Will the Lid Stay Clamped?

After a five-month run that saw more backstage bickering than onstage performance, the Senate Rules Committee last week ended its investigation of Bobby Baker. The committee's three-member G.O.P. minority was furious. Cried Pennsylvania's Senator Hugh Scott: "The minority has been shot down by the majority!" Thirteen times the six-member Democratic majority voted against calling before the committee particular witnesses the Republicans wanted to question.

Chief among these witnesses was White House Aide Walter Jenkins, who seemed to have an immunity from, as well as an aversion to, being questioned. During the Baker hearings, Jenkins was first mentioned by Witness Don Reynolds, a Silver Spring, Md., insurance broker who shared commissions with Baker. Reynolds told the committee that in 1957, when he was trying to sell Lyndon Johnson, then Senate majority leader, a $100,000 life insurance policy, Jenkins had put the arm on him to buy $1,208 of advertising time on Lady Bird Johnson's TV station in Texas. In a written statement to the committee, Jenkins said he "had no knowledge" of the transaction.

More recently, Jenkins' name cropped up again. According to an affidavit by Reynolds, Jenkins badgered him last year for a cash kickback on a second $100,000 policy that Reynolds sold to Johnson after Johnson became Vice President. Jenkins told him, Reynolds said, that the money should be given to Bobby Baker, who "would bring it in."

Unscratched Itch. Republican committee members were just itching to question Jenkins--but the Democrats refused to scratch. "It wasn't necessary to call Jenkins," insisted North Carolina's Democratic Senator B. Everett Jordan, the Rules Committee chairman. "We had his affidavit. There's no conflict. There's nothing to get excited about."

Jenkins himself was not about to testify voluntarily. Indeed, so reticent is he about any public exposure that around the White House he is almost a recluse. Jenkins, 46, refuses to grant interviews, rarely permits himself to be photographed, even though he is a Government employee with tax-paid salary (the amount of which both he and the White House decline to divulge). The son of a Jolly, Texas, farmer, he landed on Johnson's staff in 1939, two years after Johnson was first elected to Congress. Except for Army service in World War II, and a brief and unsuccessful venture into Texas congressional politics in 1951, Jenkins has devoted his adult life to serving Johnson. He is among the President's most trusted aides, functions as a sort of chief of staff, handling personnel, answering mail, and making minor decisions, all with quiet, unflappable dedication. Jenkins is a convert to Catholicism, has six children, including--like Bobby Baker--a son named Lyndon.

Pent-Up Odor. Obviously fearful that to call Jenkins before the Rules Committee might be to embarrass seriously the Democratic Administration, the Democrats voted down the Republican effort. In so doing, they chose to clamp down a lid on the official investigation of Bobby Baker rather than let it run its full course. Conceivably, there could be nothing more to it than was already known. But in putting on a lid, the Democrats were running a risk; if that lid ever blew off, the pent-up odor could be overpowering.

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