an army psychiatrist dealt with him.@s8
He was flown back to Washington, locked in Walter Reed Army Hospital and given insulin shock
treatments for alleged `` mental exhaustion. '' He was denied all visitors except his estranged wife
and children--his son had been Averell Harriman's aide in Moscow. On May 22, James Forrestal's
body was found, his bathrobe cord tied tightly around his neck, after he had plunged from a
sixteenth-story hospital window. The chief psychiatrist called the death a suicide even before anyinvestigation was started. The results of the Army's inquest were kept secret. Forrestal's diaries were (^)
published, 80 percent deleted, after a year of direct government censorship and rewriting.
North Korean troops invaded South Korea in June 1950, after U.S. Secretary of State Dean
Acheson (Harriman's very close friend) publa new war on, Harriman came back to serve as President Truman's adviser, to oveicly specified that Korea would not be defended. Withrsee national security affairs. '' Harriman replaced Clark Clifford, who had been special counsel to Truman. Clifford, however, remained close to Harriman and his partners as they gained more and more power. Clifford laterwrote about his cordial relations with Prescott Bush: Prescott Bush ... had become one of my frequent golfing partners in the fifties, and I had both liked and respected him.... Bush had a splendid singing voice, and particularly loved quartet singing. In the fifties, he organized a quartet that included my daughter Joyce.... They would sing in Washington, and, on oc[George], though, had never struck me as a strong or forccasion, he invited the group to Hobe Sound in Florida to perform. His soneful person. In 1988, he presented himself (^) successfully to the voters as an outsider--no small trick for a man whose roots wound through Connecticut, Yale, Texas oil, the CIA, a patrician background, wealth, and the Vice- Presidency.@s9 With James Forrestal out of the way, Averell Harriman and Dean Acheson drove to Leesburg, Virginia, on July 1, 1950, to hire the British-backed U.S. Gen. George C. Marshall as Secretary of Defense. At the same time, Prescott's partner, Robert Lovett, himself became Assistant Secretary of Defense. Lovett, Marshall, Harriman and Acheson went to work to unhorse Gen. Douglas MacArthur, commander of U.S. forces in Asia. MacArthur kept Wall Street's intelligence agencies away from his command, and favored real independence for the non-white nations. Lovett called for MacArthur's firing on March 23, 1951, citing MacArthur's insistence on defeating the Communist Chinese invaders in Korea. MacArthur's famous message, that there was no substitute for victory,'' was read in Congress on April 5; MacArthur was fired on April 10, 1951.
That September, Robert Lovett replaced Marshall as Secretary of Defense. Meanwhile, Harriman
was named director of the Mutual Security Agency, making him the U.S. chief of the Anglo-
American military alliance. By nowChief. , Brown Brothers Harriman was everything but Commander-in-
These were, of course exciting times for the Bush family, whose wagon was hitched to the financial
gods of Olympus--to Jupiter, that is.
Brown Brothers Harriman & Co.59 Wall Street, New York 5, N.Y.
Business Established 1818
Cable Address ``Shipley-New York''
Private Bankers
April 2, 1951