Fahrney told Keyhoe that “we’re years from anything like the saucers’ performance. And if we ever do match them, nobody’d be crazy enough to test the things near cities or along airways.”33
In early May 1949, while the air force debunked, the 4th U.S. Army approached AFOSI in San Antonio to offer assistance in investigating the green fireballs. The army actually insisted on participating, even after the initial response was no. On May 5, the 4th Army arranged a meeting with personnel from AFOSI, ONI, Army Counterintelligence Corps (CIC), the FBI, and the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project (AFSWP). The meeting took place at Camp Hood, and was the first of a planned series of weekly meetings to discuss the fireballs. At that meeting, army and navy representatives agreed that they remained unexplained and were a legitimate source of “grave concern.” AFSWP people believed the fireballs to be natural phenomena; AFOSI and FBI gave no opinion. The 4th Army pressed for a formal observation system, and in fact had just created one secretly.34
The attitude taken publicly by the air force about UFOs continued to be the opposite of the private attitudes prevalent in every other service. Following Shallett’s article, and amid the near-complete inactivity of Project Grudge, UFO sightings suddenly jumped sharply. Air Force Headquarters claimed that the recent publicity was to blame and issued a press release saying that UFOs were nothing but mass hysteria and misidentification of natural phenomena.35
THE DEATH OF JAMES FORRESTAL
The decline and death of James Forrestal remains an unresolved problem of history. That Forrestal suffered from a spectacular mental breakdown through 1948 and 1949 is undisputed. The reasons are less clear, but with possible relevance to this study.
Throughout 1948, Forrestal locked horns with Air Force Secretary Stuart Symington over defense spending. Truman demanded an impossibly balanced budget, and Forrestal’s job was to keep the services in line. He could not do this and, to some degree, would not. The result was the erosion of Truman’s confidence. It may not have mattered to Forrestal: like most of the country, he assumed Truman’s political career was over and that by the end of the year a Republican, probably Thomas Dewey, would be in the White House.
But Forrestal, not Truman, was the doomed man. His relationship with Symington went from bad to worse. For reasons still unclear, Symington “embarked upon a kind of personal guerrilla warfare” against the Secretary of Defense. Throughout the fall and winter of 1948, Forrestal’s mental health, physical condition, and authority as Secretary of Defense deteriorated. When Truman shocked the world in November by winning the presidential election, Forrestal had still not obtained a budget consensus from the Joint Chiefs. Friends commented on his growing paranoia. He was convinced that “foreign-looking men” were following him and that Symington was spying on him. Forrestal’s belief eventually came to the attention of Truman and Secret Service Chief U. E. Baughman, who decided that Forrestal was suffering from “a total psychotic breakdown.”
On January 11, 1949, Truman informed Forrestal that Louis Johnson would soon be replacing him as Secretary of Defense. By now, Symington and Attorney General Tom Clark were feeding stories to journalist Drew Pearson, in particular that Forrestal complained of “being followed by Jews or Zionist agents.” Forrestal accused Clark of having the FBI shadow him, which Clark denied, but which could well have been true. Forrestal finally left office in a formal ceremony on March 28, his last public appearance.
What followed after the ceremony remains mysterious. “There is something I would like to talk to you about,” Symington told Forrestal, and accompanied him privately during the ride back to the Pentagon. What Symington said is not known, but Forrestal emerged from the ride deeply upset, even traumatized, upon arrival at his office. Friends of Forrestal implied that Symington said something that “shattered Forrestal’s last remaining defenses.” When someone entered Forrestal’s office several hours later, the former Secretary of Defense did not notice. Instead, he sat rigidly at his desk, staring at the bare wall, incoherent, repeating the sentence, “you are a loyal fellow,” for several hours.
