Searching for Lone Star : A Tale of Two Brothers

In 2000, CIA director George J. Tenet revealed the identities of some of those who were represented by nameless stars on the CIAs Memorial Wall at its headquarters. Among those was a Texan named John W. Kearns. John served as a special operations officer in the so-called secret war in Laos, the CIAs paramilitary operation during the Vietnam War. John, whose call sign was, fittingly, Lone Star, was killed in action in 1972. He was posthumously awarded the CIAs highest honor, the Intelligence Star, in recognition of his courageous performance under hazardous conditions. For years, Johns story stayed pretty well unknown, shrouded in secrecy by classified government documents and mentioned only in passing in books about the secret war. Until now. Paul Heckmann, with the assistance of Mike Farris, tells his own personal story of adoption as a child and struggles with addiction that, later in life, led him to search for his biological familyand to discover a hero half-brother he had never known. While digging deeper into Johns story of heroism, he struggled with new and seemingly insurmountable physical difficulties of his own. Searching for Lone Star tells the story of two brothers, neither of whom knew about the other until long after the heroic death of the older that inspired the younger to overcome his own adversity. It is a story of sacrifice and inspiration, of love and loss, and, ultimately, of family.