Everything about James Forrestal totally explained
James Vincent Forrestal (
February 15,
1892 –
May 22,
1949) was a
Secretary of the Navy and the first
United States Secretary of Defense.
Forrestal's death resulted from a fall out of a
Bethesda Naval Hospital window which has led to speculation and much
controversy. He was a supporter of naval
battle groups centered on
aircraft carriers. In 1954, the Navy's first
supercarrier was named the
USS Forrestal in his honor as is the headquarters the
United States Department of Energy. He is also the namesake of the Forrestal Lecture Series at the
United States Naval Academy, which brings prominent military and civilian leaders to speak to the Brigade of Midshipmen.
Early life and career
Forrestal was born in Matteawan, now
Beacon, New York, the son of an Irish immigrant who dabbled in politics. After graduating from
high school at the age of 16 in 1908, he spent the next three years working for a trio of newspapers: the
Matteawan Evening Journal, the
Mount Vernon Argus and the
Poughkeepsie News Press.
Forrestal entered
Dartmouth College in 1911, but transferred to
Princeton University the following year. At the latter school, he served as an editor for
The Daily Princetonian and was voted by the senior class as "Most Likely to Succeed", but left just prior to completing work on a degree.
After college, Forrestal went to work as a
bond salesman for William A. Read and Company (also known as
Dillon, Read & Co.). When
World War I broke out, he enlisted in the Navy and ultimately became a
Naval Aviator, training with the Royal Flying Corps in Canada. During the final year of the war, Forrestal spent much of his time in
Washington, D.C., at the office of Naval Operations, while completing his flight training. He eventually reached the rank of
Lieutenant Junior Grade.
Following the war, Forrestal served as a publicist for the
Democratic Party committee in
Dutchess County, New York helping politicians from the area win elections at both the state and national level. One of those individuals aided by his work was a neighbor,
Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Forrestal then returned to William A. Read and Company, earning a partnership, in 1923, before eventually becoming
president of the company in 1937.
By most accounts, Forrestal was a compulsive workaholic who was very cold and neglectful towards his family. One instance of this trait came when Forrestal, while working in England, received a phone call from his two sons, ages eight and six. The two had missed their plane in
Paris, but Forrestal simply told the boys to work out the problem themselves and meet him in
London. His wife, the former Josephine Ogden, a
Vogue writer whom he married in 1926, also was a victim of this treatment and eventually developed alcohol and mental problems inherited from her mother .
President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed Forrestal as an administrative assistant on
June 22,
1940, then nominated him as
Under Secretary of the Navy six weeks later. In the latter post, Forrestal would prove to be very effective at mobilizing industrial production for the war effort.
He became
Secretary of the Navy on
May 19,
1944, following the death of his immediate supervisor
Frank Knox from a
heart attack. Forrestal then led the Navy through the closing year of the war and the demobilization that followed. What might have been his greatest legacy as Navy Secretary was an attempt that came to nought. He, along with
Secretary of War Henry Stimson and Under Secretary of State
Joseph Grew, in the early months of 1945, strongly advocated a softer policy toward Japan that would permit a negotiated face-saving surrender. His primary concern was "the menace of Russian
Communism and its attraction for decimated, destabilized societies in Europe and Asia," and, therefore, keeping the
Soviet Union out of the war with
Japan. Had his advice been followed, Japan might well have surrendered before August 1945, precluding the use of the
atomic bomb on
Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. So strongly did he feel about this matter that he cultivated negotiation attempts that bordered closely on insubordination toward the President.
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First Forrestal and later
General McArthur criticized
President Truman's Korean war plans, and they both were sacked.
Forrestal opposed the unification of the services, but even so helped develop the
National Security Act of 1947 that created the
National Military Establishment (the
Department of Defense wasn't created as such until August 1949). With the former
Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson retiring to private life, Forrestal was the next choice.
His 18 months at Defense came at an exceptionally difficult time for the U.S. military establishment: Communist governments came to power in
Czechoslovakia and
China;
West Berlin was blockaded, necessitating the
Berlin Airlift to keep it going; the war between the Arab states and
Israel after the establishment of Israel in Palestine; and negotiations were going on for the formation of
NATO. His reign was also hampered by intense
interservice rivalries.
In addition, President Harry Truman constrained military budgets billions of dollars below what the services were requesting, putting Forrestal in the middle of the tug-of-war. Forrestal was also becoming more and more worried about the Soviet threat. Internationally, the takeover by the Communists of Eastern Europe, their threats to the governments of Greece, Italy, and France, their impending takeover of China, and the invasion of South Korea by North Korea would demonstrate the legitimacy of his concerns on the international front as well.
Forrestal is alleged to be an original member of a group formed in 1947 with the purported code name of
Majestic 12.
James Forrestal was one of the foremost architects of the United States cold war policies. Dwight D. Eisenhower recorded he was in agreement with Forrestal's thesis on Communism. Eisenhower recalled that Forrestal had been "the one man who, in the very midst of the war, always counseled caution and alertness in dealing with the Soviets." Eisenhower remembered on several occasions, while he was Supreme Allied Commander,he had been visited by Forrestal, who carfully explained his thesis that the Communists would never cease trying to destroy all representative government. Eisenhower commented in his personal diary on 11 June, 1949, "I never had cause to doubt the accuracy of his judgments on this point."
Psychiatric Treatment
The attending psychiatrist Dr. Reines was handpicked by the
Surgeon General.
First week:
narcosis with
sodium amytal
Second week and for a period of four weeks: a regime of
insulin sub-shock combined with psycho-therapeutic interviews. According to Dr. Reines, the patient over reacted to the insulin much as he'd the amytal and this would occassionally throw him into a confused state with a great deal of agitation and confusion.
Fourth week: insulin administered only in stimulating doses; 10 units of insulin four times a day, morning, noon, afternoon and evening.
A rather strict regime of isolation from the outside was stablished for the patient. Family wasn't advised of patient's suicidal state.
According to Dr. Reines, "we considered
electro-shock but thought it better to postpone it for another ninety days. In reactive depression if electro-shock is used early and the patient is returned to the same situation from which he came there's grave danger of suicide in the immediate period after they return... so strangely enough we left out electo-shock to avoid what acutally happened anyhow".
Death
Although Forrestal had told associates he'd decided to resign, he was shattered when Truman abruptly asked for his resignation. His letter of resignation was tendered after Truman's dismissal on
March 28,
1949. On the day of his removal from office, he was reported to have gone into a strange daze and was flown on a Navy airplane to the estate of Under Secretary of State
Robert A. Lovett in Hobe Sound, Florida, where Forrestal's wife, Josephine, was vacationing. He was checked into the
Bethesda Naval Hospital five days later. The condition was officially announced as "nervous and physical exhaustion"; his lead doctor, Captain George Raines, diagnosing his condition as "depression" or "reactive depression."
A chief reason for Forrestal's fragile mental state was that his high-profile position was in sharp contrast to his personality. As a person who prized anonymity and once stated that his hobby was "obscurity", he and his policies had been the constant target of attacks from columnists, including
Drew Pearson and
Walter Winchell. Pearson's protege,
Jack Anderson, later asserted that Pearson "hectored Forrestal with innuendos and false accusations."
Forrestal seemed to be on the road to recovery, having regained 12 pounds since his entry into the hospital. However, in the early morning hours of
May 22, his body was found on a third-floor roof below the 16th-floor kitchen across the hall from his room. The
Montgomery County, Maryland, county coroner called it a
suicide within hours of the death.
The official Navy review board, which completed hearings on
May 31, waited until
October 11,
1949, to release only a brief summary of its findings. The announcement, as reported on page 15 of the October 12 New York Times, stated only that Forrestal had died from his fall from the window. It didn't say what might have caused the fall, nor did it make any mention of the bathrobe sash that was tied around his neck. There were reports of
paranoia and of involuntary commitment to the hospital, as well as suspicions about the detailed circumstances of his death, which have fed a variety of
conspiracy theories, some of which are described below. One of Forrestal's statements described as "paranoid" was his prediction that the United States would soon be at war; a few months later the US was indeed at war in
Korea.
Forrestal himself maintained that he was being tracked and bugged by
Zionist operatives. As Forrestal biographer Arnold Rogow puts it:
Rogow footnotes this passage, noting:
New light was shed on Forrestal's concerns in March 2006 when
The Times of London, referencing newly declassified documents, revealed that a serious attempt by
Menachem Begin's Irgun Gang to
assassinate Britain's anti-Zionist counterpart to Forrestal, Foreign Secretary
Ernest Bevin, had been thwarted by British intelligence in 1946. Forrestal had been the most conspicuous and forceful anti-Zionist in the Truman administration.
There was also a press campaign against Forrestal, led by columnist Drew Pearson. The campaign tried to make it appear that he was paranoid. Paranoia, however, was never mentioned in the official evaluations of his psychiatric state. One of Pearson's most spectacular claims was that while Forrestal was at
Hobe Sound, Florida, shortly before he was hospitalized, he was awakened by a siren in the middle of the night and ran out into the street exclaiming, "The Russians are attacking." This claim hasn't been confirmed by anyone who was there that night, and was described as a fabrication by Captain George Raines, the Navy doctor in charge of Forrestal's treatment
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