James V. Forrestal websearch @ GOOGLE indypress @ GOOGLE booklist @ NAMEBASE socialmap @ NAMEBASE From 1947 to 1949 James Forrestal served as the first Defense Secretary in U.S. history, in the Truman Administration.

Earlier in the Truman Administration Forrestal was Secretary of Navy, a post that he was appointed to in 1944, in the FDR Administration.

"It was Stimson's and Forrestal's (Secretary of the Navy who would become the first Secretary of Defense) recruits, plus a few others with similar backgrounds, including Dean Acheson, Will Clayton, and Averill Harriman who, after Roosevelt's sudden death, formed the collective picture of the world adopted by the uninformed and ill-prepared Harry Truman."

...[Paul Nitze] was the archsymbol of those Barnet calls the 'new breed'. Graduated from Harvard, he joined the prestigious New York investment banking firm of Dillon, Read. After a short stint on Wall Street, he was brought into government by Dillon, Read senior partner Forrestal in 1941, serving in a series of posts in economic mobilization agencies before becoming special consultant to the War Department and Vice Chairman of the Strategic Bombing Survey from 1944 to 1946. After the war, Nitze moved to the State Department where he specialized in international trade and finance under Will Clayton and was credited with providing much of the impetus behind the Marshall Plan. Following that he became Acheson's Director of Policy Planning in 1950, the post from which he directed the writing of NSC-68. - Peddlers of Crisis, Sanders, page 72. About Dillon, Read's connection to the Third Reich: [1]

The acquisition of oversees oil reserves becomes a matter of great 'national security' urgency:

On June 8, l943, the Joint Chiefs of Staff requested President Roosevelt to authorize the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to create a new government corporation to acquire overseas oil reserves as a matter of the greatest national security urgency. The Joint Chiefs recommended that the corporation's first project be the immediate acquisition of controlling interest in Saudi Arabia's oil concessions. On June 26, 1943, after considerable interdepartmental debate, Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes, Secretary of War Henry Stimson, Secretary of State Cordell Hull and Acting Secretary of Navy James Forrestal formally requested President Roosevelt to authorize the creation of the Petroleum Reserves Corporation. [2]

Early in Forrestal's tenure as Defense Secretary there are allegations of financial improprieties:

In 1948 the journalist Drew Pearson revealed in the Washington Post that during the 1930s Forrestal had been guilty of tax evasion and share manipulation. Other journalists made claims that Forrestal had owned shares in large companies in Nazi Germany and had used his influence to stop the bombing of German cities during the Second World War." [3]

[Forrestal was a key figure at the investment bank of Dillon Read : [4] ]

Kofsky's (1995) book, "Harry S. Truman and the War Scare of 1948: A Successful Campaign to Deceive the Nation", describes the roles that Forrestal played in fabricating the perception that the Soviet Union had aggressive military intentions towards the West. A description of the book (at Amazon.com), begins like this: "Harry S. Truman and the War Scare of 1948 reveals how during the first half of 1948, Truman and the two most important members of his cabinet, Marshall and Forrestal, systematically deceived Congress and the public into thinking that the U.S.S.R. was about to launch World War III with an invasion of Western Europe". [6]

The purpose of this fabrication - which resulted in what came to be called the 'Cold War' - was to instill fear in the American public and whip up the enthusiasm necessary to inspire sufficient loyalty and patriotism to achieve a rapid military build-up and defeat foreign and domestic resistance to the U.S. policy of imperialism.   [See the Howard Zinn quote in: Truman Administration].

Whenever the fabrication was called into question, Forrestal acted decisively: "In September 1946 he joined with James F. Byrnes to get Henry Wallace [former Vice President in the FDR Administration] sacked after he made a speech calling for an end to the Cold War." [7]     For more on this incident see: Truman Administration

The striking similarities between events that are taking place today under the auspices of the current 'War on Terror' and the events that took place in the critical years between 1946 and 1949 would suggest that the architects of the 'War on Terror' are consciously using the 'Cold War' template manufactured by Forrestal and his colleagues for precisely the purposes that it was originally intended: to create a political atmosphere conducive to imperialist expansion. For more on this and on Walter Lippman's invention, during this period, of the art that he called the "manufacture of consent", see Chomsky in: Wilson Administration.

The campaign to demonize the Soviet Union had reached a fevered pitch by the late 1940s and early 50s:

Headed by Rep. Richard Nixon the House Unamerican Activities Committee [HUAC] conducts hearings for Whittaker Chambers (1948), former senior editor of Time who claims to have been a Soviet agent in the 1930s. It identifies Alger Hiss, a prominent New Dealer, promoter of the United Nations, director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and prominent liberal Democrat as a secret member of the Communist party; when Hiss denied the charge and Truman denounced it as a "red herring," Chambers accused Hiss of spying for the Soviets. With help from the FBI and Nixon, they provided enough circumstantial evidence to give the impression that the Truman administrations teemed with secret Communists and to try Alger Hiss of perjuring himself before a Federal grand jury, convicting him in a second trial (1950), sentencing him to five years in a Federal prison. [8]

[Search on: Richard M. Nixon & HUAC]

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During the initial [HUAC] hearings so-called friendly witnesses were asked to testify. These people were allowed to read prepared statements and were treated with respect. They were not under suspicion, but, instead, were willing to testify about any Communist activity that they were aware of in Hollywood. Some of the best-known friendly witnesses were Jack Warner and Louis B. Mayer, representing the studio heads, as well as Gary Cooper, Robert Taylor. Robert Montgomery, and Ronald Reagan, representing actors. [9]

[Search on: Ronald Reagan & HUAC]

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For more on the red-baiting activities that took place during this period, see: Truman Administration. || For more on Richard Nixon's involvment in HUAC see: Nixon Administration. || For information on Ronald Reagan's participation in the HUAC hearings see: Reagan Administration. || For George H.W. Bush's defense of HUAC see: Bush Administration. || For stories on current red-baiting: search on Red-Baiting.