Уолтер Дженкинс: Падение помощника президента Джонсона.

American political figure

Walter Wilson Jenkins (March 23, 1918 – November 23, 1985) was an American political figure and longtime top aide to U. S. President Lyndon B. Johnson. Jenkins' career ended after he was arrested and charged with "disorderly conduct" with another man in a public restroom in Washington, D. C. The incident happened weeks before the 1964 presidential election, in an era in which homosexual behavior was widely condemned.

Jenkins was born in Jolly, Texas, and spent his childhood in Wichita Falls, Texas. There he attended Hardin Junior College and then spent two years at the University of Texas, though he did not earn a degree. In 1945, following his discharge from the Army, he converted to Roman Catholicism and married Helen Marjorie Whitehill. By the 1960s, Jenkins was more Johnson's friend than employee, close to Lady Bird Johnson and involved in their family finances as well. The Johnsons celebrated Lady Bird's fifty first birthday at a party at Jenkins' home in December 1963.

A month before the 1964 presidential election, on October 7, District of Columbia Police arrested Jenkins in a YMCA restroom. He and another man were booked on a disorderly conduct charge, an incident described as "perhaps the most famous tearoom arrest in America." He paid a $50 fine. Rumors of the incident circulated for several days, and Republican Party operatives helped to promote it to the press. Some newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune and the Cincinnati Enquirer, refused to run the story. Journalists quickly learned that Jenkins had been arrested on a similar charge in 1959, which made it much harder to explain away as the result of overwork or, as one journalist wrote, "combat fatigue." Finally, on October 14, a Washington Star editor called the White House for Jenkins' comment on a story it was preparing. Jenkins turned to White House lawyers Abe Fortas, the President's personal lawyer, and Clark Clifford, who unofficially was filling the role of White House Counsel. They immediately lobbied the editors of Washington's three newspapers not to run the story, which only confirmed its significance. Within hours, Clifford detailed the evidence to the President and press secretary George Reedy, who while "openly weeping," confirmed the story to reporters. Probably forewarned, Johnson told Fortas that Jenkins needed to resign. Anticipating the charge that Jenkins might have been blackmailed, Johnson immediately ordered an FBI investigation. He knew that J. Edgar Hoover would have to clear the administration of any security problem because the FBI itself would otherwise be at fault for failing to investigate Jenkins properly years before. Hoover reported on October 22 that security had not been compromised. Johnson later said: "I couldn't have been more shocked about Walter Jenkins if I'd heard that Lady Bird had tried to kill the Pope." He also fed conspiracy theories that Jenkins had been framed. He claimed that before his arrest Jenkins had attended a cocktail party where the waiters came from the Republican National Committee, though the party was hosted by Newsweek to celebrate the opening of its new offices. The Star printed the story and UPI transmitted its version on October 14. Jenkins resigned the same day. Johnson immediately ordered a poll to determine the public's reaction to the affair and learned the next day that its effect on the voters was negligible. The President announced that only he would contact the press about the incident, but his wife, Lady Bird Johnson, issued her own statement of support for Jenkins.

The incident embarrassed the administration but had little impact on the campaign in which Johnson led his opponent by large margins. One columnist wrote on October 15, "Walter Jenkins has revived and dramatized all the harsh feelings about morals, and political cliques, and the Texas gang in Washington." Johnson's Republican opponent in the 1964 presidential election, Barry Goldwater, knew Jenkins from the Senate and from serving as commanding officer of his Air Force Reserve unit, but initially denied knowing him. He did not comment on the incident while campaigning. Although it fit well with the charges he had been making about the lack of morality in Johnson's administration, those referred to Bobby Baker and Billie Sol Estes. Instead, since FBI agents had just questioned him about Jenkins, he publicly asked Hoover to explain why Jenkins had not undergone a rigorous security check before joining the White House staff. Goldwater's campaign offices distributed bumper stickers and buttons bearing slogans such as, "LBJLIGHT BULB JENKINS: NO WONDER HE TURNED THE LIGHTS OUT" and "ALL THE WAY WITH LBJ, BUT DON'T GO NEAR THE YMCA". During the remainder of the campaign Goldwater occasionally alluded to the scandal. In speeches, he referred to Johnson's "curious crew who would run the country" to the knowing amusement of his audience. At the time, observers noted the difference between the way Goldwater alluded to the scandal and the way the Republican National Committee and Goldwater's running mate, William E. Miller, used it to exploit "popular fears." Goldwater later said he 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," he wrote in his autobiography. "Winning isn't everything. Some things, like loyalty to friends or lasting principle, are more important." Johnson mentioned the affair in general terms while campaigning. In Pittsburgh, on October 27, he told a crowd that in government "unfortunate things" happen and people "disappoint" you. Some "make mistakes" and need to resign and there need to be impartial investigations. Members of Congress called for an FBI investigation of the case, citing concerns that the FBI had been unaware of Jenkins' previous offense in the same Washington men's room in January 1959.

Johnson appointed Bill Moyers to succeed Walter Jenkins. Johnson's White House Press Secretary George Reedy told an interviewer: "A great deal of the president's difficulties can be traced to the fact that Walter had to leave. All of history might have been different if it hadn't been for that episode." Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark said 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 returned to Texas and lived the rest of his life in Austin, where he worked as a Certified Public Accountant and management consultant and ran a construction company. He died in 1985, at the age of 67, a few months after suffering a stroke. A made for television film, Vanished, loosely based on the Jenkins resignation, aired in 1971. The Tony award winning play, All the Way, and its television adaptation, about President Lyndon Johnson's first year in office from the Kennedy assassination on November 22, 1963, through the 1964 election on November 3, both depict the 1964 scandal involving Jenkins. In the film adaptation, Jenkins is portrayed by Todd Weeks. Canadian playwright Steven Elliott Jackson wrote a play that stages an imaginary meeting and one night stand between Jenkins and civil rights activist Bayard Rustin called The Seat Next to the King. Directed by Tanisha Taitt and starring Conor Ling as Jenkins (along with Kwaku Okyere as Rustin), the play won the award for Best New Play at the 2017 Toronto Fringe Festival.

Lyndon B. Johnson: The Presidential Recordings, 6 vols. (New York: Norton, 2005)