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Lyndon repaid Jenkins' devotion with expressions of the highest regard. Talking with reporters one night not long ago, the President buzzed for Jenkins, said warmly as Walter trotted in with a worn folder full of political polls: "He's always here. He's the best man I've got." With his rather heavy humor, the President called Jenkins "the Pope," in reference to Jenkins' Catholicism. Once, standing beside the swimming pool at the L.B.J. ranch, the President confided: "I had this pool put in just for the Pope's kids."
But Johnson is a hard taskmaster, and in recent months friends noticed that the pressures seemed to weigh heavily on Jenkins. He grew increasingly nervous, last January was told by his doctor to lighten his load because of dangerously high blood pressure. He ignored the advice, kept working hard for Johnson. And the work always seemed to be piling up. After one lengthy meeting with the President, Jenkins rushed back to his desk, found 43 telephone calls waiting to be answered.
Two Peepholes. On Oct. 7, the evening of his arrest, Jenkins went to a party given by Newsweek magazine to celebrate its move into a new office, 1½ blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. Jenkins was in good spirits. He had one or two highballs, chatted about his family, particularly nine-year-old Lyndon and his newspaper route. President Johnson, who usually discourages his men from attending cocktail parties, was away that night, barnstorming in Iowa and Illinois. Soon after 8 p.m., Jenkins left, ostensibly for the White House.
But Jenkins took a detour, headed instead for the Y.M.C.A. on G Street. Meanwhile, two plainclothes members of the Washington morals squad, Privates Lamonte P. Drouillard and R. L. Graham, walked through the front door of the "Y" into the lobby, then descended to the basement men's room. A 9-ft. by 11-ft. spot reeking of disinfectant and stale cigars, the room is a notorious hangout for deviates. During one five-hour period earlier this year, police arrested eight homosexuals there, including two college professors and several Government workers.
The two cops entered the room, walked past two adjoining pay toilets and up four narrow steps leading to a shower room that has been padlocked for ten years.
Drouillard and Graham had a key to the lock. They entered the shower room and stationed themselves at two peepholes in the door that gave them a view of the washroom and enabled them to peep over the toilet partitions. (There are two peepholes in this and several other washrooms in the area because two corroborating officers are required in such cases.) On that night the cops spotted Jenkins in a pay toilet with Andy Choka, 60, a Hungarian-born veteran of the U.S. Army who lives in Washington's Soldiers' Home. Jenkins' back partly obstructed the detectives' view, but they figured they had seen enough to arrest the two men for a misdemeanor, if not for a more serious morals rap.