Pierre Salinger

Pierre Emil George Salinger (June 14, 1925 – October 16, 2004) was a White House Press Secretary to U.S. Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. He later became known for his work as an ABC News correspondent, and in particular for his stories on the American hostage crisis in Iran, the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, and his claims as to cause of the explosion of TWA flight 800.

Salinger served briefly as a Democratic United States Senator in 1964 and was campaign manager for Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign.

Early life

Salinger was born in San Francisco, California, his father a German Jewish mining engineer and his mother a French journalist whose father was a member of the French National Assembly. After serving with the United States Navy during World War II, Salinger graduated from the University of San Francisco and worked as a reporter for The San Francisco Chronicle and as a contributing Editor to Collier's in the 1940s and 1950s. When John F. Kennedy became President of the United States, he hired Salinger as his press secretary.

A career in broadcast journalism

Following his service in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, Salinger was appointed as a Democratic United States Senator from California to fill the vacancy resulting from the July 30, 1964 death of Senator Clair Engle, taking office on August 4, 1964. In his bid for a full six-year term in the 1964 election, he was defeated by George Murphy following a campaign in which Salinger's recent move to California, following many years living elsewhere, became an issue. He resigned from the Senate on December 31, 1964, only three days before his term was to expire. Senator-elect Murphy, who was to take office on January 3, 1965, was appointed to fill the remaining two days of Salinger's term, giving Murphy a slight advantage in seniority in the Senate over other members of the "class of 1964" at a time when seniority was even more vital in Senate affairs than it is currently.

Salinger worked on Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign and was reportedly devastated by RFK's assassination. He moved to France and returned to journalism as a correspondent for L'Express.

ABC

In 1978, he was hired by ABC News as its Paris bureau chief. He became the network's chief European correspondent based in London in 1983.

In 1991, two Libyans were later indicted over the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988, but Salinger believed Libya had been set up. In a 1989 ABC Prime Time Live Special, he named the so-called "Kenyan Three" as the masterminds of the bombing: three Palestinians no one else had ever heard of. Although there was no evidence to support this widely ridiculed claim, the program won an Emmy, much to the alleged dismay of other journalists who had worked on the PA 103 case.

One year later, Salinger went on air for ABC with a story blaming PA 103 instead on a CIA drugs-smuggling operation that went wrong, in which terrorists inserted a bomb into a suitcase on a CIA-protected drugs-route. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) set up an inquiry into Salinger's claims but found them to be without merit.

After the August 1990 invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, ABC started work on a special program about the invasion and sent Salinger to the Middle East, where he obtained a transcript in Arabic of a conversation between Saddam Hussein and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie, in which Glaspie famously told Saddam: "We have no opinion on Arab-Arab border disputes," controversially interpreted by some as giving Saddam the green light to invade Kuwait, which he did days later. Salinger brought the transcript back to London, ordering a London-based Arab journalist and an ABC researcher to sit through the night translating it into passable English. ABC, which had paid for Salinger's trip, wasn't sure whether to air the transcript immediately on World News Tonight or hold it back for a few days for their invasion special. Salinger was furious at the suggestion of delay and leaked the transcript to Hella Pick of the British newspaper, The Guardian, thereby ensuring that ABC would have to run with it that day. ^*

It was because of incidents like this that relations with the network soured. Salinger was not a popular figure inside ABC, especially with anchors like Ted Koppel and Peter Jennings, but he always had the support of Roone Arledge, the president of ABC News. Salinger would frequently telephone Arledge directly about something he wanted to put on air, bypassing the usual route of consulting with producers, correspondents and anchors, so that when they objected, as they often did, the message would come down that "Roone has approved it." But eventually even Arledge couldn't save him and Salinger left ABC in 1993.

Life after ABC

After leaving ABC, Salinger moved back to Washington, D.C. and became an executive with the Burson Marsteller public relations firm before returning to France in 2000. Until the late 80s, Salinger had been a popular "talking head" in France and was a frequent guest on French news and public affairs shows when someone was needed to explain or interpret American events for French viewers.

Salinger later became known for his claims in November 1996 that friendly fire from the United States Navy was the cause of the TWA Flight 800 crash, based on what was later seen as an Internet hoax. That experience has given name to the irrational belief in the veracity of internet rumors now known as the "Salinger Syndrome".^* In November 2000, he refused to step down from the witness box in the Scottish court in the Netherlands where the two Libyan intelligence officers were on trial for PA 103. Salinger shouted that he knew who the real bombers were and had to be asked to leave the stand by the judge.

He later made a permanent move to France, making good on his promise that, "If Bush wins, I'm going to leave the country and spend the rest of my life in France."

Salinger died in October 2004 of heart failure near his home in Le Thor, France, after suffering from dementia at the age of 79. He is buried in the Arlington National Cemetery across the Potomac River from Washington, DC.

Bibliography

With Kennedy
America Held Hostage
Secret Dossier: The Hidden Agenda Behind the Gulf War
Je Suis un Americain
La France et le Nouveau Monde
P.S.: A Memoir, 1995

References

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Pierre Salinger

Early life

A career in broadcast journalism

ABC

Life after ABC

Bibliography

References