After Truman’s reelection, Truman forced Forrestal to resign on March 28, 1949. Forrestal was then essentially placed under house arrest at Bethesda Naval Hospital, where he was murdered in the early morning hours of May 22, 1949, shortly before his brother was expected to arrive to assist him in leaving the institution.
It was the National Security Act of 1947 that created the CIA—but the Agency’s powers were expanded dramatically a month after Forrestal’s assassination. The CIA Act of 1949 was passed by the House on March 7, 1949, by the Senate on May 27, 1949, reported and agreed to by the joint conference committee from June 2-7, and signed into law by President Truman on June 20, 1949. It authorized the CIA “to use confidential fiscal and administrative procedures” and exempted it from many of the usual limitations on the use of federal funds. The Act (Section 6) also exempted the CIA from having to disclose its “organization, functions, officials, titles, salaries, or numbers of personnel employed.” And it created a program called “PL-110” to handle defectors and other “essential aliens” outside normal immigration procedures, as well as give those persons cover stories and economic support.
Forrestal’s death is a case study in fake news and the use of the media to kill a man’s name, making it easier to kill the man. If you look at the policies that Forrestal argued for—against the creation of the state of Israel and for greater transparency regarding the black budget—we would be living in a different world today if he had remained as the Secretary of Defense. Indeed, it is more than possible that there is a direct connection between Forrestal’s death, the deaths of a series of politicians over the following two decades—including Senator Joseph McCarthy, President John Kennedy, and Senator Robert Kennedy—and the steady rise of “secret monies for secret armies” and funds disappearing from the U.S. Treasury.
https://solari.com/the-assassination-of-james-forrestal-with-david-martin/