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William B Stoecker

Forrestal

May 20, 2014 | Comment icon 4 comments
Image Credit: CC 2.0 Shepherd Johnson
On 5/22/49 a man jumped, fell, or was thrown or pushed from a small window on the sixteenth floor of Bethesda Naval Hospital in Washington, D.C. A cord from a bathrobe was tied around his neck as if he had planned to hang himself, but, strangely, if it had been tied to anything in the room it had come loose. The only thing to which it could have been attached was a radiator. Scuff marks were on the window sill, indicating possibly a struggle with one or more assailants, or, if it was suicide, a last moment change of heart and a failed attempt to save himself. The hospital, without bothering to investigate, immediately classed the death as suicide, and the County Coroner agreed without question and signed the death certificate. Bethesda Naval Hospital, you may recall, did the autopsy on JFK in 1963, an autopsy that has been questioned by many researchers, and which “proved” that JFK was shot from behind.

The man who fell to his death was James Vincent Forrestal, America’s very first Secretary of Defense. He was born 2/15/1892, attended Princeton University but did not graduate, and trained as a naval aviator during WWI, but was never sent into combat. He worked as a bond salesman, and, early in WWII, was appointed Secretary of the Navy. Rather than remaining safe and comfortable in D.C., Forrestal toured the Pacific and witnessed several major battles, including Iwo Jima, where he left the relative safety of a ship and went ashore. He favored a negotiated settlement with Japan, which could have ended the war in early 1945 or even sooner, saving hundreds of thousands of lives and not involving the Soviets, who invaded Manchuria and Korea late in 1945, arming the Chinese communists and setting up a communist dictatorship in North Korea. Had Forrestal had his way, there would have been no Korean or Vietnam wars and America today would probably not be menaced by a hostile China. Forrestal was unable to convince Truman, who held out for unconditional surrender, although Forrestal finally convinced him to offer to let the Emperor remain (as a figurehead), which led Japan to accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration and surrender. After the war, Forrestal became an outspoken anti-communist, and was a close friend of communist hunter Senator Joe McCarthy (the Venona intercepts have proven that McCarthy had been right all along about the “reds under the bed”).

Over time, Truman apparently began to lose confidence in him, for, while he resisted some of the service chiefs’ demands for ever-more military spending, he opposed Truman’s near complete disarmament of the U.S. This proved to be an intolerable strain for Forrestal, who began to show very real signs of a mental breakdown, and claimed that strange men were following him. He suggested that they might have been sent by Secretary of the Air Force Stuart Symington, with whom he had quarreled, or that Attorney General Tom Clark had ordered the FBI to follow him. Remember that, for all we know, people really were following him…as the saying goes, “just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.” Tom Clark, a liberal Democrat and father of radical leftist Ramsey Clark, had been involved in the initial stages of the internment of Japanese Americans, possibly the greatest U.S. civil rights crime of the twentieth century, orchestrated by “liberals.” Secret Service chief U.E. Baughman (not a psychiatrist) believed that Forrestal was psychotic, but then Baughman, as late as 1961, was still denying the existence of an organized crime syndicate in America. At the very least, this calls his judgment into question.

On 3/28/1949 Forrestal resigned as Secretary of Defense, almost certainly because Truman no longer wanted him in that position. Some 3,000 pages of his personal diaries were then taken to the Truman White House; to this day we do not know why, nor do we know what those diaries contained. After the resignation ceremony he had a conversation with Stuart Symington that left him badly shaken; to this day we do not know what, exactly, was discussed. His mental condition continued to deteriorate, and finally he was taken by his alleged friends Robert Lovett and Dr. William Menninger to Bethesda Naval Hospital where, despite being allegedly suicidal, he was placed on the sixteenth floor. Normally, anyone believed to be suicidal would be placed on the first floor so they could not jump to their death. Lovett, a naval aviator in WWI, was a banker from a wealthy family and a member of the sinister Skull and Bones secret society; many of America’s elite have been Bonesmen. Lovett was also a close associate of John McCloy, who was an “insider’s insider.” Dr. Menninger, founder of the Menninger Foundation and the Menninger Clinic, was an extreme liberal, opposed to punishment of criminals, whom he believed could be “treated,” but there is nothing in his background to suggest that he might be dishonorable or involved in the New World Order conspiracy (which is more than can be said for the sinister McCloy).
At the hospital, the staff refused to allow Forrestal to see his priest, Father Sheehy, despite his request to allow him to visit. For a long time they resisted his request to allow his brother to visit him, although he was permitted to see his sons. He was also visited by Dr. Menninger, by LBJ (the thoroughly corrupt “architect” of the pointless Vietnam War and the failed “Great Society”), and by Rear Admiral Sidney William Souers, who had been a banker most of his life before being given a commission in the Navy, despite a lack of military training or experience.

Finally, Forrestal’s brother decided to take him out of the hospital, but, before he could do so, the “suicide” happened. Then Forrestal’s priest came to the hospital where, he claimed, an enlisted Navy medical corpsman approached him in a packed room and told him that Forrestal’s death was not a suicide, before disappearing back into the crowd. There is no conceivable reason why either the priest or the corpsman would make up such a story, and the corpsman, rather than seeking publicity, seemed anxious to preserve his career…or his life. Years later, a Bethesda corpsman involved with the JFK autopsy died under mysterious circumstances.

In fact, there have been innumerable mysterious deaths in twentieth and twenty first century America…”suicides” and “accidents” and murders by “lone gunmen,” of whom there seem to be an inexhaustible supply. To name but a few, Lee Harvey Oswald was conveniently shot by Chicago mob affiliate Jack Ruby before he could be questioned at length. Karen Silkwood was run off the road and killed while carrying documents she alleged proved malfeasance at the Kerr-McGee nuclear plant; whatever the documents did or did not prove, there is little doubt that they existed…but they were missing from her car. Documents assembled by freelance investigative journalist Danny Casolaro also vanished, after his wrists were slashed multiple times…labeled a “suicide,” of course. He had been investigating what he called the “octopus,” and many of us conspiracy researchers refer to as the NWO elite or the Illuminati. White House counsel Vince Foster was shot with an unregistered handgun he was not known to have owned and there is a mass of evidence showing that his death was no suicide, despite the usual official verdict. Then there are the mysterious deaths of Treasury Secretary Ron Brown and the passengers and crew of his plane, and former White House intern Mary Mahoney and her co-workers. Recently, fairly high level bankers have been dying like flies all over the world. So yes, it is entirely possible that powerful people in the government and among the wealthy elite who seem to control it could have thrown James Forrestal to his death.

That leaves us with the question of motive. As I said long ago in my book, the one thing the elites fear is one of their own, privy to many secrets, turning on them and possibly revealing those secrets. And, as shown above, Forrestal was certainly an insider surrounded by other insiders, other high-ranking members of the establishment. But what secret, if any, did he threaten to reveal? Author and researcher Richard Dolan has suggested that the elites may have feared that Forrestal would make public all he knew about UFOs, and, indeed, it is likely that he knew a great deal. Researchers who believe in the existence of Majestic Twelve, or MJ-12 allege that Admiral Souers was a member. Remember, even if the whole MJ-12 story, the claim that a secret group of “wise men” was appointed by Truman to study UFOs is partly disinformation, there is no doubt that our lords and masters know much more than they are telling about the subject. And there probably was something at least resembling MJ-12, even if it involved more or less than twelve members, and some of the alleged members were indeed the sort of people likely to be appointed to such a group. Yet, although UFO secrecy may have been part of the reason for Forrestal’s murder (and it does look suspiciously like murder), it is likely that the main reason is something else entirely.

The policies of FDR and Truman made the Soviet Union a world power, and FDR’s appointees, like Robert Oppenheimer, a communist who recruited other communists who gave our nuclear secrets to Stalin, ensured a nuclear balance of terror, a Damoclean sword that still hangs over us. By refusing to negotiate with Japan, and then inviting the Soviets to enter the war in the East, Truman ensured the rise of the communists in China and Korea. By disarming the US too quickly and too completely, he left the world vulnerable to communist aggression. The FDR and Truman regimes were riddled with such Stalinists as Harry Hopkins and Alger Hiss; all of this was opposed by Forrestal, who knew far too much for his own good. There is good reason to suspect that WWI and WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and all of our more recent and seemingly endless wars, including the Cold War, were rigged from beginning to end. And the elites behind it all are still in power. Comments (4)


Recent comments on this story
Comment icon #1 Posted by Babe Ruth 10 years ago
I'm surprised this was not placed in Conspiracy Theories section. Good story.
Comment icon #2 Posted by Skithia 10 years ago
One of your better columns - but even if Forrestal was murdered I doubt it was because of information about UFOs much more likely it was about money and power - the earthly reasons people in power kill or have killed other members of their own set.
Comment icon #3 Posted by Babe Ruth 10 years ago
"Money and power" covers a multitude of sins....
Comment icon #4 Posted by MysticStrummer 10 years ago
The real mystery is how he was alive in DC in 1949 when his dead body was found in South America in 1936...


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