This may clear up the Aerogel matter.
THE ESTES DOCUMENTS
In 1961, Henry Marshall was found shot to death on his remote Texas
farm. He had been shot five times with a .22 caliber rifle and,
since the rifle was lying beside his body, the coroner had no problem
coming up with the probable scenario: Suicide. The only problem was
the type of rifle - it was a bolt-action, and in non-shooter lay
man's terms, this simply meant that Marshall would had to have
manually worked the bolt four times (up, back, forward, down,
fire - up, back, forward, down, fire, etc.) in order to shoot himself.
At the same time he would have had to turn the rifle around at an
awkward angle, pointing it into his side, stretching his arm and
squeezing off each shot with his thumb. Five times. In addition to
the obvious difficulties for a man to have committed suicide in this
fashion, were the outcries of Marshall's family, who fervently
disagreed with the suicide verdict. There appeared to be no good
reason for Marshall, a successful farmer, with money in the bank
and a solid record with his employer, the U. S. Department of
Agriculture, to have committed suicide. But despite the strange
appearance of things, the cause of death was officially listed as
suicide by gunshot.
Things started to change a few months later when Secretary of
Agriculture, Orville Freeman, released information pertaining to
an investigation that Marshall had been participating in at the
time of his death.
Billie Sol Estes, now known as the Texas wheeler-dealer and
con-man supreme was, in 1961, at the peak of his agricultural
career. He had become a multimillionaire and a virtual icon in
Pecos, Texas. His success was due, in great part, by his solid
connections in government - and one of his primary connections
was Vice President Lyndon Johnson. Things started to fall apart
when Estes' cotton allotment scheme began to be scrutinized by
Agriculture officials. Estes had master minded a bizarre method
of having the government transfer other farmer's cotton
allotments to his own cotton acreage. In this way all of his
land could be used to grow the tightly regulated crop. Such a
scheme would have been impossible without help from high
officials, either inside the U.S.D.A., or Washington, or both.
Henry Marshall, in reviewing the cotton allotment irregularities
connected with Billy Sol Estes, evidently uncovered a warm path
that led to Vice President Johnson, but also to his own untimely
death.
Billie Sol went to trial and then prison, never once breathing
the name of Lyndon Johnson - until his release in 1984. A Texas
Ranger, Clint Peoples, had befriended Estes and convinced him that
he should come clean with the whole truth. True to his word, Estes
agreed to appear before a Robertson County grand jury and clear the
record concerning the cotton allotments, the death of Henry
Marshall and the involvement of LBJ and others.
He recounted the whole ugly picture - from the millions he had
funnelled into Johnson's secret slush fund, to the illegal cotton
allotment scheme, to the murder of Henry Marshall. Estes testified
that Lyndon Johnson, Cliff Carter, Malcolm Wallace and himself met
several times to discuss the issue of the "loose cannon" - Henry
Marshall. Marshall had refused a LBJ-arranged promotion to
Washington headquarters, and it was feared that he was about to
talk. Johnson, according to Estes finally said, "Get rid of him,"
and Malcolm "Mac" Wallace was given the assignment. According to
testimony, Wallace followed Marshall to a remote area of his farm
and beat him nearly unconscious.
Then while trying to asphyxiate him with exhaust from Marshall's
pickup truck, Wallace thought he heard someone approaching the
scene, and hastily grabbed a rifle which customarily rested in
the window rack of the truck. Quickly pumping five shots into
Marshall's body, Wallace fled the scene. Suicide.
That 1984 grand jury testimony accomplished only one official
action. Marshall's death certificate was finally changed to
read: "Cause of death - murder by gunshot." All of the guilty
participants were dead - Johnson, Carter and Wallace. The only
one left was Estes, and the U. S. Justice Department, getting
wind of the Robertson grand jury testimony, wanted to talk to
him.
A letter was sent to Estes, requesting a meeting with him to
discuss the provocative charges he had made. Estes enlisted the
legal services of Douglas Caddy to represent him in the matter.
Caddy then wrote a letter to the Justice Department asking for
the protection of immunity, among other things for his client.
In his letter, Caddy outlined far more than the Justice Dept.
had bargained for. In addition to the crimes Estes had
testified to for the Robertson County grand jury, Estes listed
seven more murders directly linked to Lyndon Johnson, one of
them being that of President John F. Kennedy; and all of them
at the hand of Malcolm Wallace.
After many months of negotiating at the highest levels of
the Justice Department, Estes refused to testify to federal
officials regarding the details of these crimes of the 1960's.
We are still awaiting the day when Billie Sol, now 71, will
testify to these details.
A few months after the November, 1995 release of our book:
"THE MEN ON THE SIXTH FLOOR," I received two of these letters
of negotiation, from two different sources. The content of these
letters was startling. These letters have never been released
to the public and since they are private negotiations between
the Justice Department and a citizen, it is doubtful that they
ever would have been released, even to the Assassination Records
Revue Board, whose federally mandated job it is to examine and
oversee the release of documents pertaining to the assassination
of President Kennedy.
Here, for the first time, is the complete text of these two
letters. They will be added to future printings of "THE MEN ON
THE SIXTH FLOOR."
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