As a teenager, John Richardson Jr. discovered his father was the CIA station chief in Saigon... before his cover was blown in the early 1960s.

For decades, the son was desperate to know more, but his father was distant and tight-lipped. Then, with his years running out, John Richardson Sr. began to fill in the blanks. After his father's death in 1998, the younger Richardson sought out de-classified documents and convinced some of his dad's old colleagues to talk, too.

He tells Jennifer Ludden how he pieced together a secret life for a book called My Father, the Spy.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.