Michael Forrestal

Biography Forrestal was born in New York City on November 26, 1927, to James Forrestal and Josephine Forrestal. His father served as Secretary of the Navy before becoming the first Secretary of Defense in 1947.

In 1946 Michael Forrestal graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy. He received a commission in the United States Navy, and was appointed an assistant naval attaché in Moscow under W. Averell Harriman, the Ambassador to the Soviet Union. He later served as secretary of the Quadripartite Naval Directorate, part of the post-World War II Allied Control Council that administered Berlin. From 1948 to 1950 he was deputy director of the East-West Trade Division of the U.S. European Cooperation Administration.

Forrestal attended Princeton University as a member of the class of 1949, then completed his LL.B. degree at Harvard Law School in 1953. Kennedy asked them to "wait until Monday" when all the key figures would be in Washington, but Forrestal said that Harriman and Hilsman wanted to get the cable "out right away".

Cable 243 called for Lodge to lobby for the removal from influence of Diem's younger brother and chief political adviser Ngo Dinh Nhu, and to look for alternative leadership options if Diem refused. As it was known that Diem would never sideline Nhu, it was effectively an authorisation for Lodge to encourage a military coup.

The decision to authorise the cable prompted significant infighting in the administration at the Monday morning meeting on August 26. Kennedy was met with angry comments by Rusk, McNamara, McCone and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Maxwell Taylor, all of whom denied authorizing the cable. Taylor condemned the cable as an "egregious end run" by an anti-Diem faction. and accused them of pulling "a fast one".

Forrestal was a longtime trustee of Phillips Exeter Academy and served as the board's president. In addition, he was a longtime patron of the Metropolitan Opera, and was a member of the Metropolitan Opera Association's executive committee.

Personal life and death Forrestal died on January 11, 1989, in New York City at the age of 61. He experienced a brain aneurysm while presiding over a meeting of the executive committee of the Metropolitan Opera Association at Lincoln Center. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital Center, where he was pronounced dead. A memorial service was held at St. Thomas Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue. He was buried in the Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia near the graves of his parents and his brother Peter. He neither married nor had any children.