Salinger, Pierre Emil George

(b. 14 June 1925 in San Francisco, California; d. 16 October 2004 in Le Thor, France), writer, press secretary to presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, corporate executive, and chief European correspondent for ABC News.

Salinger was the eldest of four sons of Herbert Edgar Salinger, an American Jewish mining engineer, and Jehanne (Bietry) Salinger, a journalist of French Catholic descent. A child prodigy at the piano, Salinger attended the Presidio Open Air School from 1932 to 1937. In the summer of 1937 he went to a trade union camp, where he flourished in a multicultural, multiethnic environment. In 1937 Salinger entered Lowell High School and eventually wrote for the school newspaper. He graduated from high school in 1941 and was admitted to the University of San Francisco months before the United States entered World War II.

As a skipper on the subchaser SC-1368 off Okinawa, Salinger rose to the rank of lieutenant junior grade in the U.S. Navy and served with distinction in the Pacific Theater during World War II. In October 1945 Salinger’s subchaser was hit by a typhoon, which stranded six of the crew on a reef. Salinger led a rescue party to save the sailors and for his heroic actions was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal. Salinger returned to San Francisco in 1946 and received a BS from the University of San Francisco in 1947. On 1 January 1947 Salinger married Renee Laboure, with whom he had three children. Laboure and Salinger divorced in 1957, and Salinger and his second wife, Nancy Joy, married on 28 June 1957. Salinger obtained custody of his three children.

Salinger became an undercover reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, exposing the terrible treatment of inmates in California’s penitentiary system. He was the West Coast editor of the magazine Collier’s from 1955 to 1956 and wrote about James P. (“Jimmy”) Hoffa’s control over the powerful Teamsters Union. The reporter Edwin Guthman sent Salinger’s expose of the Teamsters to Robert F. Kennedy, who was counsel to the U.S. Senate rackets committee. Kennedy hired Salinger to investigate the Teamsters and improper activities in labor management. In 1959 Salinger joined the staff of Senator John F. Kennedy, who was making his bid for the presidency. In 1960 Salinger was appointed the White House press secretary.

As the spokesperson for the Kennedy administration, Salinger embraced the new medium of television. He arranged Kennedy’s televised news conference in 1961, the first of its kind. Like the president, Salinger faced television cameras with aplomb, not an easy task during times of national crisis. Kennedy’s approval rating soared after he took full responsibility for the disastrous results of the Bay of Pigs invasion. In the 17 April 1961 incident a Cuban counter-revolutionary force that had not received military support from Kennedy was defeated by Fidel Castro’s Soviet tanks and jets. As the fiasco unfolded Kennedy did not share classified information with Salinger. During the Cuban Missile Crisis of 22 to 28 October 1962, however, Salinger redefined the role of the White House press secretary. He demanded that Kennedy keep him well informed so that he could face the press and the public with hard facts. Salinger arranged the televised speech in which Kennedy informed the nation that Soviet missiles were about to be stockpiled in Cuba. Kennedy demanded that Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev stop “the perilous arms race and... transform the history of man.” Khrushchev recalled the ships loaded with nuclear missiles, but Salinger found himself in the midst of a crisis concerning freedom of the press.

Rarely do a president and press secretary share a personal relationship as close as that of Kennedy and Salinger. As the result of his early multicultural experiences, Salinger had a political ideology similar to Kennedy’s. Salinger’s early experiences in the fine arts also endeared him to Jacqueline Kennedy. The two brought renowned musicians such as Pablo Casals and Igor Stravinsky to the White House.

After Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963, Salinger worked as press secretary in the Johnson administration until March 1964. When Senator Clair Engle of California died, Governor Edmund Brown appointed Salinger to the position, but Salinger lost the November election to George Murphy. In 1965 Salinger divorced Nancy Joy. He married Nicole Gillman on 18 June 1965. At the time Salinger was working as vice president of international affairs for Continental Airlines and director of Continental Air Services. Salinger’s fourth child was born in 1966.

After President Johnson announced that he would not seek another term, Senator Robert Kennedy of New York decided to run for the presidency in the 1968 election, and Salinger joined the campaign. On 5 June 1968 Salinger was with the Kennedy family in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles when Robert Kennedy was assassinated. Salinger was devastated, having enjoyed a closer personal relationship with Robert than with John.

Salinger left the United States in an effort to come to terms with the deaths of the Kennedys. He wrote for the French magazine L’Express and in 1976 covered the Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria. Although devastated when his son committed suicide in 1977, Salinger threw himself into obtaining the release of American hostages in Iran in 1978. By 1979 Salinger was chief of the Paris bureau of ABC News. He received the George Polk Award for the documentary America Held Hostage: The Secret Negotiations (1981). The film concerned the hostages’ release, which was initiated under the administration of President James E. (“Jimmy”) Carter and completed when President Ronald W. Reagan took his oath of office on 20 January 1981.

In 1981 Salinger separated from Gillman when he met Nicole (“Poppy”) Beauvillain de Menthon. Salinger became chief foreign correspondent for ABC News in 1983, and by 1988 he was the senior editor for Europe. Salinger and de Menthon married on 17 June 1989. In 1992 Salinger was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor. He also was made a member of the French Legion of Honor. Salinger retired from ABC News in 1993 and became a consultant for the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller.

In July 1996 Salinger questioned the U.S. government’s investigation of the crash in the Atlantic Ocean of Trans World Airlines flight 800 soon after takeoff. Salinger noted that witnesses had seen “a streak of light shooting nearly straight up at the jetliner.” Salinger began his own investigation into whether terrorists with an intentional missile or the USS Normandy with a mistaken missile launch could have caused the explosion. The official investigation of the House Aviation Subcommittee concluded that the crash was caused by a center wing tank explosion.

Among Salinger’s important nonfiction works are With Kennedy (1966), An Honorable Profession: A Tribute to Robert F. Kennedy (1993), America Held Hostage: The Secret Negotiations (1981), Secret Dossier: The Hidden Agenda Behind the Gulf Crisis (1991), and John F. Kennedy, Commander in Chief: A Profile in Leadership (1997). Salinger’s novels are On Instructions of My Government (1971), The Dossier (1984), and Mortal Games (1988), the latter two written with Leonard Gross.

Salinger died of a heart attack on 16 October 2004 in Le Thor, France, and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia. He was one of the first journalists to make the leap from newspaper journalism and scripted radio reports to live news televised directly from the White House. He walked the fine line between protecting the president of the United States as well as classified information and fulfilling his duty as a member of the press. He understood the importance of getting information to the people as an event was happening. Few White House press secretaries have addressed the nation with as much honesty, integrity, and wit as Salinger. He set the standard for the White House press secretaries who followed him.

For an account of Salinger’s life up to 1995, see his autobiography, P.S., A Memoir: Pierre Salinger (1995). For an account of Salinger’s investigation of the Trans World Airlines plane crash, see David Evans, “Salinger’s Flight 800 Theory Draws Flak,” American Journalism Review 19, no. 1 (Jan.-Feb. 1997): 10–11. Obituaries are in the Washington Post (17 Oct. 2004) and the New York Times (18 Oct. 2004).

Jane Frances Amler