Robert T. Lincoln (son of Abraham) was Secretary of War; William H. Hunt was Secreary of the Navy. (There was no secretary of defense at that time. )
Robert Smith and James Monroe
Before James Buchanan became president he was a lawyer and James Polk's secretary of state.
Thomas Jefferson appointed Madison to this position .
He served as US Secretary of State and as the President of the United States.
Forrestal was the very first Secretary of Defense, under Harry Truman.
James V. Forrestal became the first Secretary of Defense in 1947. He served for two years and then committed suicide.
The first Secretary of Defense of the United States was James Forrestal. He was previously Secretary of the Navy before the creation of a consolidated Department of Defense.
James V. Forrestal
James V. Forrestal was the first Secretary of Defense. Forrestal was previously the Secretary of the Navy until the Department of Defense came in to being when president Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947. On September 18, 1947, the Department of War was divided into the Department of the Army and the Department of the Air Force, both of which joined the Department of the Navy as part of the new National Military Establishment (NME)--changed to Department of Defense in 1949, in part because the acronmy sounds like the word "enemy."
America's first defense secretary, James V. Forrestal, went out a 16th floor window of the Bethesda Naval Hospital in the early morning of May 22, 1949. The official investigation of his death did not reach any conclusion as to what caused his fall from the window. It concluded only that he died from the fall and that no one in the Navy was responsible for his fall. It provided no explanation for the bathrobe belt that was tied around his neck. He was wearing only his pajamas. The controversy surrounding his death is discussed in detail on the James Forrestal Wikipedia site.
James Forrestal's birth name is James Vincent Forrestal.
The first US Secretary of Defense was James Vincent Forrestal. He served the office from September 17, 1947 until March 28, 1949.
James Forrestal is 5' 9".
James Forrestal was born on February 15, 1892.
No U.S. Defense Secretary has been a U.S. President to date, but one, Dick Cheney, has been a U.S. Vice President. Two U.S. Presidents had been U.S. Secretary of War. The War Department became part of the Defense Department in 1947. The two were James Monroe and William Howard Taft.
Robert T. Lincoln (son of Abraham) was Secretary of War; William H. Hunt was Secreary of the Navy. (There was no secretary of defense at that time. )