Billie Sol Estes, and the Kennedy investigations:

[Josephh Amato]

Best known for a business scandal that sent him to jail for fraud multiple times and complicated by his ties to friend and future U.S. President Lyndon Johnson...In 1962, after information came to light that Estes had paid off four Agriculture officials for grain storage contracts, President John F. Kennedy ordered FBI agents be assigned to investigate Estes and the Justice Department also conducted an investigation which concluded that Orville L. Freeman, then Secretary of Agriculture, was "untainted". Thereafter, Congress held hearings into this matter and other Estes activities including some that led to Vice President Johnson, who had been a business associate of Estes. Some historians say the vice president tried to help Estes with questionable dealings with the Agriculture Department after the storage tank fraud had been exposed. Others noted that Kennedy may have considered dropping Johnson from his ticket in 1964, partly because of the Johnson-Estes connection. Attorney General Robert Kennedy did have FBI director J. Edgar Hoover assign agents to investigate Estes in relation to the ties to Johnson. Hoover reported that they were unable to find any hard evidence as to the allegations against Johnson in his dealings with Estes...Kennedy assassination allegations:Estes also alleged in the 1980s that he had inside knowledge that Johnson was involved in the assassination of Kennedy. In 1984, he provided a voluntary statement to a Grand Jury in Texas alleging that the homicide of a key investigator in the Department of Agriculture case was perpetrated by an aide to Johnson, Malcolm Wallace, upon orders from the then-Vice President. When the Department of Justice asked for more information, Estes responded that he would provide information on eight other murders ordered by Johnson, including the assassination of Kennedy, in exchange for immunity from prosecution and a pardon. According to Estes, Johnson set up the assassination in order to become president. They refused...