The death of James V. Forrestal, America’s first Secretary of Defense, remains one of the great mysteries of the Cold War era. It is known that Forrestal, in late May 1949, plunged to destruction from the sixteenth floor of the Bethesda Naval Hospital; that he had in the preceding months suffered both mental and physical deterioration; that his friends and an attending physician testified he believed himself a “failure” and exhibited suicidal tendencies.
What is not known is why Forrestal should have been found with his bathrobe cord knotted around his neck (had he wanted to jump out the window, he had no need for the cord; had he wanted to hang himself, he had no need of a window); why, if he had suicidal tendencies, he should have been placed in a sixteenth-floor room and allowed to reach an unbarred window; why friends, including his priest, were denied permission to visit him; and why, in the months preceding his death, he was subjected to a vicious and brutalizing assault on his character.
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