The Assassination of James Forrestal
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We hear nothing from Rogow, though, of brother Henry’s vigorous denial that Forrestal had committed suicide as we saw in the passage from the Simpson book. To be sure, Rogow did not have the Simpson book to quote from since his book predated Simpson’s by three years, but he had something even better. He had Henry Forrestal himself. In his acknowledgments on page 375 he thanks Henry for his great cooperation on the work and on page 58 he has the little detail furnished by Henry that his younger brother was almost always strapped for money at college even though the family had provided him with about $6,000 while he was at Princeton.
Clearly, Henry made himself available to Rogow and told the man everything he wanted to know. No doubt, in desperate hope of finally getting his own considered opinion that his brother was murdered out to the public, he also told Rogow everything that he wanted Rogow to know. One can only imagine the sense of betrayal he must have felt upon reading what Arnold Rogow ended up writing. The experience probably left him more "damned bitter" than ever, and ever more at a loss as to what he could do.
The Gospel According to Rogow
In the absence of an official “Warren Report” or “Fiske Report” or “Starr Report” on Forrestal’s death, Rogow’s flawed account has become the surrogate “official” version of what happened. We have seen how Hoopes and Brinkley lean on it for important evidence that is not elsewhere sup-ported, like the naval corpsman witnessing Forrestal transcribing the Sophocles poem and Forrestal’s supposed talk of contemplated suicide to Ferdinand Eberstadt. It has also become the standard reference for accounts of Forrestal’s death in popular books like The Puzzle Palace, by James Bamford, The Agency, by John Ranelagh, and The Secret War against the Jews, by John Loftus and Mark Aarons. Otto Freidrich, in his book, Going Crazy, uses Rogow as his source and refers to Forrestal as “mad as King Lear.”37
We have noted that Rogow, like Hoopes and Brinkley, leaves out the name of vital witnesses such as the naval corpsman and the doctor on duty on the 16th floor on the night of May 21-22, 1949. He even goes Hoopes and Brinkley one better and omits the name of Special Assistant and General Counsel to the Secretary of Defense, Marx Leva, the man who first witnessed Forrestal’s breakdown on March 29, the day after his replacement as Defense Secretary by Louis Johnson and shortly after he was honored at a ceremony of the Committee on Armed Services of the House of Representatives. In the course of two paragraphs Rogow refers to an anonymous “aide” or “assistant” no less than five times. In each case he is talking of Leva.
Forrestal Protégé, Marx Leva
Since it is evident that Rogow didn’t want readers to seek out Leva and hear or read for themselves what he had to say, I shall provide his account here from the previously cited Truman Library interview by Jerry Hess:
HESS: What do you recall about the unfortunate mental breakdown that overtook Mr. Forrestal?
LEVA: Well, I may have been in the position of not being able to see the forest for the trees because I was seeing him six, eight, ten, twelve times a day and both in and out of the office. A lot of his friends have said since his death, "Oh, we saw it coming," and, "We knew this and we knew that." The only thing that I knew was that he was terribly tired, terribly overworked, spending frequently literally sixteen hours and eighteen hours a day trying to administer an impossible mechanism, worrying about the fact that a lot of it was of his own creation. I knew that he was tired, I begged him to take time off. I'm sure that others begged him to take time off.
I tried to arrange, and on one occasion did arrange, a fishing trip for him with his friend Ferdinand Eberstadt, which he canceled, he didn't take it. I tried to tell him he ought to go south, go somewhere, and rest. I did realize that. But I did not—I had no background with mental illness, I had no knowledge of how it manifested itself and I did not equate exhaustion and mental illness. I just thought he was terribly tired and he ought to take time off.
I even came up with what I thought was a very ingenious device be-cause he told me he didn't have any under secretary; he didn't have any assistant secretaries, he couldn't leave. And I even gave him a legal opinion (I hope not written because it was not very valid), in which I said that, I think I told him this: That because the 1947 unification act didn't create an under secretary or any assistant secretaries, but did have a number of presidential appointees in the Pentagon, it would be quite all right for him to designate any one of the three secretaries as the acting Secretary of Defense in his absence because they were the next level of presidential appointees. And I said, "If you feel that Secretary Symington cannot be objective on a Navy matter and Secretary Sullivan cannot be objective on an Air Force matter, then you have Royall as a possible man, since the Army is less partisan, or if you feel that it would be an insult to one of the secretaries to have one of the others and what you want is a caretaker for a couple of weeks, you can appoint a fellow like Gordon Gray, who was my specific recommendation, who is the Assistant Secretary of the Army, or perhaps then Under Secretary" And I said, "Nobody could be insulted, everybody respects him and he is a presidential appointee. I'm sure Mr. Truman would approve, and you could just let him run the department administratively, and we can always get you on the phone when we need to," which I thought was a rather ingenious solution, but nothing came of it.
That is a long answer to your question, or a long non-answer, I did not know what was happening. Now my observation of what did happen is as follows: Louis Johnson, who I had not met before he was sworn in, was to have been sworn in on March the 31st of 1949. Forrestal apparently just thought he couldn't hold on any longer, I didn't realize that until later, and asked that this ceremony be moved up to March the 28th. It was moved up to March 28th and while Forrestal was terribly tired, it was—he spoke briefly but well. The ceremony went off fine.
I believe that either Forrestal went to an office that had been set aside for him afterwards, or he went home. In any event, we had an appointment on the Hill the next day, March 29th before the House Armed Services Committee because Chairman Vinson had said to me, "Be sure to have Mr. Forrestal there." They wanted to take note of his outstanding service, etc. So I arranged that Mr. Forrestal would be there. He came to the Pentagon.
I rode up to the Hill with him. That was the day after Johnson was sworn in, and we appeared before the House Armed Services Commit-tee and Forrestal was sort of overwhelmed by the compliments of Carl Vinson and the ranking Republican member, Dewey Short, from the great state of Missouri. And he was a little teary eyed, I think, but he responded very beautifully and said that anything that he had been able to accomplish was because the Secretaries of Army and Navy and Air Force had been working so closely with him, etc. He made a, you know, good routine response. My further recollection at that time is that Stuart Symington said to me, "Marx, old fellow, would you mind if I rode back to the Pentagon with Jim; there's something I want to talk to him about." I don't know what it was.
I said, "Sure."
So, I rode back with Royall because Forrestal and I had driven over together. When I got back to the Pentagon I went back to my office. Forrestal had been given an office down from the Secretary of Defense a little, next door to mine. So I stuck my head in—it was next door to my office—and he was sitting there just like this with his hat on his head, just gazing. And I went in and I said, "Mr. Secretary, is there anything I can do for you?"
He was almost in a coma really. That was when I first knew and that was when I first got scared. So I said, "Do you feel faint?" I don't remember what I said.
He said, "No, no, I want to go home."
So, he got up and headed for the door and I said, "Where are you going?"
He said, "I'm going for my car." Well, he didn't have a car.
So, I ran like hell. I remember whose car I got; I got Dr. Vannevar Bush's driver, who was then head of the Research and Development Board, and I said, "Take Mr. Forrestal home and phone me when you get him there." I knew Mrs. Forrestal wasn't in town, and I told the drive
r to make sure that the butler knows that he's there, etc. And then I phoned, as it happened, Mr. Eberstadt who was testifying on the 1949 amendments to the unification act before the Senate Armed Services Committee. And I said, "I don't like what I see. Can I meet you?"
He said, "Yes, I'll meet you at the house."
So, I met him at the house and the butler said he had gone upstairs. I don't know, anyway—I’m sort of short-circuiting this. That wasn't exactly what happened. We first phoned the house, Eber and I got together, the butler said, "He won't speak to anybody."
Eber said to the butler, "You tell James (Eber and others of the Prince-ton group called him James), you tell James he can get away with that with a lot of people but not with me." And so he came to the phone and apparently babbled a lot of stuff about the Russians—apparently it was just like that. I don't know. The only further thing I knew is that I did drive to the house, I waited while Eber had the butler pack his clothes. Eber came out once and said,"Can you get a plane to take him to Florida?"
And I said, "Certainly."
And I phoned and we got a Marine plane, I think, I don't know. And so Forrestal came down and Eber sat in the back seat of my old, old Chevrolet and Forrestal sat in front with me and then the butler came running back, came running after us. He brought the Secretary's golf clubs. So I opened the trunk, we put in the golf clubs and I drove out to the private plane end (we didn't go to the military planes), private plane end of National Airport. And on the way out Forrestal said three times, the only thing he said, Eber tried to speak to him and he would say, "You're a loyal fellow, Marx." "You're a loyal fellow, Marx," three times. I remember that, I think I remember that. And we put him in the plane and I had also phoned to be sure to have a military aide there to look after him and then I said to Eber, "I hate for him to be going down there by himself but I know Bob Lovett is down there," who was a close friend.
And I said, "I'm going to phone Bob to be sure to meet the plane." So I phoned Bob and Bob did meet the plane. I never saw him after that.
By the way, psychiatry—(omit two paragraphs previously quoted)
Actually, as I understood later from Mr. Eberstadt—Mr. Eberstadt sent a plane down, chartered a plane, and sent Dr. Menninger from Topeka and wanted the Secretary to fly up to the Menninger Clinic, but Mrs. Forrestal and Mr. Truman agreed that it would be—neither of whom knew anything about psychiatry either—that there would be less stigma at being at the naval hospital.
And only a Navy doctor could put a VIP patient—(Previously-cited paragraph omitted.)
HESS: What would be your evaluation of his general effectiveness and his administrative ability and Mr. Forrestal's overall value to the United States?
LEVA: Oh, I think he was one of the ablest public servants I have ever known. I think that he was simply tremendous in everything that he went into. I think that most people's memories have been clouded by the end of the story without any attention to the early chapters or the middle chapters.
I think in particular of a column that Arthur Krock wrote that impressed me very deeply. The day after Forrestal was sworn in, which now has us to September '47, in which Arthur wrote, in substance, "He entered on his new duties as Secretary of Defense with a measure of public respect and esteem unequaled in the memory of this correspondent." It's easy to lose sight of that. He apparently did a simply fantastic job at the Navy during World War II both as Under Secretary and as Secretary. I only got there when it was over but those who were there say that that multibillion procurement program that he put together, hiring for the purpose the best and the most outstanding lawyers anywhere in the country to make sure that the country got its money's worth, and what he did on a crash basis, and I'm sure what [Robert] Patterson did in a similar context in the Army, was simply a fabulous administrative achievement. I think within the limit of what one could do in the very difficult framework of starting unification, he did magnificently.
The first thing to note is that Leva’s candid, non-medical view that prior to the breakdown on March 29 the only thing noticeable about Forrestal’s condition was that he was badly exhausted and overworked. Leva was not alone in not seeing any evidence that Forrestal was actually “cracking up.” Hoopes and Brinkley say virtually the same thing with respect to everyone who worked closely with him. Those co-workers attribute their failure to notice any change in him, like Leva, to the continuous nature of their contact with him as well as to his very self-contained, businesslike manner.38
Given the extent and pace of his decline, it is astonishing that colleagues at the Pentagon, including members of his inner staff, failed to recognize it. In retrospect they attribute their failure to Forrestal’s formidable self-control, his brusque, impersonal method of dealing with staff, and the simple fact that they saw him too frequently to note much change in his condition or demeanor.
These observations are in curious contrast to what Monsignor Sheehy wrote in his Catholic Digest article:
The day he was admitted to the hospital, Forrestal told Dr. Raines he wished to see me. The word reached me through the executive officer of the hospital. I dismissed a class, because I had seen his collapse coming on for some weeks, and knew his condition was serious. The psychiatrist told me that he wished my help, but that Jim was so confused I should wait some days before seeing him.
Sheehy does not elaborate. Perhaps he is talking about the growing exhaustion. Setting aside what some have seen as “paranoid” previous claims by Forrestal that some people were out to get him, because there is every reason to believe that they were, his truly strange behavior began very abruptly after that automobile ride with Secretary of the Air Force (and later Senator and Presidential aspirant) Stuart Symington. It should be noted that in their index under “Symington, Stuart, double-dealing tactics of,” they list pages 368-70, 380-83, 446, and 447. It is a relatively safe assumption that whatever it was Symington had to say to Forrestal affected the latter very, very greatly and in a very negative way. It would not have been out of character for Symington, if one accepts the Hoopes and Brinkley portrait of the man, for that to have been his intention. That impression of Symington’s motives is reinforced by the fact that Symington later said that no such trip had taken place or that he and Forrestal were ever alone together, but Leva and Forrestal aide John Ohly was in strong agreement with Leva on the matter.39
The Symington Revelations
The reader may excuse us if we engage in a bit of speculation at this point as to what the subject matter of that conversation might have been. One must agree, we believe, that this speculation is at least as valid as the suggestion that the word “nightingale” in that poem by Sophocles, because that was the name of an American intelligence program to infiltrate anti-communist former Nazi sympathizers into the Ukraine, touched off such feelings of guilt in an apparently fully-recovered Forrestal that he rushed quickly across the hall, tied one end of his gown’s sash tightly around his neck, attempted unsuccessfully to secure the other end to a radiator, and then flung himself out the window, dying from the fall instead of from the intended hanging.
The key to the subject matter of the Symington conversation is to be found in the five words that Forrestal kept repeating to Leva, “You are a loyal fellow. You are a loyal fellow.” And why wouldn’t he be, one might ask, and in contrast to whom? Now I think we can see why Arnold Rogow didn’t want us to know Marx Leva’s name. Marx Leva, if you had not guessed by this time, was quite thoroughly Jewish. The best guess as to the subject matter of Symington’s conversation, I believe, is that it related to some enormity, some devastating power play by Jewish Americans that advanced the cause of Israel at the expense of what Forrestal perceived to be the interests of the United States. Forrestal was apparently overwhelmed by the contrast between the personal and the patriotic loyalty of Leva, a man he had elevated to his current position because of his dedicated service to the American government, and the large number of prominent and less-prominent Jews who had made For
restal’s life a hell over the past couple of years.
On the Beach
Expanding upon the reasons for the anti-suicide precautions, Hoopes and Brinkley make Forrestal sound absolutely nutty by his suggestion that he and Lovett not talk in the proximity of the permanent sockets for beach umbrellas for fear that listening devices might be planted there. What he wanted to talk about was how the Communists who had infiltrated the Roosevelt-Truman administration had singled him out as public enemy number one, but he was not the only one that they planned to assassinate. They actually were planning the assassination of the entire leadership of the government and the invasion of the country, and might even be already underway.40
Their lone reference for all this is Rogow and Rogow, as is typical with him, has no reference at all. Their passage is so close to a verbatim rendering of Rogow, in fact, that one could almost call it plagiarism, except that Hoopes and Brinkley have made it sound even more outlandish by adding the bit about the Kremlin’s plan to assassinate the whole leadership in Washington.
The story about the supposedly bugged beach umbrella sockets is quoted in its entirety in The Secret War against the Jews and it is also recounted in The Agency. It certainly does make it sound like Forrestal was pretty far around the bend while at Hobe Sound, but there is simply no evidence that it is true.
Robert Lovett is long dead, but fortunately he gave an interview to Alfred Goldberg and Harry B. Yoshpe of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Oral History Project on May 13, 1974 (Lovett was Secretary of Defense under Truman from September 1951 to the end of Truman’s term in January of 1953.). We quote the relevant portions: