The Assassination of James Forrestal

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The Assassination of James Forrestal Page 26

by David Martin


  At that point, Carroll addressed himself to the audience, saying that the general view of everyone who has studied the matter is that Forrestal committed suicide, and that was his own opinion as well. As for the doctors not saying that Forrestal was paranoid, it was because military doctors were loath to suggest that the Secretary of Defense might have been mentally ill while on the job.

  “That’s a lie,” I could not restrain myself from saying, knowing, as Carroll also surely knows, that virtually the whole case for Forrestal’s mental illness was publicly put forward by Captain Raines in the wake of the death, and that it was upon Raines’s statements that Arnold Rogow and everyone who followed him had painted the picture of Forrestal as a very sick and suicidal man.

  Before I could explain my charge, the moderator, Meade, jumped in and said, “Let’s give some of these other people a chance to ask a question,” and that was the end of our exchange.

  I did approach Mr. Carroll just as he was signing his last book and quickly presented him with another question, "Did you know that there was an official Navy report on Forrestal’s death?"

  Now, with the audience gone and few people near to hear him, his manner turned brusque. “I’ll have to go check with my sources,” he responded. “I’ll look at what you have written,” he continued, and then he looked away, indicating that he was through with me for the night and indicating as well that, though he may look at what I have written—and probably already has—he would reserve the right to ignore it.

  The Lesson

  If you search the Internet for “James Carroll” and “Forrestal” together, you will find a great number of review articles about Carroll’s book. The reviews are decidedly mixed, although you certainly won’t find a one of them faulting Carroll, as I have, for his indefensibly shoddy scholarship on Forrestal’s death. The most salient fact about the reviews is that the book was given a lot of attention. In the quantity of publicity it received, both good and bad, it is very much like Arnold Rogow’s book. As noted in the first chapter, Rogow’s book was the most heavily publicized of the books that deal with Forrestal’s death and, at the same time, had the most distorted and deceptive treatment of the subject. Both dubious distinctions probably now belong to Carroll’s House of War.

  As those of us who care about truth and justice in this country have discovered more about the alarming facts surrounding Forrestal’s death, the molders of public opinion are working overtime to see that what the American public thinks it knows about the death is, in fact, false. The opinion molders certainly chose the right man to spread the falsehoods.

  How long will we have to wait for a recognized scholar, who is also honest, to take up the subject?

  __________

  156 May 10, 2006, https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/books/reviews/2006-05-10-house-of-war_x.htm.

  157 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/8613.

  158 The Scribe, May 1, 2006, http://prairieweather.typepad.com/the_scribe/2006/05/5106_npr_james_.html.

  159 https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=2873. Doyle also tells us of Carroll’s likely Deep State connection: “James Carroll, 57, is the son of the late Air Force Lieutenant General Joseph F. Carroll, who was the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, a top advisor to former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, and a key figure in the US Air Force bombing campaign in Vietnam. Before entering the service, Joseph Carroll had been an agent in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and a confidant of legendary FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Earliest Letters to Historians

  Apathy in Academia?

  What does their loathing for

  The facts I give them show?

  They’d rather not know more

  Than it’s safe to know.

  Sitting back and waiting for America’s historians to seize upon our discoveries concerning Forrestal’s death, we expected from the beginning, would not prove to be very fruitful, considering how little real interest they had shown from the time that it happened. We knew all along that we would have to lead this particular horse to water, but as we have seen so far and will see in the coming chapters, up to now it has been impossible to make him drink.

  The first and most natural target for our attention was the young co-author of Driven Patriot, Douglas Brinkley. He churns out books with some regularity, and his book promotion tours often bring him to Washington, DC. I encountered him on two such occasions, the first of which, discussed later, was at the Politics and Prose bookstore. The second time was in 2007 when he came to Catholic University promoting his book Parish Priest: Father Michael McGivney and American Catholicism. I don’t recall what I asked him from the audience at the close of his presentation, but it concerned what he had erroneously written about James Forrestal’s death and it was designed to make him uncomfortable, which it clearly did. It might have been about my letter to him that he never answered. There was a very nice reception afterward with lots of tasty goodies, including shrimp, as I recall. Brinkley, as the speaker, was the guest of honor, but at the close of the question and answer period he informed the host that he had a tight flight schedule and would not be able to make it to the reception.

  David Roll co-authored the 2005 biography of Forrestal's successor, Louis Johnson and the Arming of America: The Roosevelt and Truman Years.160 He is a lawyer employed in Washington by the law firm that Johnson co-founded, Steptoe and Johnson, and I have encountered him three times. After the first encounter I wrote him a letter. He responded and requested that we meet for lunch. Although the lunch meeting did not take place until several weeks had passed, Mr. Roll appeared to know no more about the case than he had shown when I talked to him previously. He simply used our brief time together to ask me a number of simple questions that are answered in great detail in "Who Killed James Forrestal?" I tried to give some short, simple responses to his questions, but the best thing I could tell him was to go read what I had written and then ask questions. He was not at all prepared to challenge anything I had written, and no progress was made toward getting at the truth at the meeting. I was left wondering why he wanted to meet in the first place.

  Now here are my letters:

  August 18, 2005

  Professor Douglas Brinkley

  Director

  Theodore Roosevelt Center for American Civilization

  Tulane University

  New Orleans, LA 70118

  Dear Professor Brinkley:

  When Truth or Virtue an Affront endures, Th’Affront is mine, my Friend, and should be yours. -- Alexander Pope

  More than two months have now passed since that night at the Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, DC, when you asked me for my home telephone number and promised to call me to talk about the serious inconsistencies I have found between your account of the death of our first Defense Secretary, James Forrestal, and what I have discovered through the use of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Your account, you will recall, is in Chapter 32 of the book you co-wrote with the late Townsend Hoopes and published in 1992 entitled Driven Patriot, the Life and Times of James Forrestal. What I have found is in the Navy's official report on the death, that of the review board convened by Rear Admiral Morton D. Willcutts, the head of the National Naval Medical Center, which supervises the Bethesda Naval Hospital where Forrestal fell to his death from a 16th floor window in the wee hours of May 22, 1949. The Willcutts Report had been kept secret for some 55 years, and it is now, unredacted [sic, “Mark Hunter” discovered that there is a small part missing, which he has noted at his web site161] and with almost all the exhibits, on the web site of the Seeley Mudd Manuscript Library of Princeton University.162

  Perhaps you need a brief reminder of the occasion for your asking for my telephone number. You had given a talk on your new book, The Boys of Pointe du Hoc. In the questions period following, I reminded you that I had called you more than a year before on C-Span and praised Driven Patriot generally, b
ut had faulted you for your use of sources on the details surrounding Forrestal's death. The best sources, I observed, would have been the Navy personnel on duty that night on the 16th floor of the hospital and, short of tracking down those among them who are still living and interviewing them, the best evidence as to what those people saw and heard would be found in the official report, that is, the Willcutts Report. You neglected to tell the readers that there was any such thing as an official report and that it remained withheld from public scrutiny. Further, the sources you used for the most important details, I said, were hard-to-trace third-hand sources. In my examination of Forrestal's death, on the other hand, I told you that I had made two FOIA attempts to get the report and that I had been quite illegally ignored both times. In your response on C-Span you did not dispute my characterization of your sources but said that you had tried to get the Willcutts Report yourself, and had failed as I had. If there were to be a new edition, you said, you would correct your omission and would talk about the Willcutts Report. In the meantime, you said, I should keep trying to get it.

  I did, and, wonder of wonders, on the third try I got it, no questions asked. That was what I announced to you and the audience at Politics and Prose. Your reaction was one of surprise at my success and you asked me what was in the report. I said that it generally contradicted what you had written in your chapter and suggested that we might co-write an article to set the record straight. At that, you asked me for my opinion as to what had happened. My response was to hold up the transcription of the morbid poem by Sophocles that was characterized as Forrestal's suicide note and to observe that the handwriting was clearly not that of James Forrestal. "What conclusion would you draw from that," I asked you and the audience.

  I don't recall your exact answer to that. I think that it was something along the lines of, "I'd have to see it." My main recollection is that at that point you moved on to the next questioner.

  At the end of the evening, after you had signed a number of books and I had talked to some members of the audience about my important discoveries, I gave you a chance to see for yourself, presenting you with a copy of the poem transcription and some known samples of Forrestal's handwriting, all of which look very much like one another and nothing like the transcription. You demonstrated considerable interest, with several other attendees looking on, and at that point requested my home telephone number for what you said would definitely be follow-up in the none-too-distant future.

  I realize that with the large new responsibilities that you have assumed, directing the new Theodore Roosevelt Center at Tulane University, promoting your book, working on a new book, and preparing for classes, your time has been limited. At the same time, I should think that you would want to do everything possible, as soon as possible, to set the historical record straight, now that we know that a number of things that you wrote in your influential book about Forrestal's death are inconsistent with the facts, as they are now known.

  Your misrepresentation of the poem transcription as Forrestal's work—like everyone else who has written on the subject—may be the most glaring inconsistency, but there are a number of others that you should be aware of. They center on the words and actions of the two Navy corpsmen who, in sequence, were responsible for observing Forrestal on the 16th floor, Edward William Prise, who was on duty until 11:45 pm, and Robert Wayne Harrison, who was on duty thereafter.

  Hoopes and Brinkley (H & B):

  Prise had observed that Forrestal, though more energetic than usual, was also more restless, and this worried him. He tried to alert the young doctor who had night duty and slept in a room next to Forrestal’s. But the doctor was accustomed to restless patients and not readily open to advice on the subject from an enlisted corpsman.

  Willcutts Report (WR):

  Q. These occurrences that you have just related in regard to Mister Forrestal's behavior on that night, did you consider them sufficiently unusual to report them to the doctor?

  A. No, sir, I reported his walking the room to Doctor Deen and I put it in the chart and then Doctor Deen asked me how come the door was locked back there and I told him I thought I better lock it being as he raised the blind.

  Q. Did you attach any particular significance to this type of behavior?

  A. No, sir, I didn't at the time.

  H & B:

  Midnight arrived and with it the substitute corpsman, but Prise nevertheless lingered on for perhaps half an hour, held by some nameless, instinctive anxiety. But he could not stay forever. Regulations, custom, and his own ingrained discipline forbade it...

  The corpsman Prise had returned to his barracks room, but could not sleep. After tossing restlessly for an hour, he got dressed and was walking across the hospital yard for a cup of coffee at the canteen when he was suddenly aware of a great commotion all around him. Instantly, instinctively, he knew what had happened. Racing to the hospital lobby, he arrived just as the young doctor whom he had tried unsuccessfully to warn emerged from an elevator. The doctor’s face was a mask of anguish and agony. As Prise watched, he grasped the left sleeve of his white jacket with his right hand and, in a moment of blind madness, tore it from his arm.

  WR:

  Q. Other than the conversation you have given with Mister Forrestal did he say anything else to you on that night?

  A. No, sir, he asked me if I thought it was stuffy in the room and he asked that several times since I have been on watch; he liked fresh air. When I was on night watch, twelve to eight in the morning he always got a blanket out for us to wrap around us because he had the windows wide open.

  Neither the recorder nor the members of the board desired further to examine the witness.

  The board informed the witness that he was privileged to make any further statement covering anything relating to the subject matter of the investigation which he thought should be a matter of record in connection therewith, which had not been fully brought out by the previous questioning.

  The witness made the following statement:

  He started reading a book at about twenty hundred and whenever the corpsman would come in the room he would turn the bed lamp off and sit down in the chair and so far as the writing I don't know. It appeared that he was but I couldn't say for sure.

  Neither the recorder nor the members of the board desired further to examine this witness.

  The witness said he had nothing further to state.

  The witness was duly warned and withdrew.

  In short, the fevered sense of dread is utterly missing from the testimony of corpsman Prise to the Willcutts review board. He sounds hardly alarmed at anything that had transpired.

  Next, we have the observations of the man who relieved corpsman Prise, corpsman Harrison, whom neither you nor a previous Forrestal biographer, Arnold Rogow, identify by name.

  H & B:

  At one-forty-five on Sunday morning, May 22, the new corpsman looked in on Forrestal, who was busy copying onto several sheets of paper the brooding classical poem “The Chorus from Ajax” by Sophocles, in which Ajax, forlorn and far from home, contemplates suicide. (As translated by William Mackworth Praed in Mark Van Doren’s Anthology of World Poetry.) The book was bound in red leather and decorated with gold.

  WR:

  Q. At what time did you last see Mister Forrestal?

  A. It was one forty-five, sir.

  Q. Where was he then?

  A. He was in his bed, apparently sleeping.

  Q. Where were you at that time?

  A. I was in the room when I saw him.

  H & B:

  In most accounts of what happened next, it is said that the inexperienced corpsman “went on a brief errand.” However, Dr. Robert Nenno, the young psychiatrist who later worked for Dr. Raines, quotes Raines as telling him that Forrestal “pulled rank” and ordered the nervous young corpsman to go on some errand that was designed to remove him from the premises.

  WR:

  (Following immediately after the Q & A above)


  Q. Did you leave the room at that time?

  A. Yes, sir, I did.

  Q. Where did you go?

  A. I went out to the nurse's desk to write in the chart, Mister Forrestal's chart.

  Dr. George Raines, the head psychiatrist in charge of Forrestal's care, was, as you know, in Montreal at a conference at the time of Forrestal's death. Some other exchanges with Harrison are also pertinent to what you and Townsend Hoopes have written:

  Q. Were the lights on in Mister Forrestal's room when you took over the watch - the overhead lights?

  A. No, sir, not the overhead lights; just the night light.

  Q. Did Mister Forrestal appear cheerful or depressed in the time that you observed him?

  A. He appeared neither, sir.

  Q. Did Mister Forrestal do any reading?

  A. Not while I was on watch, sir.

  You might also be interested to know that the thick, elaborately bound Anthology of World Poetry never makes a single appearance in the Willcutts Report. It is not among the exhibits and no witness is produced who saw it in Forrestal's vacated room. The nurse who got the first good look at the room reported broken glass on the bed, with the bed clothes half turned back and the forensic photographer captured broken glass on the carpet at the foot of the bed, but the nurse said nothing about a book—or a transcription, for that matter—and it shows up in none of the photographer's pictures of the room.

  The transcription, itself, is included among the exhibits, but no one is identified who might have discovered it. It is mentioned only once, in this exchange with Captain Raines:

  Q. Captain Raines, I show you a clinical record, can you identify it?

  A. This is the nursing record of Mister Forrestal. The only portion I don't recognize is this poem copied on brown paper. Is that the one he copied? It looks like his handwriting. This is the record of Mister Forrestal, the clinical record.

 

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