My call to Chief Baughman set several things in motion. Within half an hour, at Morris House, Eberstadt heard by phone from Louis Johnson, Forrestal’s successor, expressing grave concern about Forrestal’s condition.
The President was providing an Air Force Constellation, Eberstadt was told, to facilitate the former secretary’s much-needed vacation; and by early evening Forrestal had arrived in Florida, where a formidable circle of friends-including banker (and former Under Secretary of State) Robert Lovett, Douglas Dillon of Dillon, Read amp; Company and playwright Philip Barry-took him under their wing.
Jo Forrestal was staying at the Jupiter Island Club, but Forrestal was soon in a private home where he was attended day and night by Eberstadt and others, including Dr. William Menninger of Topeka’s Menninger Clinic. The presence of Menninger, the country’s preeminent psychiatrist, was Eberstadt’s doing.
Ironically, Menninger had been invited to the Pentagon just months before, to aid in a Forrestal-directed study of combat fatigue; Forrestal and Menninger had spent a morning together, discussing the subject, at which time Menninger apparently noticed nothing of a similar (or any) malady in the behavior of the Secretary of Defense.
Nonetheless (Eberstadt told me on the phone), this brief contact and casual acquaintanceship had made Forrestal willing to at least talk with Menninger.
But, at the same time, the government sent down their own man, Captain George N. Raines, chief psychiatrist at the Bethesda naval hospital. This may have reflected President Truman’s natural humanistic concern for a great public servant in a time of dire need; or it may have indicated the administration’s desire to contain the incident and handle the manner in which the press and public learned that a crazy man, until a day or so ago, had been their Secretary of Defense, holding his fingers to the nation’s atomic pulse.
I had intended to return to Chicago that same evening Forrestal made his Florida trip; but the Secret Service “requested” that I stay in Washington for “debriefing,” and at both Treasury and Justice I was questioned by Baughman himself, and Frank Wilson, and several other agents whose names I did not know (and which were not offered to me). This exercise in repetitiousness took three days, and the government was kind enough to pick up my hotel check for my extended stay-one of the rare times my tax dollars came back to me.
I was frank about what I’d witnessed regarding former Secretary of Defense Forrestal’s mental breakdown, and filled them in on my own meager investigation, from the maid leaking to Anderson to the unproductive sweep of Forrestal’s home for bugs; but none of my dealings with Pearson came up, specifically no mention of Roswell or Majestic Twelve. Had they asked me, I would have been forthcoming (because if they asked, that would indicate knowledge on their part, possibly stemming from surveillance of myself and/or Pearson); but they didn’t ask. And I didn’t tell.
Friday afternoon marked the final stop of my debriefing tour, which took me tooling through the suburban slumber of white cottages and brick bungalows that was Bethesda, and beyond into the flat, green countryside of Maryland. Just when I thought I’d misunderstood the directions, easing the rental Ford up over a little rise in U.S. Route 240, a nineteen-story white tower rose out of nowhere like an art moderne apparition; it was as if the Empire State Building had sprouted in a pasture.
The National Naval Medical Center sprawled over some 265 acres, the central tower flanked by L-shaped four-floor wings, a complex at once utilitarian and starkly beautiful, modern and timeless, its structural steel faced with white-quartz-aggregate concrete panels, dark spandrels between windows creating an effect of massive square columns.
On the periphery of the endless parking lot were many squat temporary buildings, so this facility-which had seemed so vast during the war-was already experiencing growing pains. The bustling lobby was lined with three colors of marble, and the corridors were a soothingly cool terra-cotta; the naval nature of the place was evident by not only the gob and jarhead patients, but the sailor-style attire of nurses and attendants, and the uniformed doctors.
While Bethesda-a site supposedly chosen by Roosevelt himself, because biblically Bethesda had been “the pool of healing”-was primarily a naval hospital, medical and dental schools were also a part of the complex. So was the Naval Medical Research Institute, a separate building I was directed to, where I was to meet with Dr. Joseph Bernstein, Chief of Psychiatric Research.
Not a military man himself (not all the doctors at Bethesda were, particularly in the research area), Bernstein had a compact, linebacker’s frame wrapped in a white smock jacket; his blue tie bore a Star of David tie tack. Perhaps fifty, he had short-cropped blond hair going white, though the difference was negligible, and he had eyes so light blue they were almost gray, and eyebrows so light they disappeared. This gave him an eerily albino cast, that his handsome features-Roman nose, dazzling smile, and square jaw-did not quite dispel.
Standing behind his desk in a small, spartan third-floor office, he offered a hand for me to shake, which I did. Firm but not showy.
“I appreciate your willingness to speak with me,” he said, in friendly but clipped manner, with an understated middle-European accent. “I take it you’re Jewish, Mr. Heller?”
“Sort of.”
Dr. Bernstein settled into his chair as I took the one opposite him. “And what does that mean, ‘sort of’?”
I explained, and he said, “I have never been religious, either, but I hope one day to go to Palestine, myself.”
“Oh?”
He folded his hands on his desk, prayerfully, on a manila file folder; they were large, thick-fingered hands and I was glad he wasn’t a surgeon. “Most of my relatives died in concentration camps, Mr. Heller. I was fortunate to leave Germany in the late twenties, and establish a practice in Zurich.”
“Yeah, well, that’s sure shrink country, isn’t it?”
That stopped him for a moment, but then he laughed, once-politely, I thought.
He raised an invisible eyebrow. “You have a rough-hewn wit, Mr. Heller.”
“That’s one way to describe it, I guess. All right if I ask you something?”
“Certainly.”
“Why the nickel tour through your background, Doc? No offense, but I don’t give a flying, rough-hewn fuck. Uncle Sam has bounced me from here to there, for three days, asking me questions, and now I have to spend the afternoon at a head clinic. Not my favorite tourist spot.”
His smile was small and casual, but his eyes were studying me; he unfolded his hands and picked up the manila folder. “Would that be because you were once a patient at such a facility yourself?”
“Not here. I was across town at St. Elizabeth’s, or do you know that? Is that my file?”
Everybody had a fucking file on me.
He tossed the folder to one side of his tidy desk. “You had amnesia induced by combat fatigue. You recovered your identity, through hypnosis therapy, but your condition was deemed serious enough not to return you to combat. You were discharged on a Section Eight.”
“Now we know both our life stories. Is there anything else, Doc?”
His expression turned somber. “I shared my background with you because I understand that you are Mr. Forrestal’s friend.”
“He’s my client. We’re friendly enough, but it’s a business relationship.”
He gestured with an open hand. “I wanted to be frank about my background, and my … support for the new state of Israel … because if you were to learn that background from someone else, you might assume I’d been less than forthcoming in an area sensitive to this patient’s case. You are the first representative of the Forrestal family that I’ve spoken to-”
“I don’t represent the Forrestal family. I work for them, or I did. I’ve completed the assignment, and plan to submit my bill. Please tell me insanity isn’t grounds for nonpayment.”
That made him smile, a little. “Perhaps my concerns were misplaced. I thought you should know that my politics will not be a conflict of interest in my involvement with Mr. Forrestal’s case.”
“Oh. Okay, I get it: you’re not one of the Zionists out to get Forrestal, ’cause of his anti-Israeli tendencies. Well, I’d worry more about convincing Forrestal of that.”
“Captain Raines will be the primary physician on this case,” he said. That faint accent combined with his impeccable English somehow added weight to his words. “I will be a consultant, an adviser; in fact, if Captain Raines were not still in Florida, with his patient, you would be speaking to him and not me.”
“You’re more in research, is that it?”
“Yes. Like Dr. Menninger, who is also involved in this case, I’m delving into operational fatigue, that is, combat fatigue and related battle neuroses … and certainly Mr. Forrestal’s case-like yours-touches upon that area. He shows that the casualties of our recent world war are not confined to combat.”
“Fine. Swell. I’m here to cooperate; what do you want to know?”
He asked different questions than the feds, but got the same answers: everyone wanted to know what Forrestal had been saying, how he’d been behaving. It didn’t take as long to fill Dr. Bernstein in, however, because-unlike the Secret Service and the FBI-he had no interest in my own investigative efforts.
When we’d come to the end of his questions, I asked Bernstein one of my own: “Do I gather you’re bringing Forrestal back to Bethesda?”
A tiny shrug. “It’s no secret: he’ll be flown here tomorrow.”
I had called Eberstadt in Florida, the day after Forrestal had been flown down there, and he’d indicated Dr. Menninger was the doctor in charge, that Captain Raines was only consulting.
So I asked, “Why isn’t Forrestal going to the Menninger Clinic, in Topeka? That’s the best psychiatric facility in the country, I understand.”
His response was faintly defensive: “The treatment here at Bethesda is among the best available, anywhere. Also, treatment this close to home will make Mr. Forrestal feel at ease, and his family and friends will have convenient access to him, providing support he’ll need to recover.”
“Does Dr. Menninger agree with this?”
“Frankly, no … but the general consensus is that Mr. Forrestal will be better served here, in a general hospital, than in a psychiatric clinic.”
“Why?”
Dr. Bernstein twitched a non-smile. “Committal to a mental hospital would be an embarrassment to a public person like James Forrestal-”
“An embarrassment to the government, you mean.”
“The stigma of mental illness in so public and powerful a man might engender a feeling of hopelessness, even despair … in the patient.”
I leaned back in my chair, gestured expansively. “Hey, I don’t blame the White House for wanting to control this. How would the country respond to knowing that, till last Monday, its national security was in the hands of a fruitcake?”
“Your flip manner does not fool me, Mr. Heller. I know you are deeply concerned about Mr. Forrestal.”
“‘Deeply’ overdoes it, Doc, but the question is, are you? Keeping him here will make it easier to isolate him, screen visitors, keep out the press, maintain strict security. All of that’s great for the government. What’s it do for the patient?”
Both invisible eyebrows lifted this time. “He’s suffering from a form of combat fatigue; where better to receive treatment than a naval hospital?”
“He doesn’t have combat fatigue, Doc; he worked long hours and suffered stress, but he didn’t have bullets flying around his head and Japs with bayonets in his lap, and as a bona fide star-spangled combat-fatigue graduate, with a Section Eight for a diploma, I resent the term being bandied about.”
Bells were quietly ringing outside; time in this naval hospital was told by ship’s bell system.
The handsome near-albino combined a patronizing smile with a regal nod. “Mr. Heller, you’re quite right. Mr. Forrestal is most likely suffering from a depressive condition common to middle-aged men: involutional melancholia. In such cases, the mental faculties become less acute, there’s a tendency to bemoan past mistakes, a feeling takes hold that the future holds no promise. Doubt, indecision, fear, anxiety manifest themselves. And there are physical effects, also: the internal secretion glands begin malfunctioning, resulting in a general overall lowering of bodily health.”
“Maybe you do know your stuff.”
“Maybe I do.” His eyes narrowed, his brow tensed, which caused his eyebrows to show up better. “I do know your friend … your client … will not survive long without hospitalization and around-the-clock care. The reports from Florida are disturbing, to say the least.”
“I know.”
I’d spoken to Eberstadt again, yesterday, and heard a harrowing tale of suicide attempts and constant supervision. In the early-morning hours, not long after Forrestal arrived, a fire engine had gone by, its siren wailing, sending the former Secretary of Defense bolting from his bed, running in his night-shirt into the street, screaming, “The Russians are attacking! The Russians are attacking!”
Dr. Bernstein stood, a cue for me to do the same, which I did.
He said, “I can assure you, Mr. Heller, that both Captain Raines and I will do everything in our power to see that Mr. Forrestal’s stay at Bethesda is as short as possible.”
“Didn’t mean to give you a hard time, Doc,” I said, and handed him my business card. “I’ll be back in my Chicago office tomorrow morning, if there’s anything you need.”
“Thank you, Mr. Heller.” He ushered me to the door, and smiled almost shyly. “And if I’m not being too personal, as one rather nonreligious Jew to another, I hope one day you will come to embrace your Jewish side, as I have.”
“Yeah, well I plan to start with a pastrami and Swiss cheese sandwich in about half an hour.”
From my room at the Ambassador, I made one more call to Florida, again talking to Eberstadt.
Eberstadt said that he and Dr. Menninger were against the Bethesda decision, but had been overruled.
“Who by?” I asked.
“Jo Forrestal and President Truman.”
“What? How the hell-?”
“Jo is adamant about protecting James’ reputation from the ‘stigma of mental illness,’ which she felt would be inevitable if he was admitted to such a famous psychiatric clinic as Dr. Menninger’s. She talked it over with Truman, on the phone, and he agreed with her and put the Bethesda plan in motion.”
“And you think it’s a mistake.”
“Hundreds of cases of operational fatigue have been successfully treated at Topeka. But what can you do? She’s his wife.”
“And he’s our president.”
“Don’t blame me,” Eberstadt said, “I voted for Dewey.”
That night I returned to Chicago, and the next day Forrestal was admitted to Bethesda. (When his plane landed, he had refused to disembark until the airport had been cleared of “all Air Force men and Jews,” a request that was not fulfilled.) On April 11, the newspapers finally reported the former Secretary of Defense was under treatment at the naval hospital for “nervous and physical exhaustion.” In covering the explosive story, the press showed restraint, for the most part.
With the exception of Drew Pearson, who made a feast of the news, distorting Forrestal’s behavior in Hobe Sound into hourly suicide attempts and constant raving about the Reds. Forrestal was a “madman” who’d had access to atomic bombs, and Pearson wondered in his column and on his radio broadcast just how gravely the secretary’s insanity had jeopardized national security.
It was typical Pearson: bombastic, overstated, cruel …
… and a damn good question.