In their column in the Sunday Herald Tribune, the Alsop brothers weighed in on the controversy between the Army and the Navy over the proposed merger of the services. At this time the two branches each had their own cabinet secretaries and duplicated many services.
According to the columnists, the Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal and Admiral Chester Nimitz had gone far in offering a compromise solution but War Department Secretary Robert Patterson and General Eisenhower had turned them down, confident that with Truman's support they would get a better deal out of Congress. Eisenhower said he thought the Navy proposal would not put a stop to bickering between the the military branches.
The Alsops also declared that the plan for an American Secret Service was stalled and denounced “one of the stupidest exhibitions of Congressional red-baiting on record” launched against Colonel McCormack who headed the State Department unit.
The Navy compromise prevailed. Forrestal, who had pushed for it, soon discovered it tied his hands when he became the first Secretary of Defense. Forrestal was strongly anti-Soviet and wanted more resources devoted to countering the threat. He was also a critic of Zionism. His positions led columnists Drew Pearson, an advocate of a more conciliatory approach to the Soviet Union, and Walter Winchell, a strong supporter of Israel, to attack him regularly with innuendo and rumor about his mental health in their columns and radio shows. Truman asked for his resignation in 1949. That year, while hospitalized for depression and post traumatic stress, he jumped to his death from a window. Some conspiracy theorists blamed the Soviet secret service for his death. Others accused the Israelis after the British uncovered an Israeli assassination attempt on the British foreign secretary. It also could have been caused by the insulin shock treatment he had been receiving. Patterson, who had turned down the cabinet post, died in a crash of an American Airlines flight in 1952.