Pierre Emil George Salinger (1925- )

Pierre Salinger, press secretary to President John Kennedy and U.S. senator for California, was born, raised, and educated in San Francisco. He interrupted his undergraduate studies at San Francisco State College in 1943 to enlist in the U.S. Navy and command a "subchaser" in the Pacific Theater. After completing his service in 1946, he joined the editorial staff of The San Francisco Chronicle and the journalism faculty at nearby Mills College. In 1957 he left San Francisco to apply his investigative skills on behalf of the Senate Select Committee To Investigate Improper Activities in Labor-Management Relations, where he worked closely with Robert Kennedy. In 1959, he left the committee to become press secretary for Senator John Kennedy, a position he held throughout the 1960 campaign and the Kennedy administration. He left the Johnson administration in March 1964 to enter the 1964 senatorial election in California. Despite losing the race, Salinger ultimately served in the Senate when he was selected to fill the vacancy Senator Clair Engle's death created in the chamber. Once again he sought election in his own right and once again, in 1964, he lost. Salinger then dedicated his political energies to Robert Kennedy, serving as one of his key aides in both the Senate and the 1968 presidential campaign. After RFK's assassination in 1968, he left politics and moved to Paris. In 1973 he resumed his journalism career, serving as correspondent for L'Express, bureau chief of ABC News Paris, and chief foreign correspondent and senior editor for ABC News London. He is the author of the autobiographical With Kennedy and P.S., A Memoir as well as two novels. He returned to the United States in 1998 where he advises governments on the dismantling of nuclear stations and the water crisis confronting the Third World. He is a director of the Foundation for the Declaration of the Rights of Children and President of Honor of the Holding and Founding of the Ethics Committee, an organization committed to intellectual property rights.

Sources: Biographical Dictionary of the United States Congress Online. Internet on-line. Available From http://bioguide.congress.gov; "Pierre Salinger's Biography," Foundation for The Declaration of the Rights of Children Internet on-line. Available From http://www.rightsofchildren.org.