Walter Jenkins

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Walter Jenkins

Walter Wilson Jenkins (March 23, 1918 - November 23, 1985) was a long-time top aide to United States President Lyndon B. Johnson. A notorious sexual scandal shortly before the 1964 presidential election ended his career.

A native of Jolly, Texas, Jenkins spent his childhood in Wichita Falls, Texas and attended the University of Texas. He began working for fellow Texan Johnson in 1939, when Johnson was a United States Representative. For most of the next 25 years, Jenkins served as Johnson's top administrative assistant, as Johnson rose from Representative to Senator to Vice-President of the United States to President of the United States. From 1941 until 1945, he served in the United States Army. After his discharge, he married Marjorie Whitehill. In 1951, he returned to Wichita Falls to run for Congress. Jenkins was attacked for having converted to Roman Catholicism when he married Marjorie and lost the election.

Johnson's former aides have generally credited much of Johnson's political success to Jenkins. In 1975 journalist Bill Moyers, a former Johnson aide and press secretary, wrote in Newsweek, "When they came to canonize political aides, [Jenkins] will be the first summoned, for no man ever negotiated the shark-infested waters of the Potomac with more decency or charity or came out on the other side with his integrity less shaken. If Lyndon Johnson owed everything to one human being other than Lady Bird, he owed it to Walter Jenkins." Joseph Califano wrote, "Jenkins was the nicest White House aide I ever met in any administration. He was never overbearing. It was quite remarkable."

His career with Johnson ended in October 1964, when Washington, DC police arrested Jenkins during a homosexual liaison at a YMCA and a reporter at the Washington Star learned of the incident. Johnson applied considerable pressure on the newspaper not to print the story and recruited his personal lawyer, Abe Fortas, to lobby the newspaper's editor. However, the story eventually appeared in the Star and Jenkins was forced to resign.

The arrest raised questions about whether Jenkins had been blackmailed. At this time gay men and lesbians were automatically denied clearance. Johnson's opponent in the 1964 presidential election, Barry Goldwater, who knew Jenkins from the Senate and served as commanding officer of his Air Force Reserve unit, chose not to make the incident a campaign issue. "It was a sad time for Jenkins' wife and children, and I was not about to add to their private sorrow," Goldwater later wrote in his autobiography. "Winning isn't everything. Some things, like loyalty to friends or lasting principle, are more important." Jenkins arrest was quickly overshadowed by international affairs -- the People's Republic of China successfully tested its first nuclear device and the politburo of the USSR overthrew Nikita Khrushchev.

Members of Congress called for the FBI to carry out an investigation into the case, citing concerns that the FBI had been unaware of Jenkins previous offence in the same Washington toilet six years earlier. Tapes of Johnson's Oval Office telephone calls later revealed that the President had orchestrated the FBI report that cleared Jenkins of any suspicions that he had compromised national security. However, investigations did reveal that Jenkins, a colonel in the Air Force Reserve, had tried to use his influence to reinstate a fellow officer dismissed for sex offences.

Johnson did not replace Jenkins, but instead divided his responsibilities among several staff members. "A great deal of the president's difficulties can be traced to the fact that Walter had to leave," Johnson's press secretary, George Reedy, once told an interviewer. "All of history might have been different if it hadn't been for that episode." Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark suggested that Jenkins' resignation "deprived the president of the single most effective and trusted aide that he had. The results would be enormous when the president came into his hard times. Walter's counsel on Vietnam might have been extremely helpful."

After leaving Washington, Jenkins worked as a certified public accountant and management consultant. He ran a construction company in Austin, Texas. He remained a friend of the Johnson family.