by David Martin
There was a history of an alleged suicide attempt obtained by Dr. Menninger which is said to have occurred on the night before the patient was seen by him (at Hobe Sound). At no time during his residence with the Naval Hospital had Mr. Forrestal made a suicidal gesture or a suicidal attempt. His feelings of hopelessness and possible suicide had been a matter of frank discussion between the two of us throughout the course of the therapy.
Please notice the firmness of the denials of actual suicide attempts versus the extreme vagueness of the apparent affirmation of suicidal tendencies and of the “alleged suicide attempt.” Arnold Rogow also got in on the act. Speaking of Forrestal’s stay at Hobe Sound, he said that Forrestal “made at least one suicide attempt,” and then he goes on to describe the various possibly dangerous things his friends kept away from him like belts, knives, and razor blades and how they kept a close watch on him when he was in the water. He’s full of details about the various suicide-prevention measures taken, but he is very vague about that supposed suicide attempt.28
Hoopes and Brinkley muddy the water still further with respect the “suicide attempt,” saying only that he talked of suicide, according to Captain Raines who had flown down from Bethesda to observe him, but he had done nothing to act upon it. Then they quickly turn around and contradict Dr. Raines with a third account. The business journalist, Eliot Janeway, they say, was told by Ferdinand Eberstadt privately that Forrestal had “made one suicide attempt” while there at the private retreat of Under Secretary of State Robert Lovett.29 Once again, the actual details of that supposed attempt by Forrestal to take his own life are still quite noticeably lacking.
Hoopes and Brinkley also say that before the decision was made that Forrestal should go to Florida to rest, he told his friend and fellow Wall Street magnate turned high government consultant on national security matters, Ferdinand Eberstadt, that “his life was a wreck, his career a total failure, and he was considering suicide.”30 And what is their reference for that? Like their account of the witness to the transcription of the poem, it is only Arnold Rogow. Rogow says that Forrestal told Eberstadt that he was a complete failure and considering suicide, but, once again, Rogow has no reference, neither an interview of Eberstadt nor any writing by him. Rogow also has no reference for his rather detailed description of Forrestal’s apparently forcible transfer from the relaxing beach resort in Florida to the Bethesda Naval Hospital.
He tells us that even though Forrestal had been sedated, he was highly agitated during the flight from Florida. He talked, said Rogow, of all the people who were out to get him and mentioned possible suicide again. He lamented his falling away from the Catholic Church, even the fact that he had married a divorcee and that it was possible that he was being punished for it. In spite of the reassurances of those with him that no one wished him ill, he even made several attempts to get out of the moving car on its way from the airport to the hospital and said that he did not expect to leave the hospital alive.31
On page 454, Hoopes and Brinkley repeat Rogow’s passage almost verbatim, leaving out the part about his talking of suicide again and supplying the information that Eberstadt, aide John Gingrich, and the noted psychiatrist, Dr. William Menninger, who had been summoned to Florida to examine Forrestal, accompanied him on the trip. They cite only the sourceless Rogow, however, as their source. Maybe the more recent authors omitted the suicide talk, knowing that it would hardly ring true in such close juxtaposition to Forrestal’s manifestation of his serious Roman Catholicism. Catholics regard suicide as a grave sin, but one must wonder how they learned who was with Forrestal on that fateful last trip to the hospital.
Of particular interest are the supposed words of reassurance, repeated by both the Rogow and Hoopes and Brinkley books, given by Forrestal’s traveling associates that no one was out to get him. At this point one must ask who was off his rocker here. The unprecedented campaign of defamation to which he had been subjected, led by columnists and radio commentators Drew Pearson and Walter Winchell, ever since his position against recognition of the state of Israel had become public, and the “great numbers of abusive and threatening letters” about the matter that the Washington Post said he had received demonstrated beyond a doubt that large numbers of people wished James Forrestal ill. It is also abundantly obvious that there were a number of people who wanted to destroy him as a man of influence. The only question was how much power they might have had and how far they thought it necessary to go.
The Hoopes and Brinkley account of what transpired upon Forrestal’s arrival at the Bethesda Naval Hospital, which directly follows the account of his troubled trip, is most intriguing. Admitted to the Bethesda Naval Hospital, as we have noted, on April 2, Forrestal was talked to by Dr. Menninger on April 3 and again on April 6, but then Menninger bowed out of the picture. Dr. Raines took over completely from that point, or, at least, appeared to take over. Hoopes and Brinkley strongly suggest, however, that he was not really the person in charge of Forrestal’s “care.” Dr. Robert P. Nenno, who had been an assistant to Dr. Raines from 1952 to 1959 said in 1984 that Dr. Raines had told him that it was not his decision to place Forrestal in the 16th floor VIP suite. Had it been left to him, any depressed or potentially suicidal patient would have been housed in one of the two single-story facilities next to the main tower that were set up specifically for emotionally disturbed patients. As for who made that call, their direct quote from Nenno is, “I have always guessed that the order came from the White House.”32
If the White House made the decision on where Forrestal should be locked up, there is a good chance that Monsignor Sheehy’s suspicion as related by Simpson that they were also specifying the visitors he should receive was also correct.
Who Was Calling the Shots?
Concerning the extent of White House involvement in Forrestal’s treatment, the following 1968 excerpt of an interview by the Truman Library’s Jerry Hess of Harry Truman’s appointments secretary for his full time as President, Matthew J. Connelly, is of considerable interest. Connelly had previously been Truman’s executive assistant when Truman was Vice President and when he was Senator, and before that he was the chief investigator on the Senate committee through which Truman rose to prominence as chairman, the Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program. The first and last parts of the excerpt are included to support other suggestions in this paper that there was a big drop-off in leadership quality in the fledgling Department of Defense when Louis Johnson replaced James Forrestal:
HESS: The next man who served for just a short period of time until the unification was Kenneth C. Royall. He appears again as Secretary of the Army so we'll discuss him as Secretary of the Army, if that's all right.
The next category is Secretary of Defense. Of course, the first Secretary of Defense under the unification act was James Forrestal. Why was he chosen as the first Secretary of Defense?
CONNELLY: Forrestal was Secretary of the Navy prior to the merger of the branches of the Army, Navy and Air Force. Mr. Forrestal had been in Washington under the Roosevelt administration, was a highly intellectual fellow, and was a good administrative officer. When the merger was completed to create the Defense Department, Mr. Truman looked on him as the superior of the other members of the military establishment and appointed him as Secretary of Defense, which office he held very successfully until an illness overtook him.
HESS: Do you recall any instances, any evidences on the job of the mental deterioration that overtook Mr. Forrestal, unfortunately?
CONNELLY: Yes, I recall Mr. Forrestal called me and told me that his telephones were being bugged, his house was being watched, and he would like me to do something about it. So I had the chief of the Secret Service detail at the White House make an investigation of Mr. Forrestal's home; I had him observe it, I had him check his phones, and found out that he was just misinformed, that it wasn't being watched, and there was no indication that there was any wiretapping in Mr. Forrestal's home. That really upset me, b
ecause I realized that the Secret Service would do a thorough job, and I told the President that I was worried that Mr. Forrestal might be a little bit wrong.
HESS: What did the President say at that time? Do you recall?
CONNELLY: He asked me what I thought and I said, "I think Mr. Forrestal is cracking up."
So he said, "Why don't we arrange to have him go down to Key West and take a little vacation?"
So, Mr. Forrestal did go to Key West. There was a repetition down there. Mr. Forrestal had hallucinations about things that were going wrong at Key West and he called me from Key West and told me that something was wrong down there. So I checked very carefully with the Navy, who supervises Key West, and Mr. Forrestal later was transferred from Key West to the naval hospital in Bethesda.
HESS: Do you recall what he thought was going wrong at Key West at this time?
CONNELLY: He thought that the same things were happening, that people were annoying him, and he felt he was under surveillance down there, he felt that he was being watched, and in other words, he was being personally persecuted. So as a result of that, we had him very quietly removed to Bethesda hospital in Washington. And history will disclose that is where he jumped out a window.
HESS: The next man to hold the position was Louis Johnson. Why was he chosen for that position?
CONNELLY: Louis Johnson was chosen for two reasons. Number one, Louis Johnson had been Commander of the American Legion. He was a perennial candidate for President. He was a very effective political organizer, and during the campaign of 1948 when things were not very good for Mr. Truman, Louis Johnson accepted the position as treasurer of the Democratic National Committee. He gave up his law practice. He devoted all of his time to raising money for the campaign in '48. He was a highly successful lawyer in Washington, and Mr. Truman turned to him after the death of Mr. Forrestal to take over the Pentagon operation.
HESS: During this time, two important events took place, the cutting back of the Armed Forces and the invasion of Korea. Some people had blamed Louis Johnson for the reduction in the Armed Forces. Is that valid?
CONNELLY: That is valid. He had promised that he would cut to the bone the expenditures of the Defense Department and set out to do so, with the result that when the Korean war developed we found our-selves very unable to meet our commitments for our appearance in Korea.
HESS: Was this done strictly for reasons of economy? Wasn't it seen that this was a dangerous thing to do in the world situation at that time, or not?
CONNELLY: Well, World War II was over and Mr. Johnson thought that the appropriation for the Defense Department could be cut to reduce the overhead we had in maintaining the equipment over here and overseas, and he put on an economy program and without the Korean war at that time being imminent, he succeeded in his objectives. However, when the Korean thing developed we were too thin on supplies and materiel.
HESS: In the Korean War the North Koreans invaded South Korea, we'll get to that a little bit later, on June the 24th, on a Saturday, of 1950. Just when was the decision made to replace Louis Johnson. What can you tell me about the resignation of Louis Johnson?
CONNELLY: I don't recall.
HESS: Was that offered willingly, do you recall?
CONNELLY: I don't believe so. I think that the President by this time became dissatisfied with Johnson because of his inability to get along with other members of the Armed Forces.
HESS: How did he get along with the other members of the Cabinet?
CONNELLY: Louis Johnson was somewhat of an individualist, and Louis Johnson was not what you would call a cooperative member of the Cabinet. He was running his own show, and he didn't want any interference from anybody else, and I don't think he asked very often for opinions from anybody else.33
The first thing to notice here is that Connelly’s statement apparently contradicts both the Hoopes and Brinkley and the Rogow accounts as to who was behind the decision to send Forrestal down to Florida, and later to have him placed in the Bethesda Naval Hospital. Both books have Forrestal’s friend, Ferdinand Eberstadt, as the prime mover in the decision to go down to the estate of State Department official and friend, Robert Lovett, where Forrestal’s wife, Josephine Ogden, “Jo,” Forrestal was already vacationing. As we shall see, the most immediate witness to Forrestal’s apparent nervous breakdown, Forrestal aide, Marx Leva, supports their version. One curiosity is that, although Eberstadt did not die until 1969, six years after Rogow’s book was published and 20 years after Forrestal’s death, no one seems to have any sort of formal statement from Eberstadt directly about these matters, including Forrestal’s supposed suicide attempt at Hobe Sound or his talk of suicide. As for the decision to move Forrestal to Bethesda, Hoopes and Brinkley have it as a “tacit agreement” among several people at Hobe Sound, including Dr. Menninger, whom Eberstadt had apparently called in, Dr. Raines, who they say had been sent down at the behest of the White House (though not as the “agent” of the White House) and Forrestal’s wife. The wife, they say, had been influenced toward the Bethesda decision by a telephone conversation with Truman. Rogow says simply that Bethesda “was deemed” preferable to Menninger’s psychiatric clinic but doesn’t say by whom.
Considering the fact that Forrestal, having been officially replaced as Defense Secretary by Johnson on March 28, was a private citizen at this point, it is certainly reasonable to assume that Forrestal’s extra-legal transportation to Florida on a military airplane and confinement and treatment in the Naval Hospital at Bethesda was not done without approval at the highest level. Therefore, the Connelly account is probably essentially correct, although some area of dispute may remain as to who was the prime mover behind the decisions that were made. What appears not to be factually correct in the Connelly account is his placing of the Florida vacation site as Key West instead of Hobe Sound. Hobe Sound is on the southeast coast of Florida, north of Jupiter and West Palm Beach and more than 100 miles from Key West. One would like to think that he just slipped up on the name, but he is so definite about the Navy’s role in everything, and the U.S. Navy does have facilities at Key West. Perhaps it was the active role of Navy doctor, Captain Raines, that caused his confusion.
As we have seen, although they don’t go quite so far as Connelly, Hoopes and Brinkley do hint at a heavy behind-the-scenes presence by the White House in Forrestal’s treatment. Not only do they suggest that the White House was responsible for Forrestal being confined to the 16th floor, but one can easily see political pressure as opposed to sound medical considerations behind the curious choice of visitors that they tell us Forrestal was permitted. Arnold Rogow doesn’t take that chance. He did, as we have seen, mention in passing, though without comment in a footnote, that the report of the official investigation was kept secret, but generally he is far guiltier than Hoopes and Brinkley of withholding vital information from the reader.
Rogow’s Psychological Autopsy
Rogow keeps the hand of the White House completely hidden in his account. Rather, the voice we hear over and over is that of Dr. Raines and of the psychiatric community. One is greatly reminded of Kenneth Starr’s heavy reliance upon “suicidologist” Dr. Allan Berman and his “100% degree of medical certainty” that Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster committed suicide.
Rogow tells us that Dr. Raines diagnosed Forrestal as suffering from something called “involutional melancholia,” which was, indeed, a depressive condition specific to people of late middle age in the eyes of certain elements of the psychiatric community at the time. Rogow also quotes from a psychiatric textbook that mentions paranoia as one of the symptoms and that there is a risk of suicide from sufferers of the disorder. Not leaving anything to chance, he reminds us at that point that Forrestal had expressed concerns that there were “plots” and “conspiracies” against him. Rogow carefully leads the reader to the conclusion that Dr. Raines had made the proper diagnosis.34
Rogow does mention, again almost in passing, that Forrestal’s brothe
r, Henry, was not happy with the treatment at the Bethesda Naval Hospital, and he quotes from the December 1950 article by William Bradford Huie in the December 1950 New American Mercury to that effect. He also tells us that Father Sheehy had tried six times “during the week before [Forrestal’s] death” to see him at the hospital but “he told reporters, he was turned away by Raines because Raines did not believe that such a visit ‘would be in the patient’s best interest.’”35
No reference is given for the Sheehy talk to reporters, but the Huie article is clear that the six attempts by Sheehy to visit took place before Henry’s last visit with Raines on May 12, ten days before Forrestal’s death, and probably over a period of time much longer than one week. Huie tells us that on April 12, “Henry Forrestal also told the doctors (Raines and Hogan) that his brother wished to talk with Father Sheehy. Captain Hogan replied, according to Mr. Forrestal: ‘Yes, he has asked to see the Father several times. And, of course, he will.’”
The prevention of any meeting between Sheehy and James Forrestal was obviously not the last minute sort of thing that Rogow would apparently want us to believe that it was.
Sheehy, in a very short article in the January 1951 Catholic Digest entitled “The Death of James Forrestal” responding to Huie’s American Mercury article, offers the opinion that “the psychiatrist in charge was acting according to his principles.” Father Sheehy, who also reveals in the article that his efforts to see Forrestal took place virtually over the whole period of the confinement, writes here in such a politically circumspect manner that one wonders what anyone could possibly have had to fear in letting him talk to Forrestal.
Rogow, for his part, even manages to come half clean with respect to doubts that Forrestal’s death was actually a suicide. In a passage that is not referenced by Hoopes and Brinkley, he informs us that the widow in June of 1949 filed a $10,000 insurance claim on the basis that the death was an accident. In a footnote he tells us that he was unable to find out if the insurance company paid up.36