Pierre Salinger, JFK press secretary, 79
Posted: Sunday, October 17th, 2004 1:54 amPierre Emil George Salinger, 79, press secretary to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and chief European foreign correspondent for ABC News, died of a heart attack yesterday at a hospital near his home in Le Thor, France, his wife said.
Mr. Salinger, a witty, debonair bon vivant, rose from a newspaper reporter in San Francisco to a top position at the White House before he was 40. He was an appointed senator from California for five months, wrote books and became ABC’s Paris bureau chief. His journalistic reputation was besmirched in the 1990s after his insistence that two major airline crashes were not what they seemed. …
Always a Democrat, Mr. Salinger worked for John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy on their presidential campaigns, and for George McGovern in 1972. He was White House press secretary from 1961 to 1964 and ran the first live televised presidential news conference in 1961.
President Kennedy called him “the voice of the White House,” but Mr. Salinger described himself as “a reporter for the rest of the press.” He was agile at leaking news and suggesting stories. The job demanded incredible discretion; between the president’s sexual liaisons and his secret ailments, Mr. Salinger was often called to account for a missing commander in chief. … Read full obituary
