User:Caulde/Michael Forrestal

Michael V. Forrestal (1928 – January 11, 1989) was one of the leading aides to McGeorge Bundy, the National Security Advisor of President John F. Kennedy during the mid–latter stages of the Vietnam Conflict (1959 – April 30, 1975). He was seen as a pivotal figure in the changing of US foreign policy; by which, means he approved the coup d'état which deposed the first President of South Vietnam, Ngô Ðình Diệm.

Following the arrest and assassination of Diệm which was backed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), General Dương Văn Minh was led to the incumbency of President of South Vietnam in November 1963. This event and the John F. Kennedy assassination which occurred later in the month, led Forrestal to eventual retirement from government service in 1965 – speculated to be because of his decreasing influence in the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson, who had replaced Kennedy in December of that year.

Other than his political life, Forrestal was a senior partner in Shearman & Sterling and a legal adviser to the state-owned Algerian oil company, Sonatrach during the 1970s. Forrestal also had roles in the National Security Council, the German-based Allied Control Council and the U.S.-U.S.S.R. Trade and Economic Council from 1978–80.

Early life
Forrestal was born in New York City in 1928 to James & Josephine Forrestal; his father later becoming the first United States Secretary of Defense of 1947, whose inauguration ceremony had taken place earlier than scheduled. At the age of 18, he received a naval commission after graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy, an independent boarding school in Boston, Massachusetts in 1946. His naval commission meant he was appointed an assistant naval attaché in Moscow under Ambassador Averill Harriman. He later attended Princeton University for a brief period of time, before later going on to read law at Harvard University for 4 years until 1953. This qualification enabled him to gain entrance into Shearman & Sterling, later becoming a partner seven years later in 1960.