As we relate in the newly published book, The Assassination of James Forrestal, the starting place for our examination of the fatal fall of the recently resigned first American Secretary of Defense, Forrestal, was the latter pages of the widely acclaimed 1992 biography, Driven Patriot: The Life and Times of James Forrestal by Townsend Hoopes and Douglas Brinkley. We quickly discovered that their account of Forrestal’s death is replete with very obvious shortcomings, which for some strange reason no one else seemed to have picked up on. Apart from what appears to be Soviet-like obligatory adherence to the completely unsupportable notion that Forrestal took his own life, the biography is largely deserving of the accolades that it received at the time.…
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James Forrestal’s “Anti-Semitism”
(This article is adapted from Chapter 2 of my new book, The Assassination of James Forrestal. Terms of Opprobrium “Anti-Semitic”, “conspiracy theorist” Throw in “isolationist,” too. We don’t need laws to limit out thoughts When labeling language will do. The year was around 2004, as I recall, and I was attending an in-house lunchtime lecture by a professor from Georgetown University at the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington on the subject of President Harry Truman’s racial integration of the United States military. I beg the indulgence of the readers, but I have completely forgotten the professor’s name. I do recall, though, that he was quite obviously Jewish. During the question and answer period after his lecture I suggested that…
FULL ARTICLEJames Forrestal’s “Breakdown”
Chapter 32 of Townsend Hoopes and Douglas Brinkley’s widely acclaimed 1992 biography of America’s first Secretary of Defense, Driven Patriot: The Life and Times of James Forrestal, is entitled “Breakdown.” It begins like this: Forrestal was present at Louis Johnson’s swearing-in ceremony at the Pentagon on the morning of March 28 [1949]. Shortly thereafter, in accordance with custom, he drove to the White House for a final good-bye to the President. To his surprise, Truman had assembled the entire Cabinet, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other government dignitaries, and there followed a second ceremony, this one honoring the retiring Secretary of Defense for “meritorious and distinguished service.” The President, beaming and ebullient, added his personal congratulations in effusive terms, and the audience warmly applauded the…
FULL ARTICLEJames Forrestal, the Great Patriot
(Note to readers: The following article is the introduction to my new book, The Assassination of James Forrestal, with hyperlinks added.) Fear Factor The truth may be there to see. But it won’t, like magic, appear. You must seek it diligently, And not be restrained by fear. James Vincent Forrestal was born on February 15, 1892, in the town of Matteawan, New York, on the Hudson River in Dutchess County between West Point and Poughkeepsie. In 1913, the town merged with adjacent Fishkill Landing and adopted the name, “Beacon,” after Beacon Mountain, the most notable landmark in the small urban area. His father, also named James, had emigrated from County Cork in Ireland to the town in 1857 at the age of…
FULL ARTICLEBefuddled Juror in Thomas Merton Book Verdict
Befuddled Juror in Thomas Merton Book Verdict My copy of the quarterly Merton Seasonal, published jointly by the International Thomas Merton Society and the Thomas Merton Center of Bellarmine University, has arrived, and I see that they have finally stopped ignoring The Martyrdom of Thomas Merton: An Investigation, written by Hugh Turley and yours truly and published in March of 2018. The Winter 2018 edition upon the 50th anniversary of Merton’s untimely and mysterious death in Thailand on December 10, 1968, is on the general theme of Merton’s demise. On the cover is a photograph of Merton’s grave marker at his home Gethsemani Abbey near Bardstown, Kentucky. The modest black and white magazine, 43 pages in length, contains six articles and two…
FULL ARTICLEDaniel Best: Trump’s Vince Foster?
Hey, Donald, do you see anything fishy here? Snopes.com, of all people, has a good summary of the basic known facts in this very recent high-level suspicious death case: On 1 November 2018, the Trump administration’s senior adviser on drug pricing reform, Daniel Best, was found “unresponsive” near the garage door exit of a Washington, D.C., apartment building. He was pronounced dead at the scene by first responders. A statement released the same day by Health and Human Services Secretary (HHS) Alex Azar mourned Best as a “friend and colleague” but addressed neither the circumstances nor the cause of his death. No other details were released to the public. Two weeks later, on 15 November, the office of Washington, D.C.’s chief medical examiner announced that…
FULL ARTICLEScarce News on Admiral Stearney’s Death
If you are a regular reader of The Jerusalem Post you would have learned on December 1 that the top officer for all U.S. Navy operations in the Middle East, Vice Admiral Scott Stearney, had been found dead in his home in Bahrain. The Reuters wire story that The Jerusalem Post was simply passing on was an official statement from U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, John Richardson. The statement gave no cause of death or any other information except to assure us that foul play was not suspected. If you get your news from The Washington Post, on the other hand, you wouldn’t even know that much, right up to the time that I am penning this report. Try searching “Scott Stearney Washington Post” and…
FULL ARTICLEWhat We Know about Thomas Merton’s Death
Paper by David Martin and Hugh Turley presented to Thomas Merton Symposium, Pontifical Antheneum, Rome, Italy, June 13, 2018 The state of knowledge of Thomas Merton’s death can best be described as highly unsatisfactory. Michael Mott’s 1984 authorized biography, The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton, has been taken as the last word on the subject. Everyone who has written about Merton’s death since then—and there are many—has apparently accepted his explanation of how Merton was electrocuted by a defective fan, departing from his description on occasion only with their own embellishments, based solely upon imagination rather than new research. This is unfortunate, because Mott leaves a lot of loose ends. First, he quotes directly from the just-then-revealed conclusion of the Thai police report, a document that only a…
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