(Bethesda Naval Hospital. Official Navy Photo.)

“Maybe he was, and maybe he wasn’t,” said Mac, shaking his head. “And maybe he did and maybe he was pushed out that window. You know that British classified records were just released a couple years ago that indicate Menachem Begin’s Irgun Gang in Palestine had a serious plot to assassinate Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin. He was a fierce anti-Zionist, and so was Forrestal”
 
“I had heard that Forrestal claimed he was being followed during the height of the struggle in the Trans-Jordan to establish Israel.”
 
“The Navy kept the report of Forestall’s death a secret for nearly fifty years, and I don’t think we will ever know for sure. But he was a gifted man, and he loved his Navy. He came through Pearl in 1942 when I was there. I don’t think LBJ had anything to do with his death, though.”
 
I had to laugh at that. “I heard that LBJ wangled a commission in the Naval Reserves, and made a fact-finding junket to the Pacific. Someone scheduled a “combat” mission-” I made air quotes with my fingers over my glass of wine- “to qualify for a Silver Star before returning to the safety of Washington.”
 
Mac smiled. “Johnson was something else, but his sights were set on being Senate Majority Leader, and he was willing to support unification if it could benefit his friends in Texas. General of the Army George Marshall had been pushing for unification of the services starting in 1943. He became Secretary in 1944, after Frank Knox died of a hart attack, and he supported the Naval Affairs Committee in Congress to scuttle the first attempt to unify the services by Congress in mid-1946.”
 
“But he still accepted the post of SECDEF when the legislation finally was passed in 1947.”
 
“He felt that unification was inevitable, and he wanted to put the best face on it. He was one of the earliest Cold Warriors, and thought that the Russians could not be trusted. He took over what we briefly called the National Military Establishment, and the new structure looked a lot like what we have today: Defense, the National Security Council, CIA, and an independent Air Force. The prototype for NSA was about to be created, too, which is where I was working in the Navy component at Main Navy. The Air Force is where the trouble was going to come from.”
 
“Didn’t the Blue-suiters claim that with the Bomb and the B-36 bomber there was no need for any other military capability?”
 
“Yes they did, and managed to kill the Navy’s first super aircraft carrier in the budget wars. Naturally, Forrestal opposed all that but he was handcuffed by Harry Truman’s approach to funding defense.”
 
I nodded in sympathy. Mac and I suffered the same fates late in our careers, falling from the fast-paced world of OPINTEL into the arcane and painful world of the intelligence budget process.
 
“How did the Truman administration approach it?” I asked with curiosity.
 
“Well, Forrestal believed in a prototype of the process we have now. The needs of the Services are stated by them, validated by the Combatant Commands, racked and ranked by priority for funding. The defense budget is built from the ground up.”
 
“Requirements-based budgeting,” I said by rote, nodding in agreement. “And Harry Truman?”
 
“Top down.” I copied the words in my notebook and underlined them. “They did not budget for needs,” said Mac. “They began by subtracting from total revenue receipts the amount needed for domestic needs and recurrent operating costs, with any surplus going to the defense budget for that year. Completely ass-backward to what was required. Remember, in addition to the consolidation, Forrestal was dealing with Communist takeovers in Czechoslovakia and China, the Berlin Blockade, the war in the Trans-Jordan and negotiations to establish NATO.”
 
“All without the resources to do it.”
 
Mac nodded gravely. “It was a pretty exciting time to get orders to Europe, right on the eve of the craziness in Korea. But it was pretty crazy here in Washington. The battle over money was about to erupt in open rebellion. Remember, Governor Dewey was supposed to beat Harry Truman in the election in 1948.”

(President Truman exults in victory, 1948. AP Photo.)

“No one will ever forget the picture of Truman holding up the headline of his defeat that morning.”
 
“Well, when the Truman people found out Forrestal had been meeting with Dewey and had agreed to stay on as SECDEF, that tore it, and Truman fired him and appointed Louis Johnson, who would do what he was told.”
 
“No wonder Forrestal was depressed.” I looked down. My glass was empty. Must have been defective, I thought, and waved my hand to see if I could get Peter’s attention and a re-fill.
 
“And no wonder the Admiral’s revolted,” said Mac.
 
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Subscribe to the RSS feed!