The death of James Forrestal - First Secretary of Defense

Was America’s first Secretary of Defense driven to suicide — or silenced because he knew too much?

This new 2026 edition features a brand-new foreword by Western Islands’ President, Joe Wolverton, II, J.D.

The Mysterious Death of James Forrestal

In 1949, James Forrestal — former Secretary of the Navy and America’s first Secretary of Defense — dies after falling from a window of Bethesda Naval Hospital. The verdict was suicide.

However, as Cornell Simpson demonstrates in this chilling investigation, the facts surrounding Forrestal’s final days raise grave and unsettling questions that have never been satisfactorily answered.