9: Forrestal Plunges into the Cold War

On the Sunday night of May 22, 1949, former Secretary of the Navy and recent first Secretary of Defense James Forrestal was found dead on the ground outside Bethesda Naval Hospital. A few months earlier he had been asked to resign as Secretary of Defense by President Truman and then spent time with Robert Lovett in Hobe, Florida before entering Bethesda Naval Hospital for depression.

While some questioned if he had intentionally died by suicide, fallen accidentally or been induced to jump by experimental drugs or nefarious forces, Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin was convinced that “communists hounded Forrestal to his death. They killed him just as definitely as if they had thrown him from that sixteenth-story window in Bethesda Naval Hospital.” McCarthy also stated that “while I am not a sentimental man, I was touched deeply and left numb by the news of Forrestal’s murder. But I was affected much more deeply when I heard of the communist celebration when they heard of Forrestal’s murder. On that night, I dedicated part of this fight to Jim Forrestal.” McCarthyism was born.1

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