Lady Hope

All three men in this photo at Arlington, JFK, Grant Stockdale, and James Forrestal, died suddenly and unexpectedly. One was shot in Dallas. The other two fell from high windows. Forrestal, the first Secretary of Defense, strongly opposed U.S. recognition of Israel in 1948. He warned it would damage American interests in the Middle East and create long-term problems. In 1949 he was found dead after falling from a 16th-floor window at Bethesda Naval Hospital. Official ruling: suicide. His brother Henry insisted it was murder. He told author Cornell Simpson that James “positively did not kill himself,” that he “was the last person in the world who would have committed suicide,” and that he believed someone had strangled him and thrown him out the window. Forrestal himself had complained he was being followed by “Jews or Zionist agents” and Communists. JFK later ran into friction with Israel over its nuclear program at Dimona. His administration pressed for inspections and also pushed efforts to force the pro-Israel lobby to register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. He was assassinated in 1963. Stockdale, standing with JFK at Forrestal’s grave in this 1963 photo, was a close Kennedy friend and former ambassador. Days after the assassination he met with Bobby and Ted Kennedy, then told friends the “world was closing in.” The day before he died he told his lawyer, in rambling fashion, that “those guys” were trying to get him and spoke about the assassination. The next day he fell from the 13th floor of a Miami office building. Official ruling: suicide. Three men. Three sudden deaths. One photo.