The Jenkins Report

From the FBI last week came a report of its findings in the Walter Jenkins case. The bureau said it had interviewed more than 500 persons in its crash investigation, undertaken on orders from President Johnson, and had examined the life of the former White House aide from his Texas boyhood right up to the moment he was last arrested in a Washington Y.M.C.A. washroom. But beyond a flat statement that Jenkins had not been "framed" or "entrapped" (as some of Jenkins' most powerful friends continue to insist), the FBI report said little that was not already known (TIME, Oct. 23) or purely conjectural.

Items from the report:

> In an interview with the FBI on Oct. 18, Jenkins "admitted having engaged in the indecent acts for which he was arrested in 1959 and 1964. He claimed that he had been 'enticed' by the arresting officer on the former occasion and that his mind was befuddled by fatigue, alcohol, physical illness and lack of food the latter time."

> "Mr. Jenkins further advised that he did not recall any further indecent acts, and if he had been involved in any such acts, he would have been under the influence of alcohol and in a state of fatigue and would not remember them."

> Neither Jenkins nor Andy Choka, the U.S. Army veteran arrested with Jenkins at the Y.M.C.A. "knew the identity of the other, nor had either gone to the basement men's room of the Y.M.C.A. by prearrangement."

> "Mr. Jenkins stated that no attempt had ever been made to compromise or blackmail him. He also told the FBI he would lay down his life before he would disclose any information that would damage the best interests of the United States."

> "Neither President Kennedy, the White House staff nor Mr. Johnson had any knowledge of the 1959 incident or any reason to suspect its existence. When he assumed office as President in November, Mr. Johnson still did not know of the January 1959 arrest."

That was far from the end of the Jenkins case and its repercussions. At week's end came two new pieces of information. A story in the Chicago Tribune, belatedly confirmed by the FBI, reported that in 1961 Jenkins had "fought like the devil" to reinstate an Air Force officer who had been forced to resign his commission after being accused of making obscene phone calls to the wife of an Air Force enlisted man. The Tribune reported that after tapping the woman's phone and hearing a sampling of the conversations, Government investigators accused the officer of "unnatural sex acts."

And, under reporters' questioning, the Pentagon admitted that Walter Jenkins' security clearance to top-secret Air Force and Defense Department information and his Atomic Energy Commission top-secret "Q" clearance have been suspended.

The FBI report was by any accounting a curious one. It seemed all the more curious in the light of an episode that took place the very day President Johnson ordered the investigation. To the George Washington University Hospital, where Walter Jenkins is confined in a room guarded by private attendants and with a "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door, came a bouquet of mixed fall flowers. With it came a card signed "J. Edgar Hoover and Associates." There was some doubt about just who those "associates" might be. But there was no doubt about Hoover, who with a waiver from Johnson will continue as FBI chief after reaching the mandatory retirement age of 70 next Jan. 1.

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