James Forrestal's Suicide

James Forrestal's suicide on May 22, 1949, ended a period of mounting illness that had been only partly visible to the people around him. After leaving the defense post, Forrestal maintained appearances for a time, then was taken to Florida and admitted to Bethesda Naval Hospital for treatment. His death shocked Washington: no senior government figure had previously taken his own life, and the tragedy made the limits of what Harry S. Truman had been told painfully clear.

Resignation and Mounting Distress

On March 1, Truman summoned Forrestal to the White House to ask for his resignation and urged him to take a vacation, but did not mention medical attention. Forrestal remained composed enough to appear in public in the weeks that followed, although only barely. On March 28 he attended the Pentagon ceremony installing Louis A. Johnson as Secretary of Defense; later that day, at the White House, he stood silently as Truman presented him with the Distinguished Service Medal. The formal appearances suggested continuity, even as Forrestal's condition was deteriorating.

The next day, Forrestal was flown to Florida to stay at Robert A. Lovett's home in Hobe Sound. There he told Lovett that people were after him. In the days that followed, he made at least one attempt at suicide. Truman, unaware of what was happening in Florida, had heard reports that Forrestal believed foreign agents were following him and asked the head of the United States Secret Service to investigate. A report dated March 31 found those suspicions unfounded and described Forrestal as exceedingly nervous and emotional. By his last day as Secretary of Defense, it said, he had not recognized his own servants. He was escorted to the plane by two friends and former associates; when he hesitated at the last moment about leaving, one reportedly said that they could not keep him there.

That report characterized Forrestal's condition as a slight nervous breakdown, apparently the extent of what Truman knew at the time. Truman later described Forrestal's departure as the result of failing health, while acknowledging that he should have let him resign earlier. The sequence that followed showed a more acute crisis than that restrained account conveyed.

Hospitalization and the Final Night

In Florida, a Navy psychiatrist and the physician William C. Menninger were called in. On April 2, Forrestal was flown back to Washington and admitted to Bethesda Naval Hospital for treatment of nervous exhaustion. Newspaper columnist Drew Pearson reported that Forrestal was out of his mind and claimed, incorrectly, that he had rushed into a Florida street shouting that the Russians were coming. The false report sensationalized the crisis without accurately describing what had happened.

Truman visited Forrestal at the hospital during the first week of May and thought he seemed like his old self. Two weeks later, in the early hours of Sunday, May 22, Forrestal sat in his room on the hospital's sixteenth floor copying lines from Sophocles' Chorus from Ajax. The lines dwell on exhaustion, hopelessness, and the prospect of the grave; their presence is a stark detail in the account, but does not by itself explain Forrestal's state of mind.

At about three o'clock, Forrestal crossed the hall to a small kitchen. He tied one end of his bathrobe sash to a radiator and the other around his neck, then jumped from an unbarred window. His body was found on the roof of the third floor, the sash still around his neck. The narrative's spare account of the act contrasts with the elaborate public ceremonies that had accompanied his departure from office and the medical language used to describe his treatment.

Shock and Public Response

News of Forrestal's suicide rocked Washington. The death stood outside the familiar pattern of officials resigning or being dismissed under a cloud: no member of the Cabinet had previously taken his own life. Truman said he was inexpressibly shocked and grieved. Bess Wallace Truman was terribly shaken, a reaction Margaret Truman Daniel later connected to memories of her own father.

The previous week, at Easter, Bess had sent Forrestal a bouquet of roses. In his note of thanks, he said the gesture had helped brighten a bleak day. That small exchange brought the private relationships around the crisis into view, without diminishing how little those close to him may have understood about its depth. Truman had visited only weeks before and believed Forrestal seemed recovered; the later account of his final days revealed the distance between that impression and the events in the hospital.

Burial and Significance

Forrestal was buried with full military honors at Arlington. Truman and the Vice President attended, along with former President Herbert Hoover, the Cabinet, much of Congress, members of the Supreme Court, the Joint Chiefs, General George C. Marshall, and an estimated six thousand other people. The scale of the gathering registered the public weight of Forrestal's office and the shock of his death.

The episode also left a consequential contrast in the record: an official report had described a slight breakdown, Truman had taken a reassuring impression from a hospital visit, and yet Forrestal had already attempted suicide before his admission and died there soon afterward. The book does not offer a single explanation that resolves those discrepancies. Instead, its chronology follows a deterioration visible in fragments—an escorted departure, a guarded medical assessment, a misleading press account, a visit that seemed reassuring, and, finally, the copied lines and the sash at the window.