Sol Estes, a longtime Johnson crony, used Johnson's influence to trade cotton-growing rights on his submerged "land" for growing rights on arable lands. The Department of Agriculture investigator assigned to look into the matter, Henry Marshall, was found shot to death on June 3, 1961 in Franklin, Texas. The local Justice of the Peace, another Johnson crony, found that, officially, Marshall had committed suicide...by shooting himself in the head 5 times with a bolt-action rifle!! (and you LHO as the lone gunman was absurd. Estes until just recently refused to talk about the entire affair, thus keeping Johnson insulated. Estes served 15 years in prison and within a year of his release in 1983, he testified before a grand jury re-investigating Marshall's murder. According to a 1999 interview with a French magazine, Estes said that he implicated Johnson in both Marshall's death and John F Kennedy's assassination. Marshall's death has been re-classified as a murder and, at this time, is unsolved.
The TFX fighter contract scandal of 1962:
This one, for a new fighter for the Navy, was right out of the movie The Pentagon Wars. The multi-billion dollar contract was awarded to General Dynamics of Ft Worth. The problem was that the plane they developed was not carrier capable, thus making it somewhat less than useful to the Navy. It eventually became the F-111 "Aardvark", after an extremely lengthy and expensive gestation period. The original contract was "won" because of the arm-twisting of Johnson friends and fellow Texans, then Secretary of the Navy John B Connally, and his successor Fred Korth, both of who were appointed by Vice-President Johnson. Korth was eventually forced to resign, in November, 1963, when General Dynamics was found to have falsified the data it submitted on the carrier capabilities of the aircraft. This time it was Korth who kept his mouth shut and Johnson again skated through by the skin of his teeth. Connally resigned to run for governor of Texas prior to the scandal being in the public domain.
The Bobbie Baker scandal of 1963:
Baker was Johnson's right-hand man while serving as Secretary to the Senate Majority Leader, Johnson's position prior to becoming Vice-President. When Baker's influence and sex peddling became known in September, 1963, it did not take a genius to see where the investigation was going to lead when the Senate Rules Committee announced:
"We are starting with the Bobbie Baker case...where it spreads from there we don't know."
Johnson removed himself from Washington and stayed out of the limelight, cowering on his ranch until Kennedys fateful Texas trip began. No doubt he saw his political life about to dissolve and faced the possibility of a prison sentence. He also knew that any last chance of cajoling Kennedy to keep him on the ticket for 1964 evaporated with the first mention of Baker's name. Even if he avoided jail his political aspirations appeared doomed.