The Assassination of James Forrestal
Page 11
47 Hoopes and Brinkley, pp. 402-404. They have taken the concluding quote from Robert A. Lovett, “Reflections on Jim Forrestal,” unpublished book preface, March 12, 1985.
48 Gabler, pp. 294-295.
49 http://www.fpp.co.uk/docs/ADL/ADLitems/McCloskey270402.html.
50 Confessions of a Muckraker: The Inside Story of Life in Washington during the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson Years (with James Boyd), Random House, 1979. p. 158. And yes, Anderson quotes Rogow extensively as well.
51 Charles Higham, Trading with the Enemy: An Exposé of the Nazi-American Money Plot 1933-1949, Barnes and Noble, 1983, pp. 210-211.
52 Simpson, p. 16.
53 Ibid., p. 6.
54 David McCullough, Truman, Simon and Schuster, 1992, p. 739.
55 Simpson, p. 15.
56 Hoopes and Brinkley, p. 238.
57 McCullough, pp. 740-741.
58 David Martin, “Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression,” http://dcdave.com/article3/991228.html.
59 Simpson, p. 7.
60 Ibid., pp. 81-82.
61 Ibid., pp. 83-84.
62 Ibid., p. 85.
63 Hoopes and Brinkley, p. 483.
64 Simpson, p. 83.
65 We shall see later that our early suspicion, hinted at here, that “Cornell Simpson” was a pen name was correct.
66 Thomas Fleming, The New Dealers’ War: F.D.R. and the War within World War II, Basic Books, 2001, p. 319.
67 Ibid., p. 322. See also this writer’s extensive documentation of Communist infiltration of the Roosevelt and Truman administration at this web site: http://ariwatch.com/Links/DCDave.htm#TheRedDecadeAndAfter.
68 Hoopes and Brinkley, pp. 428-429.
69 Simpson, p. 53.
70 Ibid., p. 90.
71 Ibid., p. 134.
72 Ibid., p. 161.
73 Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel, The Venona Secrets, Exposing Soviet Espionage and America’s Traitors, Regnery Publishing, 2000, pp. 180-181.
74 Simpson, p. 162.
75 Edwin M. Wright, The Great Zionist Cover-up, The Northeast Ohio Committee on Middle East Understanding, Inc., 1975, pp. iv-v. Available online at https://www.scribd.com/document/105756948/Wright-Edwin-The-Great-Zionist-Coverup-en-1975-142-S-Text.
76 Truman Library, Oral History Interview with Edwin M. Wright, https://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/wright.htm.
77 Loftus and Aarons, pp. 155-156.
78 Simpson, p. 182.
79 Ibid., p. 163.
80 Ibid., p. 166.
81 And Communists did not send a letter bomb to Truman in the White House in 1947. See “’Jews’ Tried to Kill Truman in 1947,” op. cit.
82 Ibid., p. vii.
83 For more on Ruddy, see David Martin, “Double Agent Ruddy Reaches for Media Pinnacle,” http://dcdave.com/article5/140314.htm and “Christopher Ruddy on Brett Kavanaugh,” http://dcdave.com/article5/180715.htm.
84 David Martin, “James Forrestal and Joe McCarthy,” http://www.dcdave.com/article5/110928.htm.
85 “New Palestine Party Visit of Menachem Begin and aims of Political Movement Discussed,” https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/einstein/1948/12/02.htm.
CHAPTER 2
James Forrestal’s “Anti-Semitism”
Terms of Opprobrium
“Anti-Semitic,” “conspiracy theorist,”
Throw in “isolationist,” too.
We don’t need laws to limit out thoughts
When labeling language will do.
The year was around 2004, as I recall, and I was attending a house lunchtime lecture by a professor from Georgetown University at the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington on the subject of President Harry Truman’s racial integration of the United States military. I beg the indulgence of the readers, but I have completely forgotten the professor’s name. I do recall, though, that he was quite obviously Jewish.
During the question and answer period after his lecture I suggested that he might have fleshed his story out a bit more by noting that the real pioneer in the desegregation of the armed services was James Forrestal, who had ordered the integration of the Navy when he was Navy Secretary. The man’s very emotional response really surprised me. “Forrestal was an anti-Semite,” he said, in what was really a complete non sequitur, as he brushed away my observation. He seemed almost like Dracula with a cross being waved in his face at the favorable mention of the name of James Forrestal. The impression that this scholar imparted was that there is a continuing strong dislike—if not pure hatred—of Forrestal within an important element of the U.S. Jewish community.
Nowhere is the malicious belief about Forrestal’s attitude toward Jews fostered more strongly than in the aforementioned Secret War against the Jews. The following sentence describing Forrestal’s ultimate demise is most damning: “To his many critics, it seemed that James Forrestal’s anti-Jewish obsession had finally conquered him.”86
Did he have such an obsession? Loftus and Aarons certainly want us to think so. In their index we find under “Forrestal, James” the sub-category, “anti-Semitism of, 156-59, 177-80, 199, 208, 213-14, 327, 365.” The primary evidence they give for the assertion are the business dealings of Forrestal’s investment banking firm, Dillon, Read, and Co., with companies in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and Forrestal’s opposition to the creation of the state of Israel, that is, his anti-Zionism.87 Nowhere do Loftus and Aarons tell us that the controlling partner of Dillon, Read, Clarence Dillon, whom Forrestal replaced as president in 1938, was Jewish. He was born Clarence Lapowski in San Antonio, Texas, in 1882, the son of an affluent clothing merchant. Maybe this is the rock upon which the Zionists’ blackmail attempt foundered.
They also have passages like this: “Forrestal himself admitted that he thought that Jews were ‘different,’ and he ‘could never really understand how a non-Jew and a Jew could be friends.’”88
The passage finds an echo in Gabler’s Winchell biography:
Forrestal had never particularly liked Jews and, according to a friend, had never understood how Jews and non-Jews could be intimates. Now he took his anti-Semitism into public policy, arguing that a Jewish state in Palestine would needlessly antagonize Arabs and jeopardize oil supplies, that the Soviets would eventually be pulled into any Mideast crisis and that American troops would eventually have to defend the Jews there.89 (emphasis added)
If the two books sound quite similar on this point it is because they have the same source, Arnold Rogow. Turning to Rogow, we see that his source is not only typically anonymous, but Loftus and Aarons and Gabler have used the passage very much out of context:
Here, perhaps, his views were a direct reflection of his background. While Forrestal was not an anti-Semite, his attitude toward Jews was characterized by much ambivalence. Although he maintained good relations with his New York and Washington associates who were Jewish, notably Bernard Baruch (At this point Rogow has a long footnote mainly expounding upon Baruch’s great admiration for Forrestal.), his Defense Department legal aide Marx Leva, and Navy Captain Ellis M. Zacharias, he had difficulty accepting Jews as social equals. One of his Wall Street colleagues recalls that Forrestal thought Jews were “different,” and he could never really understand how a non-Jew and a Jew could be friends. I remember an occasion when I was involved in his presence in an argument with a Jewish friend. At one point I got over-heated and I said something like “you son-of-a-bitch.” Jim was shocked that I could talk that way to someone who was Jewish. He himself was always very reserved with people who were Jews. I think there was something about them he couldn’t understand, or maybe didn’t like.90
Or maybe not. Forrestal was also very reserved with people who were not Jews. What Rogow has given us here is clearly the very subjective impression of one man, on a very tricky subject.91 Others have ex-pressed a very different view of Forrestal. Here are the words of the fervent Zionist James G. McDonald, America's first Ambassador to Israel.
He was in no sense an
ti-Semitic or anti-Israel nor influenced by oil interests. He was convinced that partition was not in the best interests of the U.S., and he certainly did not deserve the persistent and venomous attacks on him which helped break his mind and body. On the contrary, these attacks stand out as the ugliest examples of the willingness of politician and publicist to use the vilest means—in the name of patriotism—to destroy self-sacrificing and devoted public citizens.92
That observation by McDonald finds an echo from Forrestal’s close friend, Ferdinand Eberstadt. Reacting at the time to what he considered to be very unfair press charges of anti-Semitism and suggestions that Forrestal harbored sympathy for fascism, Eberstadt wrote, “I know of no more truly democratic or unprejudiced man than he is.”93
Hoopes and Brinkley address the “anti-Semitic” question head on, declaring the charge to be absurd. “No man had less race or class consciousness,” they quote from Washington Post editor Herbert Elliston writing in 1951. That is certainly the impression that we got of the man from our extensive interview of Forrestal’s Navy driver, John Spalding. He was one to side with the little guy against the admirals, according to Spalding, and, as noted previously, regularly called upon a prominent rabbi out of friendship upon his visits to New York City. Hoopes and Brinkley also remind us of Forrestal’s long, close working relationship with Jewish people throughout his Wall Street career. The anti-Semitism charge, according to these authors, originated completely with the Zionists to tar Forrestal over his principled opposition to their fanatical ambitions in Palestine, ambitions that he felt were contrary to the long-term interests of the United States.94
Ironically, for their rather bizarre theory that the word “nightingale” awakened feelings of guilt in Forrestal and may have prompted a sudden decision to end it all they reference Loftus, an arch-Zionist who we have seen deploys the “anti-Semitism” slur against Forrestal perhaps more recklessly than anyone. One wonders why they should think that he was someone they could rely upon on the crucial question of what could possibly have motivated Forrestal to rush across the hall and attempt to hang himself from a 16th floor window.
Around the same time as our exchange with the Forrestal-hating Georgetown professor, we ran across an article by Rabbi James Rudin on the web site of The Center for Catholic-Jewish Studies at St. Leo University in St. Leo Florida. That article, addressing a matter that was in the news the year before was entitled “Truman’s Anti-Jewish Sentiments Revealed in Diary.”95 One passage in the article, we felt, was nothing short of slanderous toward Forrestal, "While some historians believe both Marshall and Forrestal harbored anti-Jewish sentiments, that character stain had never touched Truman."
I quickly sent an email to the executive director of the center telling him how inappropriate it was for an organization purportedly devoted to improving relations between Christians and Jews to publish something that was so slanderous of the great Catholic public servant, Forrestal, and that it was unscholarly, to boot, to support the charge with what “some” unnamed historians say. I then set the director straight on Forrestal with the information that we have provided here from a number of named sources.
I received no response, but at least the center took the article down not long after receiving my email. From what I had seen in the attitude of that Georgetown professor and much else that I have read, I imagine that Rabbi Rudin was writing what he felt was an accepted fact about Forrestal’s attitude toward Jews, either that, or he is simply part of an ongoing propaganda operation to make us believe that it is an accepted fact.
What Is “Anti-Semitism?”
Please notice that Rabbi Rudin did not even use the dreaded “anti-Semite” charge against Forrestal and Marshall, only that some historians thought he “harbored anti-Jewish sentiments,” whatever that might mean, and yet he feels free to characterize such an attitude as a reflection of a “character stain.” Having grown up in a rural Southern Baptist environment in which almost everyone I knew harbored anti-Catholic sentiments—although very few of them even knew a Catholic—I know that it would never have occurred to anyone, including Catholics, to suggest that this showed a character stain on their part. What is it about being critical of Jews that is so special and different that it could get Forrestal labeled an awful anti-Semite by a wide range of scholars and to be called by a couple of them a “bigoted lunatic,” based upon the flimsiest of evidence?96
The late Catholic journalist and author, Joseph Sobran, has some very useful insights on the subject in his classic 1995 article, “The Jewish Establishment.”97
Nobody worries about being called “anti-Italian” or “anti-French” or “anti-Christian”; these aren’t words that launch avalanches of vituperation and make people afraid to do business with you.
It’s pointless to ask what “anti-Semitic” means. It means trouble. It’s an attack signal. The practical function of the word is not to define or distinguish things, but to conflate them indiscriminately — to equate the soberest criticism of Israel or Jewish power with the murderous hatred of Jews. And it works. Oh, how it works.
----
The word has no precise definition. An “anti-Semite” may or may not hate Jews. But he is certainly hated by Jews. There is no penalty for making the charge loosely; the accused has no way of falsifying the charge, since it isn’t defined.
The accused especially has no way of falsifying the charge if he is dead.
“’Anti- Semitism’ says Sobran, “is therefore less a charge than a curse, an imprecation that must be uttered for mulaically.”
In recent years, the anti-Semitism charge has been used ever more promiscuously.
Anyone critical of Israeli policies is now routinely portrayed as an anti-Semite. Even the survivors of Israel’s attack on the USS Liberty are labeled anti-Semitic for urging a Congressional investigation of the circumstances surrounding the killing of 34 U.S. servicemen by Israel Defense Forces in 1967. The survivors ask: “How does seeking an inquiry become ‘anti-Semitism’?”
In February 2006 the Church of England voted to review its investment in Caterpillar, Inc. when the church discovered that Israel uses Caterpillar equipment to destroy Palestinian homes. Concerned at the ethical implications of profiting from that policy, the church resolved to study the issue. Even that expression of moral concern was quickly portrayed as “anti-Zionist—verging on anti-Semitic.”98
When we see the anti-Semite charge being thrown around so indiscriminately, we must wonder if something deeper might be involved than just political tactics. For a psychological exploration of that question, we turn to the philosopher-longshoreman, Eric Hoffer. Perhaps it is a matter of self-contempt:
Self-contempt produces in man “the most unjust and criminal passions imaginable, for he conceives a mortal hatred against that truth which blames him and convinces him of his faults.”
That hatred springs more from self-contempt than from a legitimate grievance is seen in the intimate connection between hatred and a guilty conscience.
There is perhaps no surer way of infecting ourselves with virulent hatred toward a person than by doing him a grave injustice. That others have a just grievance against us is a more potent reason for hating them than that we have a just grievance against them. We do not make people humble and meek when we show them their guilt and cause them to be ashamed of themselves. We are more likely to stir their arrogance and rouse in them a reckless aggressiveness. Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us.99
The Israeli populace, by and large, surely displays a vicious animus towards the Palestinians, and those once large majority residents of the land to whom the residents of the Jewish state of Israel have dealt a grave injustice. One might say the same thing for the men of the USS Liberty and also of James Forrestal.
The “Suicide” Peddlers
We have detected a thread connecting those who would convince us that Forrestal committed suicide and those whom we have identified as the prime sus
pects in his murder. The dust jacket to Arnold Rogow’s book says that he is the author of four other books. It does not name them. Maybe that is because this biographer who strongly suggests that Forrestal’s opposition to recognizing the state of Israel was based upon Forrestal’s personal anti-Semitism had previously edited the collection entitled The Jew in a Gentile World: An Anthology of Writings about Jews by Non-Jews. His dangerously paranoid, ethnocentric orientation is well summed up by this sentence from the preface: “Jew-baiters and anti-Semites of one variety or the other–Greek, Roman, and Christian–have largely dominated the Gentile world, and as a result that world has been one in which the Jew has always had to move cautiously and, more often than not, live dangerously.”
Later he wrote a chapter on anti-Semitism in the International Encyclopedia of Social Science. His is the sort of thinking that gave rise to the modern state of Israel, that is, that Jews can never be safe living in majority gentile populations, so they must have a state of their own. In this view, one might say, Jews are in a more or less permanent state of war with the rest of mankind.
As for Pearson, at the bottom of the article by John Henshaw entitled, “Israel’s Grand Design: Leaders Crave Area from Egypt to Iraq,” which appeared in The New American Mercury in the spring of 1968, we find the following:
The late John Henshaw was chief legman for columnist Drew Pearson, who later broke with Pearson. At that time, Henshaw’s expenses were paid by the Anti-Defamation League, a lobby for Israel, which had a “special relationship” with Pearson. Thus Henshaw’s Middle East insights are unique.100
As we have seen, the other powerful columnist and radio commentator slandering Forrestal over his Israel opposition, Walter Winchell, also had a very special relationship with the ADL and its domestic spying and eavesdropping operation.
Journalist Eliot Janeway, the man who according to Hoopes and Brinkley told Ferdinand Eberstadt that Forrestal had attempted suicide at Hobe Sound, had more tenuous Jewish connections. Though born Eliot Jacobstein of New York Jews of Lithuanian origin, he changed his last name in his teens and concealed his Jewishness from everyone around him, including his children. If he plumped for Israel, it would more likely have been on behalf of his employer, Time magazine, than out of a sense of ethnic or religious solidarity. What little he might have written in favor of Israel, writes his son, Michael, it was done only for geopolitical reasons at the behest of Time publisher, Henry Luce, and was never on account of personal Jewish leanings.101