The present danger which this country faces is at least as great as the danger which we faced during the war with Germany and Japan. Briefly stated, it is the very real danger that this country, as we know it, may cease to exist.

If Forrestal's according to some intelligence sources then he could not scribble the word "nightingale" in the poem because it was the code name of the Ukrainian Nazi elite unit Nachtigall Brigade which Forrestal had helped to smuggle to the United States to supplant Kim Philby's failed ABN (Anti BolJames Forrestalvik Nationals) an MI6 Soviet émigré fascist group. Returning to Washington D. Menninger of the Menninger Clinic in Kansas was consulted and he diagnosed "severe depression" of the type "seen in operational fatigue during the war".

The conclusions noted only that Forrestal "died following a fall" and that the fall caused his death. On May 22 1949 he was found dead on the roof of a covered walkway below the window of a kitchen across the hall from his 16th floor room at the National Naval Medical Center (NNMC commonly known as the Bethesda Naval Hospital) a bathrobe sash knotted tightly around his neck. Forrestal was hospitalized on April 2 1949.