The Assassination of James Forrestal

by David Martin

  Cornell Simpson is not, of course, the author’s real name. Nobody would publish a book like this under his real name. I happen to know who the author is, and that makes me a bit nervous myself. I read this book five years ago, in manuscript. A friend of mine was going to raise the money to publish it (Western Islands was not then publishing new works) but “Cornell Simpson,” for reasons best known to himself, disappeared. I could not blame him too much. He knew too much—as you will see for yourself—and the wrong people knew him. The only reason I can be so frank now is that I honestly haven’t the slightest idea where he is today, or whether he is alive. It would be impossible to imagine a more devastating—or convincing—exposé than The Death of James Forrestal.

  I was living in metropolitan Washington at the time of the defenestration of Forrestal. I remember being convinced immediately that he had not committed suicide—which was the official story—but had been murdered. My reason was simple, but for myself, conclusive. The first report I read, in the Washington Post, said that Forrestal’s body had been found on the hospital roof below the open sixteenth-story window of the tower, clad in pajamas and robe, with the bathrobe cord knotted about his neck. The theory was, said the Post, that he had hanged himself out the window, and then the cord had slipped from the radiator or whatever it was tied to inside the window.

  I didn’t believe it. I believe that men hang themselves, or that they jump out sixteenth-story windows. But I don’t believe that they hang themselves out sixteenth-story windows.

  On the other hand, it is no trouble at all to imagine a murderer in orderly’s habit garroting a man with his own bathrobe cord, then heaving him out the window—perhaps with semi-maniacal haste and strength on hearing or thinking he heard approaching footsteps.

  Well, it made not the slightest difference what I thought. It still makes no difference. I could prove nothing—can prove nothing now. But there were others with similar suspicions, and one of those others—who here calls himself Cornell Simpson—decided to research the thing out to the end. He was an experienced researcher of the kind. In 1912 he would have been called a muckraker. He had written exposés for national magazines. He knew how to make contacts, he knew how to evaluate reports, he knew how to analyze.

  But he had never tackled a thing like this before. I suppose that at the outset he had dreams of fame and fortune—as the man who proved that the first U.S. Secretary of Defense had been murdered! What a sensation! The book would be a smash hit for sure! A million copies—movie rights—the works! “Cornell Simpson” was—is, if he is still alive—a professional. He liked to make money. He thought he could make a mint if he came up with a good enough product.

  He came up with a product that was virtually perfect—and suddenly realized that he would be lucky to escape with his life.

  Evans continues in this vein throughout his long review, which is not so much a critique as it is a touting synopsis. The review, therefore, can be said to have virtually all of Simpson’s strengths and weaknesses when it comes to matters of substance. Particularly for the weaknesses, I would refer the reader to the section entitled “The First Ruddy?” in Chapter One.

  Careful readers of that section and the quoted beginning of the Evans review above will notice that Evans reinforces Simpson’s claim that the book he finally got published in 1966 was unchanged from the manuscript that he had finished many years previously when he says that he read the manuscript “five years ago.” He thus provides cover for Simpson having ignored completely Arnold Rogow’s very influential 1963 book, James Forrestal, a Study of Personality, Politics, and Policy. The Rogow book is full of claims about matters related to Forrestal’s death that are in direct contradiction to what Simpson writes. Most notably, Rogow wrote that Forrestal was witnessed copying something out of a book just before he died, presumably the Sophocles poem that the press used as a surrogate for a suicide note, and Simpson says that that would have been impossible.

  Simpson’s book would have been ever so much stronger had he taken Rogow to task for his many inaccuracies and omissions, but he has this convenient excuse for not having done so, saying in his foreword that he completed it in the mid-1950s and then set it aside because his prospective publisher had rejected it as too “dangerous.” He then says that he brought it out unchanged a decade later to preserve the flavor of the period.105

  That may be Simpson’s excuse for ignoring Rogow, but what could be the excuse of the reviewer of Simpson’s book? One would think that he had an obligation to bring matters up to date in the many pages permitted him by the Birch Society house magazine by resolving the contradictions between the two books. But Evans also ignores Rogow’s book. One can hardly escape the conclusion that his reason for doing so is the same as Simpson’s. Cornell Simpson, Medford Evans, and the John Birch Society would all have us believe that if Forrestal was murdered, it was certainly the work of the Communists. Rogow is dead accurate on one point, though, and neither Simpson, Evans, nor the Birch Society could begin to contradict him on that one. That is, that Forrestal was at least as much if not more hated and feared by the Zionists. Furthermore, they have had a similar assassination record as the Communists and their leverage over the Truman administration and the American press was and certainly is now much greater than that of the Communists. (One particularly ugly secret is that in many instances the Communists and the Zionists were the same people well up to the time of Forrestal’s death.)

  Mr. LaRochelle’s email provides fresh circumstantial evidence that the story about the unchanged manuscript is simply a ruse, and it is a ruse in which Medford Evans participated. Take the matter of the misidentification of the employment of Ben Mandel. To be sure it’s possible that Evans could have simply missed that error when he read the manuscript. One can assume, though, that, as is usually the case, the manuscript was shared—if, indeed, there was such a manuscript at the time—with a knowledgeable person like Medford Evans for the precise purpose of editorial review and fact checking. Easier to believe is that Evans participated in the ruse of the publication of the unchanged manuscript in order to sidestep the Zionist angle in Forrestal’s death that is inescapable in the Rogow treatment.

  M. Stanton Evans and His Book

  So what about the statement by M. Stanton Evans to his research assistant that he had no knowledge of the Cornell Simpson book? Let’s have a look at his powerful and persuasive 663-page opus, Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight against America’s Enemies.106 We can certainly say with some confidence that if he had been informed by what is in the Simpson book, he has certainly covered his tracks well. If it is really true that he knew nothing of the Simpson book, it is truly a shame.

  On page 413 he quotes from McCarthy’s famous Senate floor speech in 1951 attacking General George C. Marshall: “If Marshall were merely stupid, the laws of probability would dictate that part of his decisions would serve this country’s interest.” As we have seen, though, this is an observation of Forrestal’s about Roosevelt-Truman policy makers in general related by Forrestal to McCarthy as recorded on page 53 of the Simpson book.

  It could not be more obvious that McCarthy was simply paraphrasing what he had been told by Forrestal and applying it specifically to Mar-shall.107

  Evans, in perhaps the only part of his book in which he is strongly critical of McCarthy, would have us believe that that speech was really someone else’s work. He tells us that it was an “open secret” that the real writer of that speech was Forrest Davis, a well-known journalist at the time, offering as evidence that it was in Evans’s opinion that it was in Davis’s style, that it used the word “malediction,” a rare word favored by Davis, and it covered topics with which Davis was very familiar.

  Compare this with what we learn from Simpson:

  When Senator Joseph R. McCarthy first came to Washington in December 1946, Navy Secretary Forrestal not only personally opened McCarthy’s eyes to the mass infiltration of Communists
into our government, but actually named names. (See the senator’s book McCarthyism, The Fight for America, Devin-Adair, 1952.)

  When asked by this writer if those individuals Forrestal had named as Communists or pro-Communists had included Marshall, and if so whether this had inspired his own devastating, thoroughly documented attack on Marshall from the Senate floor (published as the book America’s Retreat from Victory, Devin-Adair, 1952), Senator McCarthy replied, “The answer to both questions is yes. Forrestal told me he was convinced that General Marshall was one of the key figures in the United States in advancing Communist objectives.”108

  Forrest Davis might well have been the principal author of the speech on Marshall, but it certainly sounds like McCarthy had some important input into it.109 The passage also reveals again the strong influence that the much more widely respected Forrestal had upon McCarthy and his campaign to root out subversives from the government. But James Forrestal turns up in Evans’ tome only in one place in an endnote late in the book, credited only as the major influence behind the Truman Doctrine. One would think that Evans is going out of his way to deflect attention away from the man. Could it be because of our recent discoveries revealing that Forrestal was almost certainly murdered and that the Zionists, not the Communists, are the most likely suspects in the crime?

  To that point, have another look at the list of names that Simpson calls either pro-Communist or Russian spies. Evans talks about all of them repeatedly, with one exception, and that man was the most powerful Truman White House holdover from Roosevelt, David Niles. Evans draws heavily upon The Venona Secrets, Exposing Soviet Espionage and America’s Traitors, by Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel, and they also have some highly incriminating information on Niles,” as we site in Chapter One. How could Evans leave all mention of Niles out of his book? Could it be because Niles was also the leading Zionist in the Truman White House?

  The John Birch Society

  Seventeen years after James Forrestal’s covered-up likely assassination, and three years after the publication of the Rogow cover-up book, the John Birch Society was concerned enough about it to publish Cornell Simpson’s book. A few months later they thought it of enough importance to publish a glowing review of the book in their American Opinion magazine, written by the associate editor, Medford Evans.

  That’s at least how it looks if you take everything on its face. Another possibility is that, contrary to what they tell us, the Cornell Simpson book was written as a reaction, indeed, as a supplement to the Rogow book. The reasoning behind it would be that there would still be lots of people who would never believe that Forrestal committed suicide. These people would need to be steered away from the actual culprits. Such a book was written by someone, or a group of “someones,” and the name “Cornell Simpson” was slapped on it. Who the actual author (or authors) was is really not very important. It might well have been Forrest Davis, for all we will ever likely know.

  At this point, one of those emails that we received from J. Bruce Campbell, this one from December 25, 2003, is germane, and here we repeat this little Christmas present almost in its entirety:

  I have the unpleasant duty to inform you that for the entire year of 1979 I was a salaried employee of The John Birch Society. I'd been drilling oil wells for ARCO for four years when the District Governor of the JBS approached me, due to my spouting off to one of his loyal sup-porters. Anyway, I took a big pay cut and jumped on that sinking ship. I was fed up with the large and small corruption of the oil business, which I actually liked for the part in which I was involved (drilling).

  I met Larry McDonald, the congressman and later head of JBS, and although he was a very nice guy, I thought the whole thing was very dated and uninspiring. Larry was interested in my Rhodesian experiences. The night I took Larry to LAX after an important but boring fundraiser, I dreamed up a big billboard campaign in Southern California with the message "Indict the Trilateral Commission Now" signed The John Birch Society, Belmont – San Marino. At this time the TC was hot stuff and very sinister-sounding. This would have energized the whole thing and would have been cutting edge because of the newness of the TC.

  I raised a ton of money for this thing and then was ordered by the DG (who'd authorized me to do so) to change the billboard message to a tax-reform thing, which was dishonest to say the least and cowardly for displaying a fear of Rockefeller. I sent everyone's money back and called Welch in Belmont, Mass, to say that I wanted to meet with him regarding this thing. Welch did not meet with hired help but I was pretty persuasive and he finally agreed. A month later I sat in his office and, though he was prepared to counter my pitch for the billboards, I switched subjects and tried to present my real message, which was that the JBS had forsaken John Birch, who was one very violent and action-oriented guy (for a missionary). Welch surprised me with his bitterness over the Birch name, saying he regretted ever naming it after him. I said, what difference does the name make - anything would have gotten the same treatment.

  He stalked around, saying I was ignorant for trying to glamorize this guy (who had killed a whole bunch of Japanese and - realizing he'd fought the wrong enemy - was about to do the same to the Red Chinese) and said, "They can say he was arrogant toward his captors."

  "You mean the Chinese Communists, who killed him with bayonets?"

  "They can say he was living with a Chinese girl."

  "So what? They killed him. Who cares what they say about him?"

  And so it went. On the subject of religion, which is what this is about, he asked me if I were religious? I said no. He said, "Neither am I. I don't have time for all that stuff." That was surprising because of the underlying religious flavor of JBS. (Tell 'em what they want to hear!)

  Ten years later I met a Birch guy who was a 33d degree Freemason, who knew the Welches. He told me that Welch's brother James was also a 33d degree. Eustace Mullins wrote in Murder By Injection that Robert Welch was a 32d degree Mason. Welch I think was nominally a Baptist but his Freemasonry would have neutralized that. John Birch was a Baptist missionary. Welch wouldn't let me finish my pitch for Birch and later told a mutual friend that it was the silliest idea he'd ever heard.

  The Birch Society was just a corral for conservatives. Welch, who was an excellent writer in the sense that he could get people very agitated about this or that subject, from Eisenhower to Taiwan, was a promoter who told me in the car one time when I drove him to LAX that he had to raise over four million dollars a year just to keep the thing going. But he just kept the patriots bunched up and broke, writing to congressmen! There was no other point to it besides the following:

  JBS was a Zionist operation and became virulently so with the hiring of John Rees... A British Zionist, Rees hated me personally for no apparent reason. Probably instinctive, maybe because of my background as an anti-Communist "mercenary" in Africa. But Welch ran JBS as a cheering section for Likud, referring to Begin and Sharon and Shamir as anti-Communist, anti-terrorist, etc. (We learned - I was in the Rhodesian police branch of the security forces - that Israel was aiding the Communist terrorists who were slaughtering so many Africans and Europeans in Rhodesia.) The ADL had a direct control over Welch and he would brook no discussion of Jewish aims or practices - or as I said before, the Jewish creation of Communism. I know because it was my duty as a staff coordinator to expel any member who discussed Jews in a political manner. I never had to do this because by 1979 the membership was thoroughly tamed and compliant. I was asked to question a guy who was no longer an active member about some remarks he'd made about Jews. I did so and we became good friends. I resigned over the billboard issue and the disturbing experience with Robert Welch - I had been authorized to raise money with the TC message and then was told to keep the money under false pretenses, so I couldn't stick with such slimy people.

  My father had been a JBS life member and brought some financiers into the cult of Welch, which probably cut me some slack. I wasn't a member but would buy a lot of books from the Am
erican Opinion bookstores wherever I found them. I became a close friend of Alan Stang and the two of us were arrested in Southern California while target shooting one time. He wrote an interesting account for American Opinion magazine ("Police Story"), which was a problem for him due to the Birch line: "Support Your Local Police." We no longer supported the police after that nasty experience. Anyway, Stang was a big time Zionist (still is) and we went our separate ways once I wised up. Stang would become a tax rebel and go to prison for his beliefs.

  Welch turned his back on him because he demanded full compliance with IRS. Stang had been the house Jew to counter the "anti-Semitism" smear by the usual suspects. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. (I have a lot to say on this subject but won't now.)

  Strong support for Campbell’s assertions can be found in “The Birch Society—Exposed!” by John “Birdman” Bryant. The central message of the collection of materials on his web page is to be found in this quote from Revilo Oliver’s book, America’s Decline:

  After the conference between Welch and myself in November 1965, I determined to verify conclusively the inferences that his conduct had so clearly suggested, and, with the assistance of certain friends of long standing who had facilities that I lacked, I embarked on a difficult, delicate, and prolonged investigation. I was not astonished, although I was pained, by the discovery that Welch was merely the nominal head of the Birch business, which he operated under the supervision of a committee of Jews, while Jews also controlled the flow, through various bank accounts, of the funds that were needed to supplement the money that was extracted from the Society's members by artfully passionate exhortations to "fight the Communists." As soon as the investigation was complete, including the record of a secret meeting in a hotel at which Welch reported to his supervisors, I resigned from the Birch hoax on 30 July 1966 with a letter in which I let the little man know that his secret had been discovered.110