Walter Jenkins (Special Assistant to President Johnson 1963-1964)
“Johnson has long feared that the Goldwater campaign would pin some calumny on him in the last weeks of the [1964 Presidential]campaign. Now his nightmare seems to be coming to pass. Abe Fortas, his personal lawyer, troubleshooter, and confidant, calls to break the news that late on October 7, his closest aide, Walter Jenkins, whom LBJ once called “my vice president in charge of everything”, was arrested in a pay toilet stall in the basement men’s room of the YMCA a few blocks from the White House while performing oral sex on another man. Jenkins had forfeited fifty dollars in collateral and returned to work without telling the President what had happened. But now the news is spreading through Washington. [Jenkins resigned on Oct. 14, 1964 …] Terrified that the Jenkins scandal would damage his national popularity, LBJ had asked his private pollster, Oliver Quayle, to conduct a flash poll on its impact. Quayle reported that Americans did not seem to care. Johnson also enjoyed some luck. Within forty-eight hours of the Jenkins revelation, the press and the nation were distracted by the first Chinese nuclear test, Nikita Khrushchev’s ouster as Soviet leader, and the defeat of the British Conservative government, not to mention the World Series. […] Goldwater did not stress the issue. Privately he told reporters, “What a way to win an election – Communists and cocksuckers!” Johnson felt he had another fire wall against the Jenkins scandal. He confided to [FBI Assistant Director] Deke DeLoach that, from his Air Force Reserve service with Goldwater, Jenkins had learned of Goldwater’s use of prostitutes and a paternity suit by a Houston woman. An opponent with such weaknesses in his own private life was unlikely to encourage a war of all against all.” (Michael Beschloss, Reaching for Glory [New York 2001], p. 55 e.v.)