Using primarily information provided in the Navy's official investigation of the death of America's first Secretary of Defense, which had been kept secret for 55 years, The Assassination of James Forrestal thoroughly demolishes the widely believed view that Forrestal's fall from a 16th-floor window of the Bethesda Naval Hospital on May 22, 1949, was an act of suicide. The official report, in fact, did not conclude that Forrestal committed suicide. It concluded only that the fall caused his death and that no one in the U.S. Navy was responsible for it. A major reason why the suicide thesis is still widely believed is that the news of the release of the official report, which the author obtained through the Freedom of Information Act in 2004, has been effectively suppressed. Building upon what he has long made available on his DCDave.com web site, and in the manner of his 2018 book, The Martyrdom of Thomas Merton: An Investigation, co-authored with Hugh Turley, David Martin breaks through the wall of silence and misinformation. This meticulous examination of the violent death of the leading government critic of American support for the creation of the state of Israel is vital to an understanding of U.S. and world history since the mid-20th century.

A haunting portrait of one of the most fascinating and influential figures of the mid-twentieth century, this biography takes a penetrating look at James Forrestal's life and work. Brilliant, ambitious, glamorous, yet a perpetual outsider, Forrestal forged a career that took him from his working-class origins to the social and financial stratosphere of Wall Street, and from there to policy making in Washington. As secretary of the navy during World War II, he was the principal architect in transforming an obsolescent navy into the largest, most formidable naval force in history. After the war, as the nation's first secretary of defense, he played a major role in shaping the anti-Communist consensus that sustained the U.S. policy of containment during the Cold War. Despite his many achievements, Forrestal's life ended in tragedy with his suicide in 1949. This absorbing study not only takes an understanding look at the many-sided man but presents an authoritative history of the great but troubled years of America's rise to world primacy. Winner of the 1992 Roosevelt Naval History Prize, the book enjoyed wide acclaim when first published and is now considered a definitive work.

James Vincent Forrestal (1892-1949) was the last Cabinet-level United States Secretary of the Navy and the first United States Secretary of Defense. These fascinating diaries begin in 1944 shortly after James Forrestal became Secretary of the Navy, and end with his resignation in March 1949 as America’s first Secretary of Defense. Blunt and forceful, Forrestal reveals the American strategy that he helped shape with verve. Expertly edited by seasoned historian Walter Millis, the American high command as is seen in a rare light as the Second World War finishes and the Cold War begins and gathers pace.

In the case of the conviction and imprisonment of Captain Alfred Dreyfus on false espionage charges in late-19th century France, the initially small number of people who doubted the government and the press and worked for justice for Captain Dreyfus were known as "Dreyfusards." Doubt about the official version of the story of how President Bill Clinton's deputy White House Counsel Vincent W. Foster, Jr., died was also confined to a few individuals in the early days, at least among those who would speak up. By the terminology borrowed from France, David Martin was an original "Dreyfusard." In time, he was joined by people with a higher profile, but after Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's team rendered its long-delayed opinion that the original "suicide" judgment had been correct, most of them dropped by the wayside. Martin, who as a senior at Davidson College was secretary of the Young Democrats Club of which Foster was a member, persisted, following the case into the controversy surrounding candidate Donald Trump's expressed suspicions about Foster's death in the 2016 presidential campaign and beyond. In a certain sense, this book may be regarded as the memoir of a Washington, DC, "Dreyfusard" insider. Eventually, justice would prevail in the Dreyfus case. Demonstrating the same sort of incisive analysis that he showed in The Assassination of James Forrestal and The Martyrdom of Thomas Merton, written with Hugh Turley, Martin makes a persuasive case that justice is yet to be done in the case of Vince Foster's death. A major reason for the difference, Martin explains, is that the press and the ruling establishment of the United States have been much more monolithic on the side of injustice than were those institutions in France at the turn of the 20th century. This book is destined to be the definitive reference work for anyone interested in this high-level murder mystery, as Martin fashions it, while, at the same time, it reveals a great deal about the nature of the controlling power of the United States at the turn of the 21st century.

Murder, He Wrote… … And he wrote the true story. Investigative and military reporter Robert Wilcox unravels the mystery surrounding the death of one of history’s preeminent war heroes: George S. Patton. Wilcox cries foul play and reveals the shocking truth behind Old Blood and Guts' untimely demise in Target: Patton—the Plot to Assassinate General George S. Patton. Conflicting testimony, disappearing witnesses, missing official reports, a suspicious Stalin, and a lack of autopsy comprise the greatest unsolved mystery of World War II. Find out "whodunit" in this thrilling account of America's most famous general.

Seldom can one predict that a book will have an effect on history, but this is such a work. Merton's many biographers and the American press now say unanimously that he died from accidental electrocution. From a careful examination of the official record, including crime scene photographs that the authors have found that the investigating police in Thailand never saw, and from reading the letters of witnesses, they have discovered that the accidental electrocution conclusion is totally false. The widely repeated story that Merton had taken a shower and was therefore wet when he touched a lethal faulty fan was made up several years after the event and is completely contradicted by the evidence. Hugh Turley and David Martin identify four individuals as the primary promoters of the false accidental electrocution narrative. Another person, they show, should have been treated as a murder suspect. The most likely suspect in plotting Merton's murder, a man who was a much stronger force for peace than most people realize, they identify as the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States government. Thomas Merton was the most important Roman Catholic spiritual and anti-warfare-state writer of the 20th century. To date, he has been the subject of 28 biographies and numerous other books. Remarkably, up to now no one has looked critically at the mysterious circumstances surrounding his sudden death in Thailand. From its publication date in the 50th anniversary of his death, into the foreseeable future, this carefully researched work will be the definitive, authoritative book on how Thomas Merton died.

On solving history's greatest murder mystery.

The press called him a "real-life James Bond." Fidel Castro called him "the most dangerous CIA agent." History remembers him as a Watergate burglar, yet the Watergate break-in was his least perilous mission. Frank Sturgis--using more than 30 aliases and code names--trained guerilla armies in 12 countries on three continents and spearheaded assassination plots to overthrow foreign governments including those of Cuba, Panama, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti. Warrior follows the shocking, often unbelievable adventures of Sturgis, brought to life by his nephew, Jim Hunt, who lived with Sturgis, and his co-writer, Bob Risch. Also included are never-before-seen personal photos of Sturgis and his compatriots. Frank Sturgis was well-versed in a life of shadows: familiar to world leaders and underground kingpins, to spies and couterspies...Warrior is his story. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

A Cold War mystery in which PI Nathan Heller is hired by the U.S. secretary of defense who is the target of a conspiracy by Communists within the federal government. The secretary wants to know who is involved.