Any catalogue of 20th-century buccaneers must include journalist Pierre Salinger, press secretary to US Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, who has died of a heart attack aged 79.
Good fortune had catapulted "Lucky Pierre" into the inner sanctum of the Kennedy family as John was preparing to campaign for the presidency. Sound political instinct and a canny understanding of the media turned Salinger into a first-class presidential spokesman. Optimism, a sense of self promotion and an indestructible, childlike self-confidence enabled him to exploit his links with JFK and his two brothers to venture into several new careers in politics, business, journalism and public relations.
It was impossible not to admire the chutzpah Salinger employed in his association with Kennedy. Indeed, he could network forever afterwards on the basis of his 2½ years at Camelot. But he was no fair-weather friend. He remained close to Edward Kennedy, and to Jackie, and to several of the younger generation of Kennedys. He continued to hustle for work until the end of his life due to his need for money to support relatives who had come to depend on his help.
He was born in San Francisco, one of four brothers. His father, a mining engineer of German Jewish stock, died when Salinger was in his teens. His mother, who lived to 98, was a spirited Frenchwoman and a noted journalist. Salinger's love affair with the media began while he was at high school and resumed after a colourful period of war service in the US navy in the Pacific.
After the war, he finished his degree at the University of San Francisco, and the San Francisco Chronicle appointed him as an investigative journalist in 1947. A lifelong Democrat, Salinger's interest in politics began when he worked for President Harry Truman's 1948 presidential campaign. His political involvement deepened when he went to work for the Senate committee on improper activities in labour and management (1957-59); Robert Kennedy was counsel to the committee. Salinger, he observed, was "inquisitive and indefatigable".
Robert Kennedy recommended Salinger's appointment as publicity director for the Democratic advisory council, and by the time John Kennedy was weighing up his presidential candidacy, Salinger was already part of the Kennedy inner circle. Theodore White, chronicler of successive campaigns, wrote: "Large in manner, full of gusto, a wine-drinker and brandy bibber; his mind is at once jovial and quick, shrewd, practical . . . No one remembers Salinger with anything but respect and affection."
As President Kennedy's press secretary, he proved his professional mettle. Guaranteed "total access" to the Oval Office, and allowed a free hand to open the new administration to media inspection, Salinger was energetic and innovative and effected lasting improvements in news management.
Although devastated by Kennedy's assassination in November 1963, he agreed to stay on as President Johnson's press secretary.
In 1964, he briefly entered senatorial politics. After the death of Clair Eagle, one of California's incumbent senators, Salinger was appointed to fill the place for the 148 days of the remaining term. He was defeated in the subsequent election, but stayed in California to embark on a business career, and to work with Robert Kennedy during his bid to win the California primary in 1968.
Robert's assassination was another blow and Salinger decided to seek his fortunes in France. He went back to journalism, and a job with the French weekly, L'Express. He remained there until 1978, when he earned the honour of being sacked by the new proprietor, James Goldsmith. The US TV network, ABC, came to the rescue by appointing him Paris bureau chief. In 1983 ABC moved him to London as the network's chief foreign correspondent.
During the Paris years, a still star-struck Salinger established himself in France as "Mr America", obtained "exclusives" with world figures, including Fidel Castro, and Grace Kelly, hob-nobbed with President Mitterrand and Mohamed Al Fayed, sailed with Jackie and Aristotle Onassis, and served on a Cannes Festival jury.
In 1976, he was brash enough to ask the new President Jimmy Carter for the US embassy in France. Carter made no response. He tried again when Bill Clinton became president, but was ignored. It was one of Salinger's few unfulfilled dreams. As ABC's chief foreign correspondent, London became a base for ceaseless travel. But relations with ABC soured and he left the company in 1992.
He moved back to Washington to become a senior executive with the public relations giant, Burson Marsteller.
He won journalism prizes including a George Polk award for his 1981 documentary on the US government's secret negotiations to free Americans held hostage by Iran.
Not all of it was as reliable as he believed. He lost credibility when he claimed that the 1988 loss of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie was the result of a US Drug Enforcement Agency operation that went wrong and, when he tried to insist that the 1996 crash of TWA 800 over Long Island, New York, was caused by stray US navy missiles, few took him seriously. The crash was due to a mechanical fault and Salinger had been taken in by an internet hoax.
But high-level contacts in Iraq meant he provided the Guardian with a world scoop during the first Gulf war crisis, when he gave the paper the transcript of Saddam Hussein's exchanges with April Glaspie, US ambassador in Iraq. These showed that far from warning Iraq against pursuing its territorial claims in Kuwait, the US had signalled it "had no opinion" and would not intervene.
He visited Ireland several times, most notably as part of the Kennedy visit in June 1963. During a return visit in 1979 he was arrested by the RUC and held for 11 hours in Castlereagh. Salinger was in Belfast for ABC with a camera crew and had been at a Sinn Féin press conference in Ballymurphy. News reports at the time suggested the police wanted to question him about filming masked UFF members threatening to kill Catholics.
Though in many respects Salinger lived a charmed life, he suffered tragedy: a brother and one of his three sons committed suicide; his only daughter died of cancer; his first wife was an alcoholic. However many times he stumbled and fell, he always stood up again.
In his autobiography, Salinger wrote his epitaph: "I have had at least my part of tragedy, but I have felt I have had far more than my share of happiness . . . Perhaps those people were right years ago when they nicknamed me Lucky Pierre."
He is survived by Poppy, and two sons.
Pierre Emil George Salinger; born June 14th, 1925; died October 16th, 2004.