---
alias:
- James Forrestal
- James V. Forrestal
- James Vincent Forrestal
- Jim Forrestal
- Secretary Forrestal
- Forrestal
category: People
created: 2026-10-02
location: Washington, D.C.
relations:
- end: 1940-06
  fn: 1
  role: bond salesman, partner 1923, vice-president 1926, president 1937 (Navy service
    1917 to 1919)
  start: 1916
  type: employed_by
  with: '[[Dillon, Read and Company]]'
- end: 1947-09
  fn: 1
  role: Under Secretary of the Navy from August 1940; Secretary of the Navy from May
    1944
  start: 1940-08
  type: employed_by
  with: '[[Department of the Navy]]'
- end: 1949-03-28
  fn: 1
  role: first Secretary of Defense; succeeded by Louis Johnson
  start: 1947-09
  type: head_of
  with: '[[Department of Defense]]'
- end: 1949-05-22
  fn: 3
  role: named as a member in the Eisenhower briefing document and as addressee of
    the Truman memorandum of September 24, 1947; the FBI file copies carry a hand-lettered
    word BOGUS
  start: 1947-09-24
  type: member_of
  with: '[[Majestic-12]]'
- fn: 2
  role: board of investigation into his death under Rear Admiral M. D. Willcutts;
    proceedings approved July 13, 1949; digitized by Princeton from the Forrestal
    Papers (Box 94, Folder 11)
  start: 1949-05-22
  type: subject_of
  with: '[[U.S. Navy]]'
summary: Wall Street banker, Secretary of the Navy and first Secretary of Defense
  who died in a fall from Bethesda Naval Hospital in May 1949 and is named in the
  Majestic-12 documents.
tags:
- Person
- SecretaryOfDefense
- SecretaryOfTheNavy
- DillonRead
- NationalSecurityAct
- BethesdaNavalHospital
- WillcuttsReport
- MJ12
- UFO
updated: 2026-10-03
---

James Vincent Forrestal (February 15, 1892 to May 1949) served as Under Secretary of the Navy from August 1940, Secretary of the Navy from May 1944 and the first Secretary of Defense from September 1947 until his resignation on March 28, 1949, after a career at the Wall Street firm Dillon, Read and Company.[^1] He died in a fall from a window of Bethesda Naval Hospital, on May 22, 1949 according to the Navy's board of investigation under Morton D. Willcutts and on May 23 according to the Princeton University finding aid to his papers.[^1][^2] The [Majestic-12](/events/majestic-12/) documents list him as a member and as the addressee of a memorandum attributed to [Harry S. Truman](/people/harry-s-truman/); the [Federal Bureau of Investigation](/organizations/federal-bureau-of-investigation/) marked copies of those documents "BOGUS."[^3]

### Dillon Read and the Navy

The finding aid to the Forrestal Papers at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University, states that he began on Wall Street in 1916 as a bond salesman for William A. Read and Company, later Dillon, Read and Company, served in the Navy from 1917 to 1919, became a partner in 1923 and the "right-hand man" of Clarence Dillon, vice-president in 1926 and company president in 1937, and left in June 1940 to become an assistant to President [Franklin D. Roosevelt](/people/franklin-d-roosevelt/) before his appointment as Under Secretary of the Navy under Frank Knox in August 1940. It records that he married Josephine Ogden in October 1926 and that they had two sons, Michael and Peter.[^1] It names Ferdinand Eberstadt as "a close advisor to Forrestal throughout his military career" and as the author of the compromise plan that became the basis for the [National Security Act of 1947](/concepts/national-security-act-of-1947/), which created a National Military Establishment, the Department of the Air Force and the [National Security Council](/organizations/national-security-council/).[^1] As Secretary of the Navy he formed the Navy Industrial Association to bring Navy personnel and civilian suppliers together.[^1]

The collection history records that his diaries were purchased from the New York Herald Tribune and donated to Princeton by Clarence Dillon and [Laurance Rockefeller](/people/laurance-rockefeller/) in December 1952, that Josephine Ogden Forrestal gave the papers in January 1953, and that the Forrestal Diaries, edited by Walter Millis, were published in serial form in the Herald Tribune and in book form by Viking Press in 1951. The correspondence series includes folders for Laurance Rockefeller (1940), [Nelson Rockefeller](/people/nelson-rockefeller/) (1940 to 1948) and [John D. Rockefeller Jr.](/people/john-d-rockefeller-jr/) (1945 to 1948).[^1]

### Resignation, hospitalization and death

Forrestal resigned on March 28, 1949 and was succeeded by Louis Johnson.[^1] A modern editor's note on the Charlotte News of May 23, 1949 states that he was committed to Bethesda on April 2 following a stay at the home of Robert Lovett at Hobe Sound, Florida, that Drew Pearson had reported earlier suicide attempts, that a book of poems edited by Mark Van Doren containing a partial handwritten transcription of the chorus from Sophocles' Ajax was found in his room, and that Captain George N. Raines, chief of neuropsychiatry, was the attending psychiatrist from before admission to May 18.[^4]

The two dates of death sit side by side in the sources. The Navy's board of investigation, convened by precept dated May 22, 1949, found that the body was found on a ledge outside room 384 of Building One of the National Naval Medical Center at 1:50 a.m. and pronounced dead at 1:55 a.m., "Sunday, May 22, 1949."[^2] The Mudd finding aid's biographical note states that Forrestal "committed suicide on May 23, 1949" at the National Naval Medical Center lists among its sources Walter H. Waggoner's [New York Times](/organizations/new-york-times/) article of May 23, 1949; the same finding aid reproduces Truman's statement that Forrestal "was as truly a casualty of the war as if he had died on the firing line."[^1] The Eisenhower briefing document in the Majestic-12 file gives May 22, 1949.[^3]

The Associated Press dispatch of May 22, 1949, printed in the Kennebec Journal of Augusta, Maine on May 23, reported that Forrestal, 57, "committed suicide today" and was found dead on a third-floor ledge, the roof of the passageway of the third floor, below the sixteenth-floor window at Bethesda. It quoted the official hospital statement that he took his life "at 2 a.m. (1 a.m. est)" by climbing out of the window adjacent to his room, and stated that a nurse on the seventh floor heard the falling body. The board of investigation gives 1:50 a.m. for the finding of the body (see above); the wire gives "2 a.m." in its own words and attributes it to the hospital statement. The same dispatch reported a bathrobe cord knotted tightly about his neck, said that he wore a dressing gown with the sash wrapped around his neck and that his wristwatch was still running, and said the AP could not tell whether he had contemplated attaching the cord to a radiator and leaping or hanging himself. It reported that a book, "An Anthology of World Poetry," lay open on his radiator to the poem "Chorus from Ajax," with the lines "When reason's day sets rayless, joyless, quenched in cold decay, better to die and sleep" (the dispatch's dashes rendered here as commas) Per Rear Admiral Leslie Stone, the hospital commandant, and the official statement, as the AP reported them, Forrestal had declined his usual sedative that evening, left his room by a door onto the corridor, avoiding the second room of the suite where a doctor was on duty, crossed to the diet kitchen and knotted the cord about his throat; the windows of the room had been enclosed with heavy wire screening. The AP reported that he had entered the hospital seven weeks earlier with "nervous exhaustion resulting from overwork," had been described as greatly improved and permitted visitors and free use of the telephone, and had been visited by Truman on May 6 according to the [White House](/places/white-house/); that Willcutts ordered a Navy board of inquiry; and that the board was to determine "among other things" why Forrestal was left unattended long enough to reach the window.[^5]

The AP dispatch of October 11, 1949, printed in the Cumberland News of Cumberland, Maryland on October 12 under the headline "Navy Cleared In Forrestal Death," reported that the Navy court of inquiry found the death "was not caused in any manner by the intent, fault, negligence or inefficiency of any person or persons in the naval service or connected therewith." It stated that Forrestal was admitted on April 2 with "operational fatigue" according to Navy doctors, that the findings were released by Navy Secretary Francis P. Matthews without explanation of a delay of more than four months, and that a five-man board convened on May 23 on Willcutts's orders and concluded its hearings on May 30, after which the report was drawn.[^6] The Mudd Library scan records that the board reconvened and revised its finding on July 13, 1949 (see below); the AP report states that the hearings concluded on May 30 and does not mention the July session.

### The Willcutts Review Board report

The Mudd Library finding aid for the Rogow Papers on Forrestal states that files on the 1949 board of investigation, "popularly called the 'Willcutts Report,'" are online on the Mudd Library website under the title "Admiral M.D. Willcutts Report on the Death of James V. Forrestal."[^7] The Forrestal Papers finding aid lists a folder, "Willcutts Report on Forrestal's Death" (Box 94, Folder 11), with a digitized scan of 65 images, which includes a Judge Advocate General's cover letter of April 6, 2004 to a David Martin of Chantilly, Virginia, replying to a [Freedom of Information Act](/events/freedom-of-information-act/) request of March 5, 2004. The letter encloses a copy of the Board of Investigation (309 pages, of which 100 were charged free) and states that exhibit 1 (photographs of the body), exhibit 4 and exhibit 5 (photographs of injuries) were withheld under the privacy exemption of 5 U.S.C. 552(b)(6).[^2]

The precept of May 22, 1949, signed by Rear Admiral M. D. Willcutts, Medical Officer in Command of the National Naval Medical Center, named Captain A. A. Marsteller, Medical Corps (retired, on active duty), as senior member, Captains Vincent Hernandez and Harold J. Cokely, Commander William W. Ayres and Lieutenant Commander James D. Wharton as members and Lieutenant Robert F. Hooper as recorder. The board met on Monday, May 23 at 11:15 a.m. with closed doors, examined the body at the morgue, viewed rooms 1618 and 1620 (the room and the diet kitchen on the sixteenth floor of the tower) and the roof where the body landed, and took testimony beginning May 24.[^2] A photographer's mate testified to taking ten photographs of the body, and a hospital corpsman chief to eleven photographs of the room and building, among them one of a rug with broken glass about two feet from the end of the bed in room 1618.[^2]

Captain Raines testified that Forrestal was admitted at about five in the afternoon on Saturday, April 2, 1949. He described a flight on March 31 with Admiral John Gingrich to Stuart, Florida, a meeting at Robert Lovett's house with Lovett and Artemus Gates, and the arrival of Eberstadt with William C. Menninger at Hobe Sound; Raines said that Forrestal had told Menninger he tried to hang himself with a belt, that he and Menninger doubted it, that Forrestal had named sleeping pills and hanging as the two means he would use, and that Forrestal had once sent him a concealed razor blade. Raines said Forrestal's stated means had not included a window, and referred to the bathrobe cord.[^2] The Charlotte News editor's note reproduces parts of the same colloquy.[^4]

The board's finding of facts states that Forrestal died "on or about May 22, 1949" of "injuries, multiple, extreme, received incident to a fall from a high point in the tower," that his behavior in the hospital "was indicative of a mental depression," that treatment and precautions accorded with accepted psychiatric practice, and that the death was not caused by "the intent, fault, negligence or inefficiency" of any person in the naval service. The Secretary of the Navy returned the record in an endorsement stating that "on or about" was ambiguous and "ill advised," since it might imply that Forrestal could have fallen before midnight without the staff knowing; the board reconvened on July 13, 1949 and changed the finding to "about 1:50 a.m. on May 22, 1949," and Willcutts approved the proceedings in revision the same day. Letters in the folder from Winfred Overholser, John C. Whitehorn and Edward A. Strecker to the Judge Advocate General state their agreement with the findings.[^2]

Hugh Turley, writing for the Hyattsville Life and Times, stated in 2009 that the History News Network announced the report's availability in 2004, and that the report offers "new evidence of a struggle in Forrestal's room" in the form of broken glass found on the bed and photographed on the floor. Turley wrote that the transcribed testimony of a corpsman, asked when he last saw Forrestal, was "one forty-five, sir," that Forrestal "was in his bed sleeping," and that the corpsman was in the room; he wrote that the report says nothing of the book of poetry, that the board "did not comment on why the sash" of Forrestal's dressing gown "was around his neck," and that the report "did not conclude Forrestal committed suicide." Turley's article reports that the historians Keith W. Olson and Martin J. Sherwin were invited to comment: Olson said "the need for such a study is obvious," and Sherwin wrote "I have always thought Forrestal committed suicide, but this is not because I investigated the manner of his death." Turley's own inference, in the article, is that the report indicates assassination.[^8]

### Majestic-12

The Eisenhower briefing document, dated November 18, 1952, lists Secretary James V. Forrestal among the twelve members of Majestic-12 and states that his death on May 22, 1949 left a vacancy filled on August 1, 1950 by General Walter Bedell Smith. The Truman memorandum of September 24, 1947, bearing a signature reading "Harry Truman," is addressed "Dear Secretary Forrestal" and states that the matter shall hereafter be referred to only as "Operation Majestic Twelve." The FBI file on Majestic 12 reproduces both with the word "BOGUS" hand-lettered across them.[^3] Stanton T. Friedman wrote in 2004 that if the briefing document, the Truman-Forrestal memorandum and the Cutler-Twining memorandum were genuine, "Aliens are visiting earth," the government had recovered "at least one crashed saucer and several alien bodies," and a group of American scientists and military leaders had "kept secret all kinds of information about the visitors."[^9]

[^1]: Princeton University Library, "James V. Forrestal Papers, 1907-1958 (mostly 1940-1949)," MC051, collection creator biography, collection history, immediate source of acquisition and series 1 folder list, https://findingaids.princeton.edu/catalog/MC051.xml (EAD export, opened 2026-10-03).
[^2]: "Willcutts Report on Forrestal's Death," Forrestal Papers, Box 94, Folder 11, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, digitized at Princeton Figgy (IIIF manifest https://figgy.princeton.edu/concern/scanned_resources/97bd9b5d-cc16-4f8c-94bf-0763b7228def/manifest), finding aid entry https://findingaids.princeton.edu/catalog/MC051_c04531. Page images (Judge Advocate General letter of April 6, 2004; precept of May 22, 1949; findings; endorsements of June and July 1949; testimony) read directly for the precept and findings pages and by machine OCR for the remainder; names in the testimony transcribed from OCR and not individually verified against the images.
[^3]: FBI, "Majestic 12," file 65-81170, Part 01, pages reproducing the Eisenhower briefing document and the Truman memorandum, https://vault.fbi.gov/Majestic%2012/Majestic%2012%20Part%2001%20%28Final%29/at_download/file (Wayback copy used; page images not machine readable; wording cross-checked against the existing Majestic-12 page).
[^4]: Site editor's note on The Charlotte News, Monday, May 23, 1949, W. J. Cash site, https://www.wjcash.org/WJCash17/Charlotte.News.Articles/5-23-49.htm (a modern summary quoting the board testimony, not the 1949 page).
[^5]: "Forrestal Death Leap / Ex-Defense Sec'y Jumps from 16th Story Hospital Window," Associated Press, Washington, May 22 dateline, Kennebec Journal (Augusta, Maine), May 23, 1949, p. 1, https://www.newspapers.com/image/857767711/
[^6]: "Navy Cleared In Forrestal Death," Associated Press, Washington, Oct. 11 dateline, Cumberland News (Cumberland, Md.), October 12, 1949, p. 1, https://www.newspapers.com/image/58094016/
[^7]: Princeton University Library, "Arnold A. Rogow Papers on James V. Forrestal," MC240, related material note, https://findingaids.princeton.edu/catalog/MC240 (Wayback snapshot of September 24, 2021), linking http://www.princeton.edu/~mudd/finding_aids/willcutts/index
[^8]: Hugh Turley, "Historians Support Inquiry into the Death of James Forrestal," History News Network, citing the Hyattsville Life and Times, https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/historians-support-inquiry-into-the-death-of-james Turley's article is the sole source for the passages so cited.
[^9]: Stanton T. Friedman, "Update on Operation Majestic 12 Documents," April 2004, The Black Vault, https://www.theblackvault.com/casefiles/update-on-operation-majestic-12-documents/