Walter Wilson Jenkins (March 23, 1918 – November 23, 1985) was an American political figure and longtime top aide to U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson.

[12][13] Within hours, Clifford detailed the evidence to the President and press secretary George Reedy, who while "openly weeping,"[14] confirmed the story to reporters.

He knew that J. Edgar Hoover would have to clear the administration of any security problem because the FBI itself would otherwise be at fault for failing to investigate Jenkins properly years before.

Johnson immediately ordered a poll to determine the public's reaction to the affair and learned the next day that its effect on the voters was negligible.

[16][17][20] The President announced that only he would contact the press about the incident, but his wife, Lady Bird Johnson, issued her own statement of support for Jenkins.

One columnist wrote on October 15, "Walter Jenkins has revived and dramatized all the harsh feelings about morals, and political cliques, and the Texas gang in Washington.

[23] Johnson's Republican opponent in the 1964 presidential election, Barry Goldwater, knew Jenkins from the Senate and from serving as commanding officer of his Air Force Reserve unit, but initially denied knowing him.

Although it fit well with the charges he had been making about the lack of morality in Johnson's administration, those referred to Bobby Baker and Billie Sol Estes.

[30] On October 15, James Reston gave some support to Johnson by confirming that "President Eisenhower was embarrassed by a comparable morals charge against one of his first appointees of his first Administration.

"[22] On October 19, Drew Pearson in his "Washington Merry-go-round" column recounted the 1959 events with greater detail and named Arthur H. Vandenberg, Jr. as the Eisenhower appointee who "had homosexuality problems and could not pass a security test.

[32][33] On October 29, 1964, leading clergymen, including Francis B. Sayre, Jr. of Washington National Cathedral, United Presbyterian Church Leader Eugene Carson Blake, Methodist Bishop John Wesley Lord, American Hebrew Congregations President Maurice Eisendrauth, and theologians Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr, issued a letter commenting on the Jenkins affair: "We see the Jenkins episode as a case of human weakness.

If there is a security factor involved, let that be dealt with on its own terms and let it not serve chiefly as an excuse for dwelling on this one episode to cater to the prurient curiosity or to the self-righteousness of part of the public.

"[34] After the election, the American Mental Health Foundation wrote a letter to Johnson protesting about the "hysteria" surrounding the case:[35] The private life and inclinations of a citizen, Government employee or not, does not necessarily have any bearing on his capacities, usefulness, and sense of responsibility in his occupation.

[38] Johnson's White House Press Secretary George Reedy told an interviewer: "A great deal of the president's difficulties can be traced to the fact that Walter had to leave.

Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark said that Jenkins' resignation "deprived the president of the single most effective and trusted aide that he had.

[39] After leaving Washington, Jenkins returned to Texas and lived the rest of his life in Austin, where he worked as a Certified Public Accountant and management consultant and ran a construction company.

Canadian playwright Steven Elliott Jackson wrote a play that stages an imaginary meeting and one-night-stand between Jenkins and civil rights activist Bayard Rustin called The Seat Next to the King.