Salinger dead

Pierre Salinger, the spokesman for the Kennedy White House, who later became a European correspondent for ABC News, died on Saturday at a ho...

Pierre Salinger, the spokesman for the Kennedy White House, who later became a European correspondent for ABC News, died on Saturday at a hospital near his home in Le Thor, France. He was 79.

Salinger had been in declining health for four years and died of heart failure, said a longtime associate, Elizabeth Bagley, an Ambassador to Portugal under President Bill Clinton. Bagley said she learnt of Salinger’s death from his wife, Nicole, the operator of a bed-and-breakfast in Le Thor, in Provence.

Salinger, a native of San Francisco who was regarded as a child prodigy on the piano, spent the early years of his career as a print journalist, working for The San Francisco Chronicle and as a contributing editor for Collier’s magazine. Salinger worked on John Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1960, and was appointed White House press secretary after the election.

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Salinger’s appointment came as the pervasive influence of television was becoming clear in politics and world affairs, and he assumed an unusually powerful role for a press secretary. He accompanied Kennedy to conferences with other world leaders, including the 1961 meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna, Austria, and was dispatched by the president to Moscow the following year to confer directly with Soviet leaders.

After Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Salinger continued as White House press secretary under President Lyndon B. Johnson.

He resigned in 1964 to run for the Senate from California. After winning the Democratic primary, he was appointed to fill the seat when Claire Engle died. But he was defeated by George Murphy, a Republican. — NYT