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In on Everything. When, in 1961, Jenkins needed a White House pass, the Protective Research Section of the Secret Service fingerprinted him and sent a copy to the FBI for a check. Sure enough, the bureau turned up his old record, told the Secret Service about his having been arrested in 1959 on the vague charge of "investigation—suspicious person." As the Secret Service tells it, nobody checked further with the police about the arrest because it was only a misdemeanor and because Jenkins already had a "Q" clearance. According to all present accounts, nobody told Johnson about his aide's 1959 arrest. Jenkins got his White House pass.
Ten days after John Kennedy's assassination, a White House staff member phoned the CIA and requested immediate top-security clearance for four Johnson men who would be "in on everything"—Bill Moyers, Jack Valenti, George Reedy, and Walter Jenkins. The CIA, responsible for such clearances whenever intelligence documents are involved, suggested a full FBI field investigation for all four.
Such FBI field investigations were required by Dwight Eisenhower for all his presidential assistants. One check eliminated a possible appointee to Ike's personal staff on the ground of perversion just before Eisenhower's inauguration. Kennedy, in his turn, ran checks on some aides, but not all. But in 1963, when the CIA suggested field investigations on Johnson Aides Moyers, Valenti, Reedy and Jenkins, there was a long, hostile silence on the White House end of the phone. The CIA, lacking legal authority to require investigations of presidential staffers, had no alternative but to give the four men top clearance.
Unquenchable Penchant. Though a preliminary, unpublicized check by the CIA has unearthed no evidence that either Jenkins or Choka was involved in anything worse than what they were caught at, it is axiomatic that sexual deviates are vulnerable to blackmail. Walter Jenkins could at any time have laid his hands on the most closely guarded secrets of the U.S., including the workings of the most advanced nuclear weapons. Any questions now to be asked of Jenkins, however, may take some time to be answered. In his dark, 8-ft.-square room on the hospital's second floor, he is under partial sedation and almost constant surveillance.
The Jenkins case raised new doubts about the effectiveness of U.S. security agencies. Are the FBI and the Secret Service, recently rebuked by the Warren Commission for their sloppy work before the Kennedy assassination, once again guilty of grave inefficiency? Should the CIA or any other security agency be denied the authority to check out White House staffers who handle the nation's top secrets? Just what kind of atmosphere prevails in Washington when local police would rather let a case rest than risk getting "burned" by Government officials or Congressmen?
One characteristic of Lyndon Johnson familiar to all Washington is his unquenchable penchant for intimate knowledge and gossip about everyone of importance in the capital. Was this one case where cops and security agencies—and who knows who else—were simply afraid to tell him about his aide?