Larry Hancock suggested that the theme of this conference might be a much neglected-issue faced by writers on the Kennedy assassination: What constitutes reliable evidence? How do we recognize it? How then do we interpret its meaning? Would the evidence we present be acceptable in a court of law?
When is historical evidence even stronger than information emerging at a trial? In the case of the book I am writing about Mac Wallace, and no project presented more evidentiary problems to me than the story of Mac Wallace – I had to raise this question: does someone’s having sworn to tell the truth before a grand jury mean that what he said was reliable? Did it constitute evidence? What if this were your only witness?
When the accusations that he had been Lyndon Johnson’s hit man were made, Mac Wallace had been dead for thirteen years. Should historians have taken the charges leveled against him seriously?
I’m talking about self-described Texas wheeler-dealer and con man Billie Sol Estes, who is the source and the only source that I could discover, for the claim that Mac Wallace had been a hit man, henchman, and serial killer under the command of Lyndon Johnson, first as a U.S. Senator, and then as a Vice-President, and then as President.