When America entered the First World War, Forrestal then aged 25, enlisted as a seaman in the navy. He then transferred to the Aviation Branch and was sent to Canada to train with the Royal Flying Corp. He passed and returned to the US and was posted to the office of Naval Operations in Washington.

In June 1940 with World War 2 on the way and America neutral, after twenty years on Wall Street, Forrestal resigned from Dillon Read & Co., where he was President, to become part of Roosevelt's New Deal Administration.

When the Secretary of the Navy, William Franklin Knox, died in 1944, he was the natural choice to replace him and was the principal architect of massive naval activity during the Second World War.

On the 26th July, 1947, President Truman invited Forrestal, to take on the job of First Secretary of Defence. This was five weeks before the General Assembly's special Committee came forward with the majority recommendation for the partition of Palestine.

The significance of James Vincent Forrestal can be summarised in two short statements. He was the man with executive responsibility in the Truman Administration who dared to say that the best interests of America and the free world dictated that Zionism should not be allowed to determine US policy in the Middle East.

If there was one man above all others most likely to succeed in getting the Palestine problem lifted out of American domestic politics that one man was Forrestal,

As a leading and very successful banker he understood that the US would have to generate the wealth to fund the Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of war-devastated Western Europe and that, in order to put capitalism back on its feet in Western Europe and Britain, an uninterrupted and escalating flow of Arab oil at the cheapest possible price was the most crucial factor and that Oil was the main source of Forrestal's interest as Secretary of Defence, and how the Palestine problem should be handled by the administration he served.

Forrestal regarded the creation of a Jewish state in the face of Arab and wider Muslim opposition as a threat to the US national interest and, in the even bigger picture, America's ability to fulfil its global obligations.

That Forrestal's strategic view was shared by Marshall, the other leading American at the time with unquestionable integrity made it all the more remarkable that, when the crunch came, President Truman chose to surrender to the Jews with the consequences that still exist.

At a cabinet meeting on the 7th November, three weeks before the vote in the General Assembly on the partition plan, Marshall presented the State Department's review of the international situation. After the Cabinet Meeting Forrestal made the following note : "I repeated my suggestion made several times previously that a serious attempt be made to lift the Palestine problem out of American partisan politics. No group in this country should be permitted to influence our policy to the point where it could endanger our national security."

The day before he had an unsatisfactory meeting with Senator Mcgragh, National Chairman of the Democratic Party, and depressed by his initial response, they nevertheless had lunch together three days later. Forrestal produced a secret report on Palestine prepared by the CIA and he read part of it to the Senator. But McGragh had a secret of his own to reveal: the fact that Jewish sources were responsible for a substantial part of the contributions to the National Committee of the Democratic party. Many of the contributions were made with the distinct idea of the givers that they would have the opportunity to express their views and have them seriously considered on such questions as the present Palestine question. Added to which there was a feeling amongst the Jews that the United States was not doing what it should to solicit votes in the General Assembly in favour of the partition of Palestine. Beyond this the Jews expected the United States to do its utmost to implement the Partition decision when it was voted on by the UN, through force if necessary.

Forrestal stuck to his guns and stressed that it involved not merely the Arabs of the Middle East but also might involve the whole Muslim world.

Later in his diary Forrestal noted: "I had lunch with B. M. Baruch."

Bernard Mannes Baruch, constituted the real power, economic, political and military. Forrestal's brief but tantalising diary note of the conversation said : "He took the line of advising me not to be active in this particular matter. That I was already identified and it was agreed that opposition to the United Nations' policy on Palestine was not in my own interest. He said that the Democratic Party could only lose by trying to get our Government's policy reversed."

Baruch knew of course that his statement was untrue. Partition was not UN policy. only the Jews were asserting that Partition was already UN policy. It was, as Forrestal had pointed out, only a rigged recommendation of the General Assembly.

The truth was Forrestal was being subjected to the maximum possible pressure by civilised means.

One of the greatest and most tragic ironies in the whole story of the creation of the Arab/Israeli conflict is that on the same day, 3rd February 1948, Forrestal received word that the Republican Party was ready to have negotiations with the Democratic party about taking the Palestine problem out of US politics.

And yet within a matter of days the prospect of negotiations to lift the Palestine problem out of US domestic policy was killed.

Baruch's role was a critical one. He was telling (warning?) Forrestal that it was not in his own interests to pursue the matter of taking Palestine out of US domestic politics. By this he could have meant: (1) that the Jews had enough influence in Congress to deny him the legislative and fiscal support he needed to make a success of the new department of Defence or (2) that the Jews had enough influence with the Democratic Party to have Forrestal removed from office.

The bottom line of Baruch's advice to Forrestal could not have been clearer. The election prospects of the Democratic Party had to be given priority and that meant abandoning the campaign to get Palestine out of US domestic politics.

It followed that, if Forrestal could be neutralised, the campaign to take the Palestine problem out of US domestic politics would be terminated.

Forrestal sent a transcript of his conversation with Winthrop Aldrich, the president of the Chase National Bank in New York, to Marshall regarding the possibility of negotiations with the Republican Party to take the Palestine problem out of US politics. That done Forrestal drew up a memorandum for President Truman. The edited version of the "Forrestal Diaries" as published does not reveal what this particular Forrestal memorandum said and it appears it was never submitted to the President.

A sensational development three weeks later would have removed from Forrestal's mind any lingering doubt that some in the Democratic Party would stop at nothing to stop the loss of Jewish campaign funds and votes.

On the morning of the 26th March Marshall called Forrestal with disturbing news that the Democratic Party would have to draft General Eisenhower as its nominee.

Eisenhower came from a poor family of Jewish origin and had not much of academic achievement until he entered the United States Military Academy at West Point. When America entered the war he was only a colonel. But by the time Germany surrendered on the 7th May 1945, he was a five-star general, having been promoted over the heads of 30 more experienced officers.

His rapid promotion had arisen because Marshall and Baruch had recognised his abilities.

When Eisenhower allowed himself to be persuaded to run for the Presidency in 1952, it was on the Republican and not the Democratic ticket.

It is not difficult to believe that Eisenhower was disturbed by the complicity of the Democratic party in the destruction of Forrestal.

Forrestal's diary entry for the 31st December a week after Israel broke the cease fire and launched its offensive to destroy the Egyptian army in the Negev he had learned of an unexpected request by the State Department for 6,000 American troops to be used as a "guard force" in Jerusalem apparently to assist the implementation of Bernadotte's Peace Plan. With some bitterness Forrestal said that it was another example of the disconnection in policy making.

He also repeated his long held view that America's Palestine policy had been made for "squalid political purposes." He concluded by saying that he hoped one day to be able to make his position clear on that issue. The implication is that, if Forrestal had lived, he would have written an insider's book of the corruption of America's foreign policy, and the need to clean it up so that those with executive responsibility for protecting US interests and security were to be allowed to do their jobs to the best of their professional ability.

Forrestal resigned on March 28th 1949. In 1949 there were rumours that he had a mental breakdown. Forrestal himself maintained that he was being tracked and bugged by Israeli security agents. It was later learned that Jewish agents feared that America was making secret arrangements with Arab agents and had followed around another Government official with similar views on Israel as Forrestal.

He had also been the victim of a slander campaign against him led by the columnist Drew Pearson. The campaign tried to make it appear he was paranoid although paranoia has never been mentioned in the official evaluations of his state.

He had checked into the Bethesba Naval Hospital five days after his resignation. His condition was officially announced to be physical and nervous exhaustion. Forrestal seemed to be on the road to recovery when in the early morning of May 22nd his body was found on a third floor roof below the 16th floor kitchen across the hall from his room.

The County Coroner called it a suicide within hours of death.The official Naval Review Board which completed hearings on May 31st did not release a brief summary of its findings until October 12th. The announcement stated only that Forrestal had died from a fall from the window. It did not say what might have caused the fall nor did it make any mention of the bathrobe sash that was tied round his neck. There were reports of paranoia and of involuntary commitment to the hospital as well as suspicions about the details of the circumstances of his death, which have fed a variety of conspiracy theories.

Additional doubts have been raised by the 2004 release of the Navy investigation. Among the discrepancies between the Report and the accounts given in the principal Forrestal biographies are that broken glass was found on Forrestal's bed.

One of the nurses, in 1975, when she was then dying of terminal cancer, told a journalist that the day of the suicide as she was working in the hospital she had seen two men enter his room. There was an animated discussion and following that silence. The two men left and some minutes later his body was found after he had, presumably, jumped out of the window.

Jumped, or was he pushed?

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