P.S.; A Memoir

New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995. First Edition. First Printing. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Philippe Beauvillain (Jacket Photograph). 25 cm xi, [3], 304, [2] pages. Illustrations. Index. Slight creasing to DJ edges. Inscribed by the author in French to Henri Tran Van Kha. Pierre Emil George Salinger (June 14, 1925 - October 16, 2004) was an American journalist, author and politician. He had served as the seventh White House Press Secretary for United States Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Salinger served as a United States Senator in 1964 and as campaign manager for the 1968 Robert F. Kennedy presidential campaign. After leaving politics, Salinger became known for his work for ABC News, particularly for his coverage of the Iran Hostage Crisis and the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Salinger worked on Kennedy's presidential campaign in 1960, and became one of the leading figures in the campaign. In 1961, after JFK became President, he hired Salinger as his press secretary. When Kennedy became the first president to allow live television broadcasts of his news conferences, Salinger was said to have managed the press corps with "wit, enthusiasm and considerable disdain for detail," which made him a "celebrity in his own right." After the August 1990 Iraq invasion of Kuwait, ABC sent Salinger to the Middle East, where he obtained a transcript in Arabic of a conversation between Saddam Hussein and the US Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie; the latter infamously told Saddam: "We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts," which was interpreted by some as giving Saddam the green light to invade Kuwait, which he did only days later. Derived from a Kirkus review: The autobiography of a newsman and presidential press secretary. Salinger's memoirs include several confessions of his ego. The memoir is filled with real-life stories about historic events of the past half-century. Salinger was really there. He joined Robert Kennedy's team investigating the Teamsters in the 1950s, served as presidential press secretary to John F. Kennedy and, briefly, Lyndon Johnson, and was among the close friends who convinced Robert Kennedy to run for president in 1968. Shattered by RFK's assassination, Salinger fled the US for France, where the onetime journalist became Paris bureau chief for ABC news. He investigated such stories as the hostage crisis in Iran, the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, and the Persian Gulf War, before finally coming back to the States in 1993. But the most fascinating stories come from Salinger's days working on the Kennedy campaigns and in the Kennedy White House. Especially riveting are accounts of private conversations with Russian premier Nikita Khrushchev and of his participation in back-channel contacts between Russia and the US. Virtually the only harsh words in the book are in Salinger's charge that the Gulf War could have been avoided, but ``President Bush wanted to go to war.'' A fascinating insider's view of historic events of the past 50 years, especially those involving John and Robert Kennedy.