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Malcolm Wallace Part 2


Larry Hancock

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William, I think the real issue may be the word "investigation". Agricultural allotments are regulated by law and if you use false

information to obtain them (or exaggerate the size of your claim) you are subject to penalties and fines as well as the loss

of your allocations. And that can have a major financial impact since your allocations go with the land and have an impact on

its valuation and even leasing rights. Certainly Marshall was not a criminal investigator in the classic sense but if you

have your allocations challenged (and living in wheat and cotton country and having a history with them I can say this from

personal experience) you would certainly feel like you were being investigated - and there can be a number of sources for charges

that allocations are questionable.

Certainly Marshall would have done a very limited investigation, checking ownership and leasing rights and making sure that all the

filings were in place to ensure that Estes did have legal rights to the allocations he was claiming. That sort of investigation

is very much paperwork and records oriented.

In 1960 Marshall was asked to investigate the activities of Billie Sol Estes. Marshall discovered that over a two year period, Estes had purchased 3,200 acres of cotton allotments from 116 different farmers. Marshall wrote to his superiors in Washington on 31st August, 1960, that: "The regulations should be strengthened to support our disapproval of every case (of allotment transfers)".

I'm sorry but it's just plain wrong. Marshall was not an investigator and he never did any kind of investigation on BSE. I know that this story is wide spread but the facts and the files do not support it. Quite a contrary.

Over the next few months Marshall had meetings with eleven county committees in Texas. He pointed out that Billie Sol Estes scheme to buy cotton allotments were illegal. This information was then communicated to those farmers who had been sold their cotton allotments to Billie Sol Enterprises.

Marshall's job was to approve or not cotton allotments and he did change his position several times. Few days after his meetings, he wrote a memo stating that the deals were legitimate. And few days before his death, he did approve some allotments on Billie's behalf.

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Laurent, that's a great question and I agree with your thoughts on the "mastermind" issue as my friend Phil knows.

Walt Brown did not unearth the prints, that was done by a former Dallas Police reserve officer and the story is an extended one. Walt was part of the team which took the story public and has become associated with it but people like Richard Bartholemew were also involved. I wish someone would do an update on the whole matter - its not nearly as clear as it seemed at the beginning. One of the issues seems to be that the first fingerprint expert to do the ID appears not to have found a match until told of certain injuries to Wallace's hand - which of course adds a real issue of subjectivity. And of course the whole issue of human print matching is being called more and more into question - recently in a blind test several experts were embarrassed by not matching print sets which they had in earlier criminal cases and now those convictions are being challenged.

At one time I was very excited by the Wallace matches but time has not seemed to make the story stronger...still perhaps it is but if so then Walt Brown or someone else needs to take up the challenge and move forward with it. I wonder if William might be in a position to give us an update on the fingerprint issue?

While I have little doubt that Johnson was aware of the plot in advance and agreed to cover it up, I cannot believe he masterminded it, as Philipp Nelson claims. I came to wonder whether that LBJ thesis recently pushed forward could not stem from an ultimate effort to mislead the public away from the true culprits, just like the original lone nut theory. Since the testimonies of people like Billy Sol Estes or Barr McClellan obviously cannot be trusted, I am suspecting that the miraculous discovery of Wallace's fingerprint in 1998 is a fraud. That fingerprint could have been planted to blackmail LBJ into closing the investigation, as John Simkin has suggested. But I can hardly imagine someone pressing a box on Wallace's finger then speedily and carefully sending it to the Book Depository. If it was planted, it must have been planted directly into the FBI files. But then, why not in 1998 rather than in 1963? How did Walt Brown, a "former special agent of the Justice Department", unearthed that gem? Has anyone looked critically into this "magic fingerprint"?

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Here is a idea. If Mr Estes mind is still sound this could be asked of him. Mr Estes here is what we could do. Would you please write down everything you know about the JFK assassination. All parties involved dates, places, and any other info.

This info will be left with a lawyer with orders untill you pass away it will remain under seal and when you do pass then it will be release. In this way there will be no reprises against you. In case If you feel that it could happen.

I think he is still one of the few that may have info on this.

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Mark, its an interesting idea but here are some of the related problems. Technically speaking Estes has already done that multiple times. William Reymond could tell you far more than I but even before William worked with him, Estes had provided elements of his "true" story to the Justice department and offered an iron clad witness who could confirm the conspiracy information related by Cliff Carter. Of course Estes backed out of a deal Justice was offering to pursue that... Then William worked with him and ultimately William published a book which contained the true story of Estes. OK, fine. And the witness earlier mentioned was named and I have seen a video of him certifying exactly what Estes first claimed to Justice. But - then a bit later, Estes, apparently unsatisfied with the lack of royalties from an English version of William's book, brought in a young man to do some writing, added a lot of really juicy stuff that nobody had been told before (secret meetings in Dallas, etc). And in doing that book he recanted portions of his earlier statements and totally disavowed the eyewitness he had first offered and who has confirmed the Cliff Carter meetings and revelations. I'm sure William could tell all this better than I - up to the point that Estes "final" version came out in print we at least at a pretty consistent scenario and even an independent witness; at this point in time if Estes did exactly what you suggest its hard to say what he would write but equally hard to it tell if it were true or possibly just one final effort to make some money for his family (the problem we have with Howard Hunt's final "confession").

Here is a idea. If Mr Estes mind is still sound this could be asked of him. Mr Estes here is what we could do. Would you please write down everything you know about the JFK assassination. All parties involved dates, places, and any other info.

This info will be left with a lawyer with orders untill you pass away it will remain under seal and when you do pass then it will be release. In this way there will be no reprises against you. In case If you feel that it could happen.

I think he is still one of the few that may have info on this.

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