by David Martin
Spreading the Willcutts Report Around
Beginning in early August 2004, we sent the following e-mail message to a number of organizations:
To whom it may concern:
Through the Freedom of Information Act, I have obtained the report of the review board convened on May 23, 1949, by Admiral Morton Will-cutts, Commander of the National Naval Medical Center, to investigate the death of former Secretary of Defense James Forrestal. The report had been secret for some 55 years. Exhibits accompany it, and there are no redactions in the text. The report reveals a number of glaring inaccuracies in the accounts of Forrestal's death by biographers Arnold Rogow and Townsend Hoopes and Douglas Brinkley. It also reveals that there was broken glass on Forrestal's bed and on the carpet at the foot of his bed and that his room had been well "laundered" before the crime scene photographs were taken several hours after his fatal fall.
I have had all the materials, including photographs and my transmission letter from the Navy's Judge Advocate General's office, put on a compact disc, which I would like to mail to you. If you are interested in receiving these materials and would give them due publicity, I would appreciate your letting me know.
Sincerely,
David Martin
Those organizations were as follows:
The Harry S. Truman Library
The Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton, N.J., which houses the Forrestal papers.
The Library of Congress
The John Birch Society
The Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans, which was headed by Douglas Brinkley at the time.
The Ludwig von Mises Center
The Cato Institute
The Howland Library in Beacon, New York, James Forrestal’s hometown.
The representative of the Mudd Library, immediately recognizing the document’s historical significance, responded enthusiastically and was sent a copy of the long-suppressed report. He then pleasantly surprised us by putting the entire report up on the library’s web site.137
Even though no one there responded to the e-mail, the Library of Congress does now have a copy of the Willcutts Report because on August 19, 2004, we personally presented the CD to the head of the U.S. Acquisitions Section of the Anglo-American Division of the library. My e-mail had clearly never reached the people at that level. Like the representative of the Mudd Library at Princeton, he and his assistant easily understood how important the document was, and they appeared to be quite pleased to get it.
Larry Greenley, director of research for the John Birch Society, responded positively on August 25, apologizing that my original e-mail had become buried in the volume of correspondence that they get. He concluded, however, “I can’t promise that we’ll publicize the Forrestal mate-rials, or if we do, how much; that is up to the editorial staff and others.” I wonder who the others might be.
On Wednesday, September 8, 2004, we attended a lecture in Washington, DC, by David Eisenhower on the presidential library system. Our purpose was to publicize my Forrestal work with a question for Dr. Eisenhower relating my experiences, both good and bad, with the Truman Library. As it turned out, the head of the Truman Library was present, and we presented him with a copy of the CD. It felt like we were serving a summons.
We also gave one to Dr. Eisenhower, the well-known grandson of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Senior Fellow at the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. In a personal discussion afterward, he volunteered that his grandfather was “tasked [by Truman] to push Forrestal out.” His tone of voice hardly matched his words, but then, realizing his faux pas, he clarified that he meant “out of office,” not “out the window.” In our initial shock and then our amusement we failed to ask for further clarification of why the retired General Eisenhower might have been chosen for such a job and how he would have been expected to accomplish it. We know of nothing on the official record or in the historical literature connecting Eisenhower to Forrestal’s dismissal as Defense Secretary.
__________
113 Willcutts Report on Forrestal’s Death, James V. Forrestal Papers, Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University, https://findingaids.princeton.edu/collections/MC051/c04531. The report, with some additional insightful analysis, is available in searchable htm format at http://ariwatch.com/VS/JamesForrestal/WillcuttsReport.htm.
114 Unfortunately, that last sentence, written first on the author’s web site in 2004, has proved to be all too prescient, as we shall see in subsequent chapters.
115 Hoopes and Brinkley, pp. 464-465.
116 Hoopes and Brinkley, p. 454.
117 Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Secret Life of Bill Clinton: The Unreported Stories, Regnery Publishing, 1997, p. 159. We see the technique employed again in the case of the curious death in Thailand of the famous Catholic monk, Thomas Merton. In the translation of the Thai police report, furnished by the U.S. Embassy in Thailand, the names of all the witnesses are wildly misspelled. Even the name of the lead investigator is misspelled. See Hugh Turley and David Martin, The Martyrdom of Thomas Merton: An Investigation, McCabe Publishing, 2018, pp. 25-28.
118 Ibid., p. 162.
119 Simpson, p. 18.
120 http://ariwatch.com/VS/JamesForrestal/WillcuttsReport.htm#ObscuredWitness1
121 The most fruitful question was probably #11, one very similar to what was asked of Prise, “On that particular night in question did you notice that he appeared unusual in any way or more agitated, more disturbed, more distraught than usual?” Her answer contrasts not only with Prise’s but with the assumption behind the question, that is, that it might have been usual for Forrestal to be agitated, disturbed, or distraught: “At the time I saw him in the galley close to eleven thirty he appeared his usual self; very cheerful, pleasant but no different than at any time that I had ever seen him.” (emphasis added) One may be virtually certain that Margie Hardy was among the nurses at Bethesda who did not believe that Forrestal committed suicide.
122 Rogow, pp. 9-10.
123 Prescribers’ Digital Reference, http://www.pdrhealth.com/diseases/drug-abuse/symptoms.
124 https://www.erowid.org/chemicals/opiates/opiates_mcdermotts_guide.shtml.
125 http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/jvforres.htm.
126 John Osborne Collection, Library of Congress.
127 Rogow, pp. 17-18.
128 Ibid., p. 6.
129 Ibid., pp. 32-33.
130 Ibid., pp. 194-195.
131 Ibid., p. 46.
132 Ibid., pp. 83-85.
133 Jewish Virtual Library, Ukraine Virtual Jewish History Tour, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ukraine-virtual-jewish-history-tour.
134 Thomas Reppetto, American Mafia: A History of Its Rise to Power. Holt Paperbacks, 2004, pp. 194-195.
135 Gus Russo, The Outfit: The Role of Chicago’s Underworld in the Shaping of Modern America, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2001, p. 41.
136 John William Tuohy, “The Meet: The Origins of the Mob and the Atlantic City Conference,” March 2002, Rick Parrello’s American Mafia.com, http://www.americanmafia.com/Feature_Articles_194.html.
137 https://findingaids.princeton.edu/collections/MC051/c04531.
CHAPTER 5
Handwriting Drives Last Nail in Cover-Up Coffin
Pravda on the Potomac
Our press supports our liberty,
We proudly like to boast,
But the stark reality
Is in The Washington Post.
On May 23, 1999, The Washington Post marked the 50th anniversary of James V. Forrestal.’s death with a lead cover article in its Style section. “The Fall of James Forrestal,” it was titled, with The Post’ s typical inappropriately cutesy word-play, and the subtitle was as follows: “When America’s first secretary of defense dove from a 16th-floor window at Bethesda Naval Hospital precisely half a century ago, he left a poem, a mystery, and 50 years to understand what he’d been trying to tell us.”
A half-century la
ter, we see, The Post was still playing up the transcribed poem angle for all it was worth, though we now know that the official investigators made nothing of it whatever. They also seemed to have forgotten about that cord around Forrestal’s neck, which had forced them to speculate that he must have been trying to hang himself out of the window rather than diving through it. Here is how the 1999 Post article, written by Alexander Wooley, begins:
His hand moved across the paper, copying Greek poetry from a thick anthology. Then, abruptly, mid-sentence, it stopped. He slipped the paper inside the book and set it aside. His room was on the 16th floor of the towering Bethesda Naval Hospital. It was 2 a.m. Sunday, 50 years ago. Exactly 50 years ago yesterday. His name was James Vincent Forrestal....
For one who had lived in great wealth, his hospital room was simply furnished—a narrow bed, a straight-back chair, an Oriental carpet on the floor, a rotating fan on the wall by a closed window. Closed and locked. Three windows in the room, all securely locked.
He went across the corridor to a small lab-like kitchen, with locked filing drawers, white tile walls, stainless steel and glass cabinets. There, above a radiator, an open window. He pulled out a screen, stepped onto the sill, leaped into the void.
Later, after they found him broken, 13 floors below on a low roof, they searched his room for clues to his last moments. There was the book, “An Anthology of World Poetry,” still open to an excerpt from Sophocles’ “Ajax,” (sic) still containing the paper on which he’d copied the poet’s words:
“’Woe, woe!’ will be the cry—no quiet murmur like the tremulous wail Of the lone bird, the querulous nightingale,” he’d begun, stopping short, in mid-word, “Night—“he wrote. Then jumped out a window.
And this is how the 50th anniversary Post article, some 70 paragraphs later, ends:
The date was now May 22, Sunday, the day of [Drew] Pearson’s weekly broadcast, which had become so agitating to Forrestal.
Forrestal was reading the poetry anthology, and began to copy from “Chorus From Ajax” on Pages 277 and 278. He stopped after the first syllable of the word “nightingale” and—apparently during the guard’s five-minute break—walked out of his room, across a hall, into the ad-joining kitchen. He took off the sash from his robe and tied one end to the radiator under the window, the other end around his neck, undid a screen and climbed out the window.
According to the coroner’s report, Forrestal likely then jumped out the window and hung for some seconds suspended. The report also notes scuff marks on the cement work underneath the window, indicating reflexive kicking, or possibly terrified second thoughts. To no avail: The sash gave way and Forrestal fell 13 floors, landing on an asphalt-and-crushed stone surface of a third-floor passageway roof. Death was instant.
The coroner noted that the sash was still wound tightly around his neck. The front of his skull was crushed, his abdomen slit, and his lower left leg severed. The report notes that his watch was still running.
Last Words
Why would a man about to kill himself copy an ancient Greek poem, but not complete it? Was there any connection between the words he copied and his last, desperate act? Hoopes and Brinkley believe that more than mere chance might be at play. They note that after the end of World War II, the National Security Council authorized the recruitment of members of former Ukrainian death squads, who had worked for the Nazis exterminating Jews and Red Army supporters, to work clandestinely within the Soviet Union assassinating communists. The name of the group was Nachtigall, or Nightingale. Ironically, while one wing of the CIA was secretly bringing Nightingale’s leaders to the United States to train them, another wing of the agency was in Europe working to bring them to trial in Nuremberg. The secret program, which Forrestal almost undoubtedly helped bring about, failed, however. The biographers postulate that Forrestal, in his unsedated state, may have felt a shock of guilt—or, given his reds-under-the-bed delusions, paranoia—that may have triggered suicide.
But perhaps there is another, less strained connection between Sophocles’ verse and Forrestal’s tragic end. Perhaps the key was in the verse that immediately followed the one containing the word “nightingale,” the verse Forrestal could not bring himself to copy:
Oh! When the pride of Graecia’s noblest race
Wanders, as now, in darkness and disgrace,
When Reason’s day,
Sets rayless—joyless—quenched in cold decay,
Better to die, and sleep
The never-ending sleep, than linger on.
And dare to live, when the soul’s life is gone.
The problem with all this, we now know, is that it is completely made up. Someone else did the poem transcription. Captain Raines, whose credibility was brought into question by many of his other statements, as we saw in the previous chapter, was simply wrong when he said that the handwriting on the poem written on brown paper looked like Forrestal’s. It doesn’t look the least bit like Forrestal’s handwriting, which we can see in the samples in the frontispiece.
One hardly needs an expert to tell him that the person who transcribed the poem is not the same person who wrote the various letters there that Forrestal is known to have written. The most obvious difference is that Forrestal writes his words and letters almost straight up and down, while the poem transcriber writes with a more conventional consistent lean to the right. Forrestal, on the other hand, is more conventional in how he writes his small r’s, making either a single hump or an almost imperceptible double peak, while the transcriber has a very distinctive exaggerated first peak in almost every one he makes. The transcriber is a very conventional “archer” in the manner in which he makes his small m’s and n’s. Forrestal, on the other hand, is a typical "swagger," sagging down between peaks, as opposed to rounding over arches.
What’s most amazing is the complete brazenness on display. One can truly say that the transcription of “Chorus from Ajax” is not a forgery. Not the slightest effort was made to mimic James Forrestal’s handwriting. The perpetrators must have been completely confident that no attempt would be made by the Navy to authenticate the note, and, in fact, that no question would even be raised either by the press or by anyone with a public forum as to the authenticity of the handwriting in the transcription.
Now that the cat is so thoroughly and obviously out of the bag, one would have anticipated that there would have been one last, desperate effort to put it back in. It would not have been at all surprising for someone to claim that what was sent to me in response to the Freedom of Information Act request was not the actual transcription written by Forrestal, but a facsimile, obviously written by someone else. That has not happened. Instead, the press has gone with Number One of the Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression.138 It has dummied up, pretending that there has never been any such revelation.
After all, the transcription was right there in Exhibit Three along with the nurse’s notes, just as it was when Dr. Raines examined it and volunteered to the Willcutts Review Board that it looked like Forrestal’s handwriting. Just as Raines was the only person at Bethesda Naval Hospital to testify that Forrestal was suicidal at any time, he was also the only one there, or anywhere else, to say that the handwriting in the transcription looked like Forrestal’s.
But was The Post’ s reporter Wooley writing in good faith? After all, all the newspapers and books, with the exception of the obscure Cornell Simpson, had said that the transcription was Forrestal’s work. There is some evidence in his article that he was not. Have another look at the second paragraph of his article. Notice the precise detail with which he describes Forrestal’s room and the kitchen across the hall. To our recollection, those rooms were not described in such detail in contemporary news reports. Neither was there any such gruesome description of Forrestal’s broken body. The latter is doubtless what one would have seen in the photographs that weren't sent to me—and likely a cord around the neck that would have never reached the radiator—and the former is what one sees
in the photographs that we have.
It looks very much like the Willcutts Report, while secret to the general public, was shared with the Jewish-owned secret government adjunct known as The Washington Post. If Wooley had the photographs, he would have seen the broken glass on the Oriental rug in one of them, and he would have seen the big contradiction between the witness testimony and what those photographs show, but sharing such information was not part of the agenda.
He would also have had the poem transcription. He wouldn’t even have had to go to the trouble that we did to find a hand-written memorandum for comparison purposes. One look at Forrestal’s signature is sufficient to see that Forrestal didn’t do that transcription. Walter Millis begins his 1951 book, The Forrestal Diaries, with 12 pages of photographs. The final page is a full-page formal portrait photograph of Forrestal with his signature beneath it.
We might be inclined to give The Post the benefit of the doubt on whether it had access to the Willcutts Report, but for its abysmal record in this case and other such high-level cases. Recall from the previous chapter that they loved those last lines of the poem so much that they wrote that they stood out in “firm and legible handwriting” in Forrestal’s transcription, when those words actually come several lines later than what they and the other newspapers say Forrestal copied. The Post was also in the very forefront in selling the story that Deputy White House Counsel Vincent W. Foster, Jr., of the Bill Clinton administration killed himself.139
The Pentagon Book
Any such benefit of the doubt for The Post on the Forrestal case should have been gone by 2007, three years after the Willcutts Report had been released to the public. I had publicized its revelations on my web site, including the fact that the poem transcription was clearly not in Forrestal’s hand, the Seeley Mudd Manuscript Library of Princeton University put the long-suppressed report on its web site, and even the Wikipedia page on Forrestal made mention of it. That was the year that Washington Post Pentagon correspondent, Steve Vogel, came out with The Pentagon: A History.