10 The Solari Report / 2018 Annual Wrap Up / Part Two II. Prologue: Wall Street (August 1978– April 1989) “This game is more fascinating than no-limit stud poker.” ~ Clarence Dillon O ne of the things I learned working on Wall Street was about the dangers of working for the federal government. I describe one story in my online book Dillon Read & Co., Inc. & the Aristocracy of Stock Profits: James Forrestal’s oil portrait always hung prominently in one of the private Dil- lon Read dining rooms for the eleven years that I worked at the firm. Forrestal, a highly regarded Dillon partner and President of the firm, had gone to Washing- ton, D.C. in 1940 to lead the Navy during WWII and then played a critical role in creating the National Security Act of 1947. He then became Secretary of War (later termed Secretary of Defense) in September 1947 and served until March 28, 1949. Given the central banking-warfare investment model that rules our planet, it was appropriate that Dillon partners at various times led both the Trea- sury Department and the Defense Department. Shortly after resigning from government, Forrestal died falling out of a window of the Bethesda Naval Hospital outside of Washington, D.C. on May 22, 1949. There is some controversy around the official explanation of his death—ruled a suicide. Some insist he had a nervous breakdown. Some say that he was opposed to the creation of the state of Israel. Others say that he argued for transparency and accountability in government, and against the provisions instituted at this time to create a secret “black budget.” He lost and was pretty upset about it—and the loss was a violent one. Since the professional killers who operate inside the Washington beltway have numerous techniques to get perfectly sane people to kill themselves, I am not sure it makes a big difference. Approximately a month later, the CIA Act of 1949 was passed. The Act created the CIA and endowed it with the statutory authority that became one of the chief components of financing the “black” budget—the power to claw monies from other agencies for the benefit of secretly funding the intelligence communities and their corporate contractors. This was to turn out to be a devastating development for the forces of transparency, without which there can be no rule of law, free markets or democracy. I studied Forrestal’s oil painting with his solemn stare during many a private lunch—each time reminded that government service was an important duty and honor in the Dillon tradition, but it was a dangerous business. Congressional Committees had roughed up Clarence Dillon during the Pecora Commission hearings in 1933 that investigated the cause of the stock market crash. Forrest- al had died. Douglas Dillon was Secretary of the Treasury when Kennedy was assassinated. The partners’ entrance to Dillon Read’s offices on Wall Street at 46 William Street. (Courtesy Robert Gambee and his book Wall Street)