"However history may ultimately judge his opposition to the establishment of Israel, by 1949 it was clear that Forrestal was, in a sense, one of the casualties of the diplomatic warfare that had led to the creation of the Jewish state." Arnold Rogow, James Forrestal, A Study of Personality, Politics, and Power (1963) p. 195
New Forrestal Document Exposes Cover-up
Who Killed James Forrestal?, Part 1, Short Version, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6,
Letters to Historians, James Carroll on James Forrestal, Lies about Kennedy and Forrestal Deaths, Spook Shrink Flubs Script,
Post Reporter Continues Forrestal Cover-up, Handwriting Tells Dark Tale?
James V. Forrestal was America's first Secretary of Defense. He was also
the leading official in the Truman administration opposing the creation and
U.S. recognition of the state of Israel. President Truman relieved
Forrestal of his position in late March of 1949. Within a few days he was
committed, apparently against his will, to Bethesda Naval Hospital suffering
from "exhaustion." In spite of the invaluable service he had
rendered to the country during World War II, first as Under Secretary of the
Navy and then Secretary of the Navy, he had in 1948 and early 1949 been the
subject of an unprecedented press vilification campaign, led by powerful
columnists Drew Pearson and Walter Winchell.
At around 1:45 am, May 22, some seven weeks after his admission to the
hospital, Forrestal plunged from a 16th floor window of the hospital to his
death. A belt or cord, said to be from his dressing gown, was tied
tightly around his neck.
On May 23, a review board was appointed by Admiral Morton D. Willcutts, the
head of the National Naval Medical Center to investigate the death. The
board completed its work on May 31, but not until October 11 did it publish a
brief, summary report of only a few lines. No explanation of the delay
was given. The summary concluded that Forrestal had died from the fall,
but it had nothing to say about what caused the fall, except to conclude that
no one associated with the Navy was responsible. In short, it did not
conclude that he had committed suicide, as initial reports stated and the
public is still given to believe. No mention was made in the summary, or
in those later October press reports, of the belt around Forrestal's neck.
The Willcutts Report, itself, was kept secret, and, curiously, no hue and cry
was raised over that fact. After two unsuccessful Freedom of Information
Act tries with the National Naval Medical Center, I was finally able to get the
report of the review board from the office of the Navy's Judge Advocate
General, and my analysis is at http://www.dcdave.com/article4/040922.html .
At the time of the death, all the press made much of a book containing a morbid
poem from Sophocles, "Chorus from Ajax," that Forrestal had
supposedly been copying from shortly before his plunge from the window.
The press reports all say that the book and a transcription "were
found," but they never say by whom. Neither does the Willcutts
Report. No witness is produced who claims to have discovered the book or
the transcription. Rather, the first person to get a good look at
Forrestal's vacated hospital room found broken glass on his bed, a likely sign
of some sort of struggle. She also described bedclothes half turned back,
but the official "crime scene" photographs taken many hours later,
show a bed with a bare mattress, an obvious sign of a cover-up. One can
also see that articles were moved around from one picture to the next: http://www.dcdave.com/article4/040916.htm. Needless to
say, no news report has ever mentioned the broken glass or the laundering of
the room before photographs were taken.
Pro-Israel writers like Arnold Rogow, Winchell biographer, Neal Gabler, Jack
Anderson, Charles Higham, John Loftus, and Mark Aarons have continued the
character assassination against Forrestal, falsely characterizing him as an an
anti-Semitic nut who had made several previous suicide attempts. This
claim of several previous suicide attempts, echoed at this Arlington Cemetery
web site: http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/jvforres.htm , is virtually
proved to be false by the testimony of Forrestal's Bethesda Hospital doctors in
the Willcutts Report. They agree that, from all indications, he had never
before attempted suicide.
The indications are very strong that Forrestal kept his no-suicide-attempt
record intact on May 22, 1949, and became another casualty of the creation of
the state of Israel in the same sense that Lord Moyne, Count Bernadotte,
Yitzhak Rabin, Rachel Corrie, 34 crewmen on the USS Liberty, and Palestinian
leaders on a regular basis have been casualties.
The Willcutts Report is available in pdf form on the web site of the Seeley Mudd Manuscript Library at Princeton University. Copies should also be available for perusal at the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, and the Library of Congress. I have given the appropriate officials at these libraries compact discs of the report.
David Martin
September 27, 2004
Addendum
Two months after posting this article, I revealed in Part 3 of “Who Killed James Forrestal?” the strongest evidence yet that Forrestal was murdered. I obtained Forrestal handwriting samples that clearly differ radically from the handwriting of the copied Sophocles poem. Another important research milestone was reached in early February of 2010 when the proprietor of the ARIWatch.com web site, who uses the nom de plume of “Mark Hunter,” put up a searchable htm version of the Willcutts Report, complete with his own analysis.
David Martin
November 17, 2010
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