WASHINGTON – Longtime Hollywood lobbyist Jack Valenti was among the Washington figures whose sex lives were secretly investigated by the FBI in the 1960s.
Valenti, who died in April 2007, was a special assistant and confidant to President Lyndon Johnson in 1964, when J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI investigated rumors that he was gay, the Washington Post reported yesterday, based on agency files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
Valenti had been married to Johnson’s personal secretary for two years at the time. But he was suspected of having a gay relationship with a commercial photographer friend.
When the FBI initially reported its suspicions to Johnson, the president defended his top aide as “all right.”
Bill Moyers, an LBJ aide now best known as a liberal television commentator, was also described in the files as seeking information on the sexual preferences of White House staff members.