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"Walter Jenkins has worked with me faithfully for 25 years," it said. "No man I know has given more personal dedication, devotion and tireless labor. Until late yesterday, no information or report of any kind to me has ever raised a question with respect to his personal conduct." While expressing "deepest compassion for him and for his wife and six children," Johnson added that "on this case, as on any such case, the public interest comes before all personal feelings."
Johnson also ordered the FBI to assign 50 to 100 men "to make an immediate and comprehensive inquiry and report promptly to me and the American people." He instructed Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon to look into security procedures of the Secret Service, an arm of his department. And the Central Intelligence Agency quietly began probing the possibility that the Jenkins case might involve foreign espionage through blackmail.
"Q" Clearance. There was plenty to investigate, since there had obviously been serious security lapses. Before his first arrest in 1959, Jenkins had at least two security checks. In 1956 the Air Force gave him top-secret clearance in connection with his reserve status; he is a colonel in Capitol Hill's 9,999th Air Reserve Squadron, whose commander, of all people, is Reserve Major General Barry Goldwater. Two years later, the
Atomic Energy Commission asked the FBI to run a full field investigation because Jenkins would be handling atomic data in connection with L.B.J.'s work with the Senate Preparedness subcommittee. At that time, Jenkins was given a top-secret "Q" clearance, an AEC classification.
A few months later, on Jan. 15, 1959, Jenkins was arrested for loitering in the same Y.M.C.A. washroom where he was nabbed two weeks ago. At first he was booked on an open charge, photographed and fingerprinted. Inspector Roy E. Blick, then head of the morals division, quizzed Jenkins for 31 hours, finally learned he was a top aide to Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson. He allowed Jenkins to list his occupation as "unemployed," apparently because he had previously run into trouble in cases involving important people. Blick, now retired, said last week that he had been "leary of talking to the Hill" because he had been "burned" in the past.
A duplicate card with Jenkins' prints was sent to the FBI the next day as a matter of routine; the agency receives some 23,000 such cards a day from all over the U.S. On that card, Jenkins was listed as "unemployed," and the charge was listed only as "investigation —suspicious person," the standard notation used by police for a misdemeanor of that sort until they decide on a more precise charge.
Later, the police listed the charge on the blotter, in black ink, as "disorderly conduct." Still later, in a different hand in blue ink, the word "pervert" was added in parentheses.