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Strange Death of James Forrestal, Part I
By Peter Robbins
FATE :: August 2004

Between the years of 1938 and 1949, few individuals on the national or international stage commanded more attention or wielded more power than James Forrestal. His service as a member of FDR’s “Kitchen Cabinet” helped speed the end of the Great Depression and his tireless efforts as Undersecretary and then Secretary of the Navy contributed significantly to winning the war at sea.

When faced with the gargantuan task of dismantling the arcane Department of War and creating a modern, unified Department of Defense, it was Jim Forrestal that President Truman turned to. In his role as that department’s first secretary, Forrestal was a key architect of our modern defense establishment and set the policies that defined much of the Cold War from its inception on. He oversaw the birth of the United States Air Force, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the National Security Council, and the beginnings of both our modern national security state and our modern age of UFOs.

Throughout this period his policies and public statements held great sway in this country and abroad. They were also the subject of regular print and broadcast news coverage and commentary. But ask the great majority of Americans today who he was and they will likely draw a blank, and with good cause. Excluding a handful of noteworthy exceptions, he has effectively been written out of the history books and out of our national consciousness, an Orwellian bit of historical revisionism if ever there was one. How and why did this quiet purge occur, and did the man who created our modern Department of Defense take his own life, or was it taken from him?

If we are to accept the official account, early on the morning of May 22, 1949, Secretary Forrestal took his own life by going out of a 16th-floor window at the Bethesda Naval Hospital where he was being treated for depression. But the accepted account that he died a suicide does not hold up under examination. It’s my contention that the first Secretary of Defense was murdered, and by an individual or individuals working at the behest of powerful persons within the Truman Administration, with or without the express permission or awareness of the President.

Forrestal’s death was precipitated by a profound nervous breakdown. He was a complex, driven individual who over the years assumed tremendous responsibilities in his public life while his private life suffered. A number of causes likely contributed to his emotional collapse, but an officially overlooked factor no doubt related to his far-reaching knowledge of UFO reality, the extraterrestrial implications of same, and his inability, in his capacity as Secretary of Defense, to impact on this national security concern in any manner whatsoever ...

Read the rest of this article in the August 2004 issue of FATE

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