During the East Texas oil boom, Byrd rented office space in the Gregg Hotel in Longview and secretly bought out the Gregg Abstract Company. He then hired seventy-two typists from Dallas and assigned each of them to a volume of the county abstracts. With his control of lease information thus secured, and with an office set up in the courthouse yard, Byrd could force anyone who wanted to verify a lease to consult him; he could also get service to anyone he was dealing with by the end of the day or pay cash for any lease that he wanted to acquire. He comments in his autobiography, "At one time I owned 34,000 acres, but... ended up owning 15,000 in partnership with Gulf, Humble, and Atlantic Oil Companies, with whom I drilled about 5,000 wells.... Needless to say I became an overnight millionaire."

For rendering meritorious service to the United States Air Force from Dec. 1941 to April, 1960. Motivated by a strong sense of patriotism, Mr. Byrd played a major part in the successful operation of the Texas Wing, Civil Air Patrol, throughout World War II. After the war he assisted in the incorporation of the Civil Air Patrol and its designation as an Auxiliary of the Air Force. Mr. Byrd helped initiate the International Air Cadet Exchange and worked closely with the Air Cadet League of Canada. The many scholarships established or supported by Mr. Byrd have aided countless cadets in the attainment of additional training and higher education. His contributions of material and personal aircraft to the use of Civil Air Patrol materially aided in the performance of its mission.. The distinctive accomplishments of Mr. Byrd have earned for him the sincere gratitude of the United States Air Force.

Byrd prepared well for the trip: Temco, Inc. was an aircraft company founded by D.H. Byrd and which later merged with his friend James Ling's electronics company (1960), and aircraft manufacturer Chance Vought Corporation (1961) to form Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV). Byrd became a director of LTV and bought, along with Ling, 132,000 shares of LTV in November 1963. Byrd then left the country to go on his two-month safari in central Africa. He returned in January to find his good friend Lyndon Johnson president of the United States, his building famous, and a large defense contract awarded to LTV to build fighter planes - to be paid for out of the 1965 budget which had not yet been approved by Congress.

Mac Wallace, who received a five-year suspended sentence in the shooting death of John Douglas Kiner in Austin on October 22, 1951, went to work for Temco, Inc. of Garland, Texas five months after his trial. He remained in that position until February 1961, four months before Henry Marshall's mysterious death on June 3, 1961, when he transferred to the Anaheim, California offices of LTV.

The transfer required a background check by the Navy. "The most intriguing part of the Wallace case was how a convicted murderer was able to get a job with defense contractors. Better yet, how was he able to get a security clearance? Clinton Peoples [the Texas Ranger Captain who investigated the Marshall and Kiner murders] reported that when the original security clearance was granted, he asked the Naval intelligence officer handling the case how such a person could get the clearance. 'Politics,' the man replied. When Peoples asked who would have that much power, the simple answer was, `the vice president,' who at the time was Lyndon Johnson. Years later, after the story broke [of Billie Sol Estes' March 20, 1984 testimony that implicated Lyndon Johnson, Malcom Wallace, and Clifton Carter in the death of Henry Marshall], that investigator could not recall the conversation with Peoples but he did say no one forced him to write a favorable report. He also added that he wasn't the one that made the decision to grant the clearance. The whole matter might have been solved with a peek at that original report but unfortunately, when the files were checked, that particular report was suspiciously missing. It has never been seen since."

Wallace was transferred and given clearance in February 1961. "In January 1961, the very month Johnson was sworn in as vice president, and the month Henry Marshall was in Dallas discussing how to combat Estes-like scams, Billie Sol Estes learned through his contacts that the USDA was investigating the allotment scheme and that Henry Marshall might end up testifying. The situation was supposedly discussed by Estes, Johnson, and Carter in the backyard of LBJ's Washington home. Johnson was, according to Estes, alarmed that if Marshall started talking it might result in an investigation that would implicate the vice president. At first it was decided to have Marshall transferred to Washington, but when told Marshall had already refused such a relocation, LBJ, according to Estes, said simply, 'Then we'll have to get rid of him.'"

According to Craig Zirbel, author of The Texas Connection, in May 1962, "...Johnson flew to Dallas aboard a military jet to privately meet with Estes and his lawyers on a plane parked away from the terminal.... This incident would probably have remained secret except that LBJ's plane suffered a mishap in landing at Dallas. When investigative reporters attempted to obtain the tower records for the flight mishap the records were "sealed by government order."

Still more LTV intrigues were revealed by Peter Dale Scott: "A fellow-director of [Jack Alston] Crichton's firm of Dorchester Gas Producing was D.H. Byrd, an oil associate of Sid Richardson and Clint Murchison, and the LTV director who teamed up with James Ling to buy 132,000 shares of LTV in November 1963. While waiting to be sworn in as President in Dallas on November 22, Johnson spoke by telephone with J.W. Bullion, a member of the Dallas law firm (Thompson, Wright, Knight, and Simmons) which had the legal account for Dorchester Gas Producing and was represented on its board. The senior partner of the law firm, Dwight L. Simmons, had until 1960 sat on the board of Chance Vought Aircraft, a predecessor of Ling-Temco-Vought. One week after the assassination, Johnson named Bullion, who has been described as his `business friend and lawyer,' to be one of the two trustees handling the affairs of the former LBJ Co. while its owner was President."

Another important Johnson friendship was in the construction business. This special relationship actually started in 1937 with Brown & Root, the contractors who built the dams needed for LCRA in central Texas. During the war, the company would expand mightily for the war effort as military bases were built everywhere in Texas. After the war, from his new position in the Senate reviewing waste and then preparedness, Johnson was in the middle of the armed forces and the military-industrial complex. George Brown and brother Herman Brown remained good friends of Johnson throughout his long political career. Like old money, these old friends were there from beginning to end. Wonder kids from the start, they stayed friends and prospered.

There was another important class of supporters who had entered Johnson's sphere of friends before the 1948 Senate election. This group included the Ling story, but it was more accurately the Murchison story and Big Oil in what was then high-tech business. During the 1950s as money flowed to Big Oil, the huge sums had to be invested somewhere. Construction was a key attraction and major investments went into building, from readymix plants to highways and bridges to high-rises. Murchison and his Big Oil friends had the excess profits needed, called "burn money." Like throwing cash in an incinerator, this was the unexpected cash. They used it to invest in apparently hopeless ventures or into business they knew little or nothing about.

D. H. Byrd attracted their interest because he experimented in airplanes and rockets, important keys to the military industrial complex in the late 1950s. A member of Big Oil, D. H. "Dry Hole" Byrd was well known for his lack of success in the oil business. Finally, when the east Texas field was developed, he bought into it and became wealthy. Through him, the foundations were laid for the military-industrial complex that centered on LTV. With the money flowing everywhere, D. H. Byrd had enough extra to purchase the building that later housed the Texas School Book Depository.' There were notable success stories. John Connally advanced into the Governor's Mansion. Clint Murchison and his Big Oil friends all became the new billionaires and Dallas became Big D. Old friends George and Herman Brown benefited with military construction during the war. After the war they moved into oil. As one example, they helped convert the Big Inch and Little Inch, the emergency wartime oil pipelines, into Texas Eastern and its natural gas pipelines.