Legacy MattersThe son of a spy tries to unravel the puzzle of his paternity.
From His Father's Secrets
Fathers as foreign entities: It's a familiar theme. But in his book, My Father the Spy which is subtitled "An Investigative Memoir," Richardson, now 50, takes us deep into the life of a CIA agent, both professional and personal, noble and tragic.
Others knew his father in ways he could only imagine. They knew a completely different man.
"I was jealous, more than anything else," he says. "I loved that he was like that" -- like the man in the early letters. "I loved that guy. And yet that was not a guy I ever met.
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One day, he's sitting on his father's patio, chatting amid the bougainvillea and lemon trees. They're chatting about Vietnam, sort of. And the son decides to ask his father the big question.
"I asked him how he felt about the blood on his hands," Richardson recalls in the interview.
In the book, he writes: "I'm thinking in a general sense about Diem and the war. But he looks hurt and puzzled and doesn't answer. Later, mom gets angry at me. 'He never killed anyone or ordered anyone to be killed. You know that.' "
But he didn't know that. Not even at the very end in 1998, when his dad is dying and gasping for breath and the son is sitting on the edge of the bed. So much he would never know.