Jim Forrestal, when the president ousted the Dulles ally from the Pentagon. By the time he was pushed out, Forrestal was showing signs of severe nervous exhaustion. Angry and despondent about his ouster, he began spiraling quickly downward, ranting about how the Soviets had infiltrated Washington and how they had marked him for liquidation. Early in the morning of May 22, 1949, after Forrestal was checked into the Bethesda Naval Hospital for psychiatric evaluation, he squeezed through the small bathroom window of his sixteenth-floor hospital suite and fell to his death. The tragic collapse of
...more
