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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.

Legends Die but Are Never Forgotten America’s first Secretary of Defense opposed rushing to recognize Israel. Not because he hated Jews. Because he thought it would blow up U.S. relations with the Arab world and put Middle East oil, the fuel of the American industrial machine, at risk. George Marshall agreed with him. The Joint Chiefs agreed with him. That didn’t matter. What followed was a smear campaign. Drew Pearson and Walter Winchell spent months calling him dangerous, unpatriotic, even a coward. They didn’t debate his policy. They went after his sanity and his manhood. By the time Truman forced him out in March 1949, the press had already written the ending: Forrestal wasn’t a strategist. He was “crazy.” Five days later he was locked in Bethesda Naval Hospital. Seven weeks after that, on May 22, 1949, they said he “fell” from a 16th-floor window. His own brother Henry Forrestal said the nervous-breakdown story was garbage and that James was coherent when they pushed him out. A hospital corpsman pulled a priest aside that morning and told him Forrestal didn’t kill himself. Journalist William Bradford Huie wrote that the truth had been suppressed, that Forrestal had been treated like a prisoner, and that his own priest couldn’t even see him. The Navy’s official Willcutts report, buried for 55 years, never even concluded suicide. It only said he died from the fall and that no one in the Navy was at fault. Broken glass was later reported on the bed. The scene was cleaned before it was photographed. They paint you insane. Then they write the obituary. Then they tell you to stop asking questions. Where have we seen this before? Never forget what they did to James Forrestal. The same playbook is still in use.