She said her husband decided to move to France because he was so deeply opposed to the presidency of George W. Bush.
"He was very upset because he thought Bush was not fit to be president. He said he would leave if Bush became president and he did," Mrs. Salinger said.
He did the same in 1968 after the assassination of Robert Kennedy, she said. "He said, 'They're killing all the Kennedys, and he left," she said.
Pierre Salinger, who served as President John F. Kennedy's press secretary and later had a long career with ABC News, has died at a hospital in southern France. He was 79.
Pierre Salinger, shown here in 1996, was President Kennedy's press secretary. He also had a long print and TV journalism career.
AP
Salinger died Saturday from heart failure following surgery last week at a hospital in Cavaillon to implant a pacemaker, his wife, Nicole "Poppy" Salinger, told The Associated Press Sunday in a telephone interview.
Mrs. Salinger, spoke from Le Thon, near Avignon in the Provence region, where the couple moved four years ago to run a bed-and-breakfast inn.
The cultured and outspoken Salinger rose from the ranks of newspaper journalism to become press secretary to John F. Kennedy and eventually a trusted member of the family's inner circle. He and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis stayed in contact for many years following her husband's assassination, Mrs. Salinger said.
Salinger, who also served as press secretary for President Lyndon Johnson, said Kennedy was a "special man" who surrounded himself with advisers who "believed in each other" and in a common mission.
"There was no barrier on the president's door," Salinger wrote in McCall's magazine in 1988. "Any of his dozen principal staffers could see him when they wanted to. They didn't need permission from a chief of staff to gain access."
A longtime print journalist, Salinger switched to television reporting when he joined ABC in 1977. In the years following he worked as the network's Paris bureau chief, chief foreign correspondent and senior editor in London.
He had left the network by 1997, when he became a prominent backer of the theory that TWA Flight 800, which crashed off Long Island in 1996 on a flight to Paris, was accidentally brought down by a Navy missile.
Salinger had said at the time that a government document showed the Navy was testing missiles off the coast of New York and had been told planes would be flying higher than 21,000 feet. The Navy was unaware that Flight 800 was flying at 13,000 feet because another commercial plane was flying above it, he said.
The National Transportation Safety Board found no evidence of a missile strike. It concluded that Flight 800 was destroyed by a center fuel tank explosion, probably caused by a spark from a short-circuit in the wiring that ignited vapors in the tank.
Salinger's oldest son, Stephen, said his father's health had declined noticeably when he last saw him at his home in France four weeks ago.
Although his eyes twinkled at a gift of his favorite Punch Punch Cuban cigars, "his vocabulary was limited to only a few words," Stephen Salinger said from his home in Los Angeles. "That was OK, because among the few words he could still remember and words every son wants to hear. He said 'I love you.'"
"It's the first time in my life I wasn't going to receive a prognosis on the upcoming election," Stephen Salinger said.
Mrs. Salinger said her husband suffered from aphasia and was not able to speak, but otherwise was very aware of his surroundings and recognized and enjoyed the company of his friends and family.
Born on June 14, 1925, in San Francisco, Pierre Emil George Salinger first worked on the editorial staff of the San Francisco Chronicle from 1942 to 1943. He resigned from the newspaper to enlist in the Navy, where he commanded a sub chaser in the Pacific during World War II. He was honorably discharged with the rank of lieutenant in 1946.
Salinger, who graduated from the University of San Francisco in 1947, returned to the Chronicle after the war before leaving to join Collier's Magazine as a contributing editor in 1955. Two years later, he joined Kennedy's senatorial staff and served as his press officer in the 1960 presidential campaign.
Kennedy, Salinger said, "was not a perfect man. ... For all his loftiness of purpose, he did not take himself that seriously. He had no great vision of himself as a political or intellectual giant."
But Salinger said Kennedy learned from his mistakes, citing private correspondence between Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev that he said showed "two leaders of confrontational powers groping toward understanding."
Once while he was press secretary, a journalist asked him directly about Kennedy's sex life, Salinger said in a 1993 Washingtonian interview.
"I gave him a 1960s answer, not a 1990s answer: 'Look, he's the president of the United States. He's got to work 14 to 16 hours a day. He's got to run foreign and domestic policy. If he's got time for mistresses after all that, what the hell difference does it make?' The reporter laughed and walked out. That was the end of the story. For sure, I couldn't get away with that in the '90s."
After Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, Salinger served under Johnson before being appointed to complete the term of Sen. Clair Engle, D-Calif., who died in office. But Salinger lost his 1964 bid to keep the job to one-time Hollywood song-and-dance man George Murphy.
After his political career, Salinger worked as a correspondent for the French news magazine L'Express and later for ABC.
Salinger, whose mother was French, lived some 19 years in Paris, although he later made his home in New York. In 1978, the French awarded him the Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, France's highest civilian honor, for increasing understanding between the two nations.
He is survived by his fourth wife, Nicole, and two sons, Stephen and Gregory. He had two other children who died, his wife said.
Salinger's wish was to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery following Mass at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Washington, D.C., his wife said.
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We recommend . . .
President of the United States: John Kerry
(Florida paper endorsing Kerry)
When the Herald recommended the election of George W. Bush as president of the United States four years ago, we lauded his record in Texas as a consensus builder and expressed confidence in his ability to unite the country after four years of bitter partisanship. We liked his slogan, "A uniter, not a divider," and criticized opponent Al Gore's role as point man for Democrats' mean-spiritedness.
How poorly we understood George W. Bush in 2000. We could not imagine the possibility that, just four years later, Bush would have done just what we feared of Gore - that the United States would barely be on speaking terms with some of its staunchest allies, and that America would be reviled around the world as a bullying, imperialist superpower. How far we have fallen from the bright fiscal forecast in 2000, with surpluses that offered the promise of debt paydown now replaced with a staggering $500 billion annual deficit and the national debt projected to exceed $9 trillion by 2010.
As for Bush being a uniter, sadly, the nation is more polarized than it has been since the 1960s. Bush's administration is notable for its lack of transparency, its intolerance of dissent, its refusal to admit mistakes. Under Bush's leadership and Republican control, Congress has become a mean-spirited, partisan body where the vice president is praised for cursing an opposition senator on the Senate floor. The "compassionate conservative" president has people at outdoor rallies arrested for hoisting an opposition sign.
After 9/11: Hope
But all of this is overshadowed by the two most significant issues in this campaign: the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism. In both, Bush has failed as well - to our country's great peril. There were promising signs in the dark days following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that Bush would fulfill his potential. Indeed, though he had already begun to stray from promises to protect the environment and practice fiscal responsibility, all was forgotten in his inspired response to the shock and grief of the 9/11 attacks. He truly acted like a uniter in those months, rallying the nation in a righteous offensive against those responsible and an effort to win world support to defeat international terrorism.
Had he continued on that course, he would be riding to a second term on a wave of national adulation. But sometime in 2002, Bush's obsession with Iraq began to surface, and the country has suffered ever since. Rushing into a war on false pretenses, without wide international backing, without adequate forces and with no plan for securing the peace, Bush has embroiled this country in a quagmire that is every bit as grave as was Vietnam. Even as Iraq moves closer to anarchy, the president is in a state of denial. His rosy assessments of progress are mocked by the rising toll of American casualties, the savage beheading of American citizens and the virtual siege of the country by enemy forces. Bush's defense of this chaos - "Winning the peace is hard work" - is a pathetic defense of such incompetence.
A needed change
And so we come to John Kerry. We believe the Democratic nominee offers America a clear choice for a badly needed change in direction. Kerry brings to the job of president more than 20 years of Senate leadership, a personal knowledge of war and hope for a new approach to end the Iraqi nightmare and address the nation's domestic problems.
Kerry makes those high priorities. He offers a solid plan for making health care more affordable to more citizens, for dealing with the deficit, for preserving the future of Social Security and Medicare, for raising education standards, for stopping the drain of jobs overseas and for encouraging economic growth. On these fronts Bush also appears to be in denial, painting rosy scenarios to people deeply worried about their jobs.
The Bush campaign has sought to smear Kerry at every turn, engaging in the most despicable campaign tactics to demean his honorable war service and twist his legislative record. It is so easy to lump Kerry's principled votes on key legislation as "flip-flopping" - but without adding the context of those votes is simply dishonest. It is the height of hypocrisy for Bush to attack Kerry as a flip-flopper when Bush has broken so many promises and contradicted himself so many times.
No mixed-signal fears
We acknowledge the concerns that many have at changing leaders in the middle of a war. But we do not agree that it represents a mixed signal to our enemies. Rather, it represents hope for a change in pursuit of the war that might ameliorate the situation. We can expect no silver bullet from Kerry that will bring our forces home in victory by next summer. What Kerry can do is try to gain international support for the effort to train and equip Iraqis to take over. We think Kerry's fresh slate will ease animosity stirred by Bush's demeaning treatment of leaders who disagreed with him. At the same time, Kerry's promise to boost U.S. forces by 40,000 and to put more Special Forces units into the pursuit of terrorists, including bin Laden, should boost our chances at restoring security in Iraq.
Bush has made the war on terror the centerpiece of his campaign, using it to frighten Americans into thinking a change now would weaken the country's resolve to aggressively pursue terrorists. But this premise is built chiefly on twisting Kerry's words. The senator has stated unequivocally he would pursue and capture or kill terrorists wherever they try to hide. Moreover, he has promised to do far more to secure this country against a repeat terrorist attack, including beefed-up border security and more intensive screening of freight at ports and airports - huge gaps that Bush has largely ignored. Remember, 9/11 occurred on Bush's watch and has been characterized as the biggest intelligence failure in American history. Yet not a single person responsible for that failure has been fired, and Bush cannot think of a single mistake he might have made.
The Herald Editorial Board's recommendation of Kerry was a difficult decision, and it was not unanimous. It comes with the stipulation that Kerry stick to his promises to support our troops, to secure the homeland, to protect the middle class from tax increases while reining in federal spending, to choose open-minded Supreme Court nominees if vacancies occur, and to strengthen the economy and protect the job base. Certainly there is a degree of risk in choosing one who is untried. But then, we face that uncertainty with every first-term president. At least we have the benefit of four years of Bush's administration to help us make the choice. It comes down to this simple question famously asked by Ronald Reagan in 1980: Are you better off today than you were four years ago?
The answer, clearly, is no. Ultimately, that is why we recommend John Kerry as president of the United States in the Nov. 2 election.
