Were They Suicided?

[Robert Charles-Dunne]

I don't read many blogs, but have stumbled across one that's worth recommending. In particular, a post there about men in positions of power leaping from tall buildings to their certain death caught my eye. Because it includes information about James Forrestal, Frank Olson, the CIA assassination manual, and many other things that have been dealt with here, I thought it might be of interest. You can find the site at:

http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/

The following is from:

http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2004...all-for-it.html

Thursday, August 19, 2004

Suicide? Don't fall for it.

Here's a game we can play: what do the names Forrestal, Olson, Kokal and Weiss have in common?

James Forrestal, 1949: "jumped from building"

At around 2 a.m. on the morning of May 22, 1949, America’s first Secretary of Defense, James Vincent Forrestal, fell to his death from a small window of the 16th floor of the Bethesda Naval Hospital....

Throughout Forrestal’s hospitalization, access to him was severely restricted. One-time visitors were his wife, his two sons, Sidney Souers (a former DCI, NSC executive secretary, and alleged MJ-12 member), Louis Johnson, Truman, and Congressman Lyndon Johnson. Menninger visited twice. Although Forrestal was presumably glad to see his sons, he was not close to any of these visitors, and had a political antipathy to his government colleagues who came by. However, Forrestal was not permitted to see the several people he continually asked to see: his brother, a friend, and two priests....

Father Sheehy had reason to suspect murder. When he arrived at Bethesda Naval Hospital after learning of Forrestal’s death, an experienced-looking hospital corpsman approached him through the crowd. In a low, tense voice he said: "Father, you know Mr. Forrestal didn’t kill himself, don’t you?" Before Sheehy could respond or ask his name, others in the crowd pressed close, and the man quickly departed....

Later inspection found heavy scuff marks outside the window sill and cement work. Proponents of the suicide theory claim these were made by Forrestal’s feet while he was hanging by the neck from the radiator, and perhaps that he belatedly changed his mind and tried to climb back in. But the scuff marks confirm no such thing. They could just as easily have been made by his struggle with someone pushing him out the window.

Frank Olson, 1953: "jumped from building"

Frank Olson and Kurt Blome (who had become a protegé of the Americans) later met at Camp King in Germany in the early 1950s when Olson made several visits there to participate in "Operation Artichoke", in which the U.S. Army and the CIA experimented with the use of drugs (including LSD) in interrogation. Olson was present during brutal interrogations by the Americans of Soviet prisoners and suspected double agents, some of whom died under torture. Olson was deeply disturbed by what he had seen....

In November 1953 Olson attended a meeting of a group of CIA agents at a country retreat where they discussed their work. Olson was suspected by the CIA of being a security risk. He was given a drink laced with LSD and when well under the influence of the drug he was subjected to interrogation using Artichoke techniques, probably a very unpleasant experience.

A week later Olson was staying in Room 1018A at the Hotel Statler in New York City under the supervision of a CIA doctor, Richard Lashbrook. The manager of the hotel, Armond Pastore, heard a thump outside and went out to find Olson dying on the pavement, having fallen from the 13th floor. The manager later found that a phone call had been made from Room 1018A to a number in Long Island and the caller had said only, "Olson's gone."

The CIA maintained that Olson had leapt through the closed window to his death. However, an autopsy conducted forty years later on the exhumed corpse revealed an injury to the skull most likely caused by a blow to the head and no evidence of any cuts to the body from broken glass. It seems that Olson, exactly as recommended in a CIA assassination manual, was struck on the head (possibly while drugged) and thrown from the window to his death thirteen floors below.

John Kokal, 2003: "jumped from building"

WASHINGTON — A State Department (search) employee was found dead outside the agency headquarters in Washington, D.C., Friday around 5 p.m., Fox News has confirmed.

State Department sources told The Washington Post that John Kokal (search) worked in a unit that dealt with intelligence and research. Sources said he handled classified documents regularly....

....the man, a white male, was wearing a dress shirt, tie and slacks, but was not wearing shoes....

Mystery Surrounds Death of State Dept. Official

In a case eerily reminiscent of the death of British Ministry of Defense bio-weapons expert, Dr. David Kelly, an official of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research Near East and South Asian division (INR/NESA), John J. Kokal, 58, was found dead in the late afternoon of November 7. Police indicated he may have jumped from the roof of the State Department. Kokal's body was found at the bottom of a 20 foot window well, 8 floors below the roof of the State Department headquarters near the 23rd and D Street location. Kokal's death was briefly mentioned in a FOX News website story on November 8 but has been virtually overlooked by the major media....

Kokal's INR bureau was at the forefront of confronting claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Washington police have not ruled out homicide as the cause of his death. Kokal was not wearing either a jacket or shoes when his body was found. He lived in Arlington, Virginia....

It would have been impossible for Kokal to have gained entry to the roof on his own. INR occupies both a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) on the sixth floor that has no windows and a windowless structure on the roof that has neither windows nor access to the roof, according to the former official. The other windows at the State Department have been engineered to be shatter proof from terrorist bomb attacks and cannot be opened.

INR and other State Department officials report that a "chill" has set in at the State Department following Kokal's defenestration. A number of employees are afraid to talk about the suspicious death. It also unusual that The Northern Virginia Journal, a local Arlington newspaper, has not published an obituary notice on Kokal.

Gus Weiss, 2003: "jumped from building"

Nashville native Gus Weiss, adviser to 4 presidents, dies

Gus Weiss, a Nashville native who advised four presidents, served on the National Security Council for 16 years and won numerous awards for his foreign policy and intelligence-gathering skills, has died. He was 72.

Mr. Weiss died Tuesday in Washington, D.C. The circumstances surrounding his death could not be confirmed last night.

Friends of Mr. Weiss expressed shock at his death....

"He was wired into the intelligence community, and there were a lot of mystical secrets we weren't privy to," said Harris Gilbert, a Nashville attorney who had been friends with Mr. Weiss since childhood. "He was very interested in diplomatic strategy and was very, very opposed to the Iraq war. It was the first military action he ever opposed, but he believed we shouldn't go to war in the Middle East without knowing what we were getting into."

Gus W. Weiss, 72; White House Adviser

Gus W. Weiss, 72, a former White House policy adviser on technology, intelligence and economic affairs, died Nov. 25 of a fall from the Watergate East residential building in the District. The DC medical examiner ruled his death a suicide.

A spokesman for the D.C. police said that officers found his body at a service entrance to the apartment cooperative. Dr. Weiss lived in the building....

Much of his government work centered on national security, intelligence organizations and concerns over technology transfers to communist countries. As an adviser to the Central Intelligence Agency, he served on the Pentagon's Defense Science Board and the Signals Intelligence Committee of the U.S. Intelligence Board.

During the Carter administration, Dr. Weiss was assistant for space policy to the secretary of defense.

Okay - stumped?

Here's a clue, from the CIA's declassified assassination manual:

Accidents:

For secret assassination, either simple or chase, the contrived accident is the most effective technique. When successfully executed, it causes little excitement and is only casually investigated.

The most efficient accident, in simple assassination, is a fall of 75 feet or more onto a hard surface. Elevator shafts, stair wells, unscreened windows and bridges will serve. Bridge falls into water are not reliable. In simple cases a private meeting with the subject may be arranged at a properly-cased location. The act may be executed by sudden, vigorous [excised] of the ankles, tipping the subject over the edge. If the assassin immediately sets up an outcry, playing the "horrified wit ness", no alibi or surreptitious withdrawal is necessary. In chase cases it will usually be necessary to stun or drug the subject before dropping him. Care is required to insure that no wound or condition not attributable to the fall is discernible after death.

There are many restless ghosts rattling John Ashcroft's cages in the Homeland formerly known as the United States of America. More Americans ought to learn some of their names, and discover the reasons why they were sent to early graves. A reconciliation with the dead marks the beginning of peace for a haunted nation.

But regretably, and not surprisingly, this is not a respectable endeavour, not even among the respectable Left. To admit that the state has been criminalized to such a murderous degree will get you labelled a conspiracy theorist, and before you know it, there goes your endowment from the Ford Foundation.

I'm reminded of David Corn's early and uninformed smear of the 9/11 truth movement. Corn wrote: "to execute the simultaneous destruction of the two towers, a piece of the Pentagon, and four airplanes... is far beyond the skill level of U.S. intelligence. It would require dozens (or scores or hundreds) of individuals to attempt such a scheme."

How respectably foolish is this: 9/11 was "far beyond the skill level of US intelligence," and yet it was not so far beyond the skill level of a cave dweller with bad kidneys and no state sponsorship.

Corn becomes so respectable here, it hurts:

I recall interviewing one former CIA official who helped manage a division that ran the sort of actions listed above, and I asked him whether the CIA had considered "permanently neutralizing" a former CIA man who had revealed operations and the identities of CIA officers. Kill an American citizen? he replied, as if I were crazy to ask. No, no, he added, we could never do that. Yes, in the spy-world some things were beyond the pale. And, he explained, it would be far too perilous, for getting caught in that type of nasty business could threaten your career.

So Corn takes the CIA at its word, body count and assassination manual to the contrary, that No, heaven forfend, we would never kill an American citizen, and thus is his case made against 9/11 complicity: Since the CIA would never kill an American citizen, how much less thousands?

Here's the question: Does the apparatus of the National Security State draw a line at the murder of Americans, regardless of benefit? Corn says yes. And you, Messrs Forrestal, Olson, Kokal and Weiss? Can we see a show of hands?

The comments posted in reply to the foregoing also contribute some interesting details about other such cases where persons of interest appear to have been suicided.

[John Dolva]

"I recall interviewing one former CIA official who helped manage a division that ran the sort of actions listed above, and I asked him whether the CIA had considered "permanently neutralizing" a former CIA man who had revealed operations and the identities of CIA officers. Kill an American citizen? he replied, as if I were crazy to ask. No, no, he added, we could never do that. Yes, in the spy-world some things were beyond the pale. And, he explained, it would be far too perilous, for getting caught in that type of nasty business could threaten your career."

Interesting choice of words.

I've always understood that the killing of citizens inside borders was the task of the local law enforcement/intelligence agencies like the FBI and various state agencies/bodies, directly or contractually.

The CIA is supposed to deal with the foreign. Though they circumvent such things by gathering information on citizens that is gathered outside borders. Perhaps this is passed on to the domestics, I don't know. Anyway, that would be one way of keeping your job.

[John Simkin]

I wonder if E. Grant Stockdale was suicided?

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=943

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKstockdale.htm

[Bill Cheslock]

[Forrestal, fell to his death from a small window of the 16th floor of the Bethesda Naval Hospital....

Later inspection found heavy scuff marks outside the window sill and cement work. Proponents of the suicide theory claim these were made by Forrestal’s feet while he was hanging by the neck from the radiator, and perhaps that he belatedly changed his mind and tried to climb back in. But the scuff marks confirm no such thing. They could just as easily have been made by his struggle with someone pushing him out the window.

A very interesting post, to say the least. I remember talking to a friend who was in

the Navy, and he told me he thought there were two members of the military police

posted INSIDE of Forrestal's hospital room. If true, this makes Forrestal's "suicide"

even more suspicious.

Bill C

[James Richards]

I wonder if E. Grant Stockdale was suicided?

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=943

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKstockdale.htm

It might also be worth pointing out that Stockdale was responsible for introducing the first anti-Ku Klux Klan legislation in a southern state.

FWIW.

James

[Lee Forman]

Add James Hicks - who managed to survive, if his account is valid.

http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/garr...y/pdf/Hicks.pdf

[John Simkin]

It might also be worth pointing out that Stockdale was responsible for introducing the first anti-Ku Klux Klan legislation in a southern state.

True but that was in the late 1940s while a member of the Florida State House of Representatives. I doubt if that was a factor in his death in 1963. The KKK were always anti-Catholic. Do you know if Stockdale was a Catholic?

[James Richards]

It might also be worth pointing out that Stockdale was responsible for introducing the first anti-Ku Klux Klan legislation in a southern state.

True but that was in the late 1940s while a member of the Florida State House of Representatives. I doubt if that was a factor in his death in 1963. The KKK were always anti-Catholic. Do you know if Stockdale was a Catholic?

I don't think it was a factor in his death either but background doesn't hurt. Stockdale was also responsible for getting women on juries. That may have been a factor. Just kidding...

I don't know if he was a Catholic or not.

James

[John Simkin]

Stockdale was also responsible for getting women on juries. That may have been a factor. Just kidding...

I suspect it was George Smathers who moved Stockdale to the right with his dodgy business deals.

[Shanet Clark]

Stockdale was also responsible for getting women on juries. That may have been a factor. Just kidding...

I suspect it was George Smathers who moved Stockdale to the right with his dodgy business deals.

Thank You for Identifying KOKAL, who fell from Foggy Bottom

[Antti Hynonen]

Robert Charles-Dunne Posted Apr 14 2006, 12:07 PM

James Forrestal, 1949: "jumped from building"

At around 2 a.m. on the morning of May 22, 1949, America’s first Secretary of Defense, James Vincent Forrestal, fell to his death from a small window of the 16th floor of the Bethesda Naval Hospital....

The Bethesda Naval Hospital and Medical School seem to be popular places to commit suicide. Refrence to Lt. CMDR Pitzer's death.....

[Jim Feemster]

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Wasn' there a southwestrn bell employee that fell from a building right after the assassination?

Seems like I remember something about that.

Also, a fellow in Florida.

Jin Feemster