? Why was I abused? Why did I have to end up doing this thing that I thought I was never capable of? And this is at Mission 22, we talk often about the idea of moral injury who John like that was a Dr. Shay, the author of Achilles in Vietnam and Odysseus in America talks about the undoing of character. Basically in a nutshell, moral injury is like
when things really aren't the way that you thought they were. ⁓ One could be like discovering the USA misappropriation of funds. One could be just your very, like your entire story, right? Of discovering, wait a minute, what are all these letters? And the sort of country, the family, the institutions or whatever that I had this trust in, now that trust is broken. And then can I even trust myself? And then the cascade of questions follows that.
And so I think it's really important to sort of see these stories of how other humans have gone through something similar, maybe even greater in magnitude in some ways, like we don't want to compare necessarily, but like in terms of the sort of scale of the number of people involved and all of that, there is this kind of sense where there's always going to be sort of this mystery ⁓ and living well with that as opposed to trying to make it all go away is the challenge for us. And I think the title Odyssey really describes the
type of journey that it takes to do that. So at one point you went back, you went back to the actual crash site. Tell us a little bit more about that. said you experienced miracles there.
Speaker 1 (33:53)
Well, yeah, what was incredible was ⁓ at the crash site, actual location was classified. I could never figure out where it was. And a Vietnam War veteran, a helicopter pilot, told me to check the ⁓ MACV Region 3 journal. And I did. ⁓
There were pages missing from that journal and I filed a FOIA and got those pages and in it was the military map coordinates of the crash site. I said, this is great. And then a high school buddy of mine who was special forces at one time said, James, ⁓ we can transfer those military map coordinates to a Google map that will help you when you go back to Vietnam. I said, great.
And so we did that. And so I went to Vietnam with this Google map, this colored Google map, showing me the crash site location. And we hire a driver and I have my interpreter with me and we go to the Google map location. And I'm so disappointed. It's a middle of a busy, noisy, dirty intersection and scooters and trucks. And I said, this is no place to have a memorial service.
And so asked my interpreter, asked these vendors around here if there's any National Liberation Front veterans living around here and come to find out there's one just right down the road. And this National Liberation Front veteran lives in a compound. It's a block wide, block long. He's a wealthy individual and he's got a gate around his property and we ring the bell and we're let in. And this amazing man,
tells us he was the Communist Party secretary at the time, the top Communist official, and come to find out, he says, we didn't shoot it down. We were just as puzzled as anyone else why this plane went down. We didn't shoot it down. thought maybe it ran out of gas or something. And ⁓ he said, plus as soon as it crashed, it was immediately surrounded by three rings of perimeter security, police, and ARVN.
You know South Vietnamese army and it says but it didn't happen here It happened to call you know kilometer up the road somewhere, but he was too old and frail for us to put in our car so we we go looking for other National Liberation Front veterans who can perhaps help us and get this my interpreters father was a ⁓ Viet Cong hero, okay
⁓ His nickname was the American Slayer. He killed seven Americans in close combat. But we get him on the phone and he gives us the names and addresses of a half a dozen National Liberation Front veterans in the area. And so we go talking to them. And we talk to some and they remember the crash, but they're too old and they can't remember where it was. And we go to this one address and we're talking to this guy.
And he still has four bullet, American bullet fragments in him. And he's got scar tissue all over him. He's one tough fella. me tell you. And he says, yeah, I was a, I was a national liberation front veteran fighting right here in 65. And we did not shoot that plane down. We would be crazy to shoot at a plane that close to this heavily fortified airfield that had a bunker.
of arvin troops in it. We would never shoot at a plane that close. We wanted to give whoever shot it down a medal, but nobody came forward. But he can't remember where the crash site is exactly either. And just by chance, his wife happens to step out of the little house onto the patio where we're talking, sits down at the table and we're talking. And I'm looking at my watch telling my interpreter, we're not getting anywhere with this guy. We got to move on.
And she finally speaks up and through Vietnamese, she says, I know where the crash site is. You do how every time I go by there, I am spooked by ghosts. that's how we found the crash site.
Speaker 2 (38:27)
They did it at a going.
Speaker 1 (38:29)
Yeah, and so we go to the crash site. Well, we go near the crash site and we speak to a gentleman ⁓ who's actually has a one chair barbershop and he says, follow me. And we go through the back of his barbershop up the field and behind the crash site, he goes, it happened right there. See that barn? That's where the crash occurred. It used to be a big bamboo wood there.
and it crashed and burned there. And ⁓ come to find out, he said, it crashed into my old man's house. It did? And so we go and speak with his father, who's like 80 something years old and his wife. And they tell us when interviewing them that they were there. They saw the Air America plane fly through the roof of their home. And when it...
got through the roof of their home, it lost its landing gear, then hit a bamboo bush. They called it a bush, but a bamboo forest. And those things are like impenetrable from what I hear. And it was like hitting a brick wall and it ⁓ crashed and burned there. And then it was immediately surrounded by all sorts of police and urban security. But they said, they all said it wasn't smoking when it went down. was flying normal. It was just too low.
We don't understand why it was flying so low. And also interviewing them, I forgot to mention this, the media, the government also told the media, my family, that immediately after the crash, seven South Vietnamese national policemen were killed trying to rescue the pilots and my father from the burning wreckage. That's what we believed. Okay. But they were killed.
by the Vietnamese communists, the National Liberation Front. And this would have been early afternoon. And so I'm interviewing the couple and I asked them, what about the policemen who were killed and they're confused, they don't know what I'm talking about. And they said, nobody was killed after that crash. As soon as it crashed that afternoon, they put, you know, I guess tape around the crash scene, cordoned it off so nobody could enter it.
When we went to bed that night in our roofless home, the placement regarding the crash site, when we woke up the next morning, they were gone. They apparently left for some reason. But again, they exposed another government lie.
Speaker 2 (41:07)
I imagine it would be fairly difficult to sleep under the stars that night, like for me again or something.
Speaker 1 (41:13)
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:17)
So, from, as you were kind of piecing this all together, it almost sounds like that Colonel that you had mentioned was in cahoots with whatever, you know, the NLF that took out these policemen. And so it was like, they had planned on when and where that occurred in order for them to respond. Was that kind of your suspicion?
Speaker 1 (41:38)
Now, I don't think the Colonel had any actions at all with the National Liberation Front. Come to find out they hated him. Everybody hated this Colonel. So I don't think he had any interactions with him. ⁓ The National Liberation Front did not enter the crash site until a couple of days later, until it had been removed and everybody had left. ⁓
But that Colonel is the smoking gun because of his past behavior. And he was removed from his position and convicted of multiple crimes. ⁓ He only did 30 days in jail and he was relieved of command. But he is the smoking gun as to what happened to my father.
Now get this, you'll understand this as many veterans from the Middle East can relate to this, that this Colonel come to find out, and I've read about him in multiple books written by Vietnam War scholars, was one of the most competent military commanders in the Vietnam War. He was braver than most and very competent. And so one of the theories I have is that perhaps
the US or the CIA, whoever was aware of his involvement, not wanting this corruption involving him and expose, but tolerated that because he was of more value to the US militarily. And they did not want to lose that. And from what I've read about some of the wars in the Middle East, we've allied with many corrupt warlords and such.
but still tolerated their corruption because they were least willing to be of some military assistance to us.
Speaker 2 (43:39)
Yeah, the ethics of war is a perennial issue that you're never really going to quite have the right answer to, but it's always those scenes that are most compelling in war movies or when you come to a point where it's like, do the ends really justify the means? And as, as we're kind of demonstrating here, if you ever come across a situation, well, I should say when probably, whenever you come across a situation where like ends justify the means, I'm
sort of taking matters into my own hands, the proverbial taking the fruit from the tree, basically defining right and wrong for ourselves, right? That's the original sin. And being able to reconcile that, I think has a lot to do with writing a story, with saying a story, with piecing it all together and to make sense of it all. Because with trauma, with moral injury, a lot of that has to do with the sense of I'm part of this story in this narrative.
All of a sudden I run into an encounter where, nope, that's not the story anymore. But then the irony of it all is once you sort of circle, like make the full circle. I love the fact that the trip to Vietnam was a very visceral experience of kind of completing the circuit almost. know there were still any sort of questions, but nevertheless that's you come to realize like, ⁓ that is the story. The story is when plan A goes terribly wrong. When my
my understanding of the world is shattered and I kind of have to put the pieces back together. What were, you know, for the listener, what would you say have been some of the most important sort of life lessons or like if you, if you were to bring somebody in to a campfire and like, Hey, I need to let you know about ⁓ the way that things are in my life through my story. What would you say?
Speaker 1 (45:29)
Well, I think I have a couple of lessons for veterans and others dealing with trauma.
You need to talk to people. Don't hold it within yourself. I got so much out of group counseling and therapy and the readers can read for themselves the last few chapters, the amazing things I learned and they brought me a lot of peace. ⁓ And one of the most valuable things I got from one of the closing chapters was
Peace requires forgiveness. Forgiveness requires the truth. This book is my confession, my version of the truth. So perhaps once I share it with the world, and that's what I'm doing, my wife and I are on a book tour, perhaps once I share it with the world, both my father and I will come to peace. So that's what I will happen.
⁓ But another thing I'd like for readers to get out of the book that and again a lot of what I write in the book I didn't intend for my book to take on a spiritual thing, but it did okay and a lot of this Revolves around my Episcopalian faith, but I'm often reminded of the the phrase I think is from Matthew
25, the least of us among us. So like Jesus, my father,
cared for, fought for, and defended the marginalized, the poor, the sick, the hungry, the refugee, when no one else would. And he gave his life for that. So I'd like to think that perhaps my book can be ⁓ a reminder for people that we need to stand up to injustice and corruption.
and speak truth to power when we should. And perhaps we should take risks. And perhaps in some cases giving up your life may be the risk worth taking in order to best leave your mark upon the world. And it's perhaps due to my advancing age. But I often wonder
How can people today live, live a lie and then face the end of death with that burden? So I'd like to think that
This book can be a reminder about...
integrity, doing what's right. Well, how you started out the broadcast, what you talked about, you know, those things are important. And ⁓ so that's what I'd like for readers to really get out of it, I think.
Speaker 2 (48:51)
Sometimes living in this lie is a fate worse than death.
Speaker 1 (48:56)
Right, right. think I really think it is. And as readers will find out from my book, I reveal all in my book. Mistakes I made ⁓ as a young man and the hell I put my wife through in that chapter called the toll. And one of the great testimonials I got from one of my ⁓ friends, ⁓
He's expat living in Laos. His testimonials in my book, he very smart man. he told me, said, James, I wouldn't reveal all those things you say about yourself in the book. And I told him.
I said, I have to, it's about the truth. I gotta be true to myself. If I'm not true to myself, I can't be true to the reader. So in some regards, I have to do this. Plus, and this is for your wannabe writers, in my MFA program, get this, the toughest instructor in the MFA program told us in class one day,
The best thing a writer can do to establish credibility with the reader is to throw themselves under the bus. That night I drafted that chapter, The Toll, where I write about my wife giving me hell for the subcession I've had about my father's death all these years.
Speaker 2 (50:20)
Yeah. Yeah. Another, another theme of the book of, of just like, what is the cost of pursuing what, what you know, you need to pursue. And I think that bringing that honesty to bear is something that, you know, every, everyone I think can really appreciate and be familiar with a time in life where they had to make that choice, whatever it is, like having a kid, it's going to be tough. Like being, ⁓ being somehow enraptured in a particular vocation and something like, know, you need to do.
There's another verse in Matthew, I believe, that talks about you need to count the cost of following the truth, of following the logo, so following what's right. If it were easy, everyone would do it, right?
Speaker 1 (51:02)
Right. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:06)
Well, James, your book is for sale now. It's a fascinating story. The more I was reading into it, the more more interested I was in like what's happening next and the blend of kind of your own personality with it, your storytelling, but also some very serious investigative kind of inquiry made it for a very compelling read. Where can readers go to find your book and where can we find out more about your touring dates?
Speaker 1 (51:30)
Yeah. Well, you know, I encourage people to utilize independent bookstores when they can. You can order it from any independent bookstore. My website, JamesBWells.com has all sorts of information about the book, ISBN numbers and such. You know, you can also get it from Amazon and Barnes and Noble, which are real easy. ⁓
But yeah, you can get it most anywhere books are sold. My book tour, we've just finished our summer book tour that we had 21 different venues in a half a dozen states from Ohio, Kentucky, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida. And in September, we start our journey north where we end up in Maine and then we come back down and I have events and.
New Jersey and Ohio again. I forget, but my website has this information at jamesbwells.com and you can click on the links there where one of them is called Book Tour in Progress and find out where we'll be. I hope to go out west next year with my wife. We bought a small Class B RV. We're both retired now, so we're wanting to tour and see the country as well.
⁓ slow down a little bit. This summer tour is pretty hectic. We didn't get to much sightseeing, but we hope to slow down with our future events and enjoy some of the scenery. But Maine in October will be beautiful, so we're really looking forward to that.
Speaker 2 (53:16)
Well, fair to say the odyssey continues. James, thank you so much for your time and for your story.
Speaker 1 (53:21)
Thank you Marcus, it's been great and thank you Mission 22 for what you do.