Journalist, government official. Investigator, U.S. Senate Select Committee to Investigate Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field (1957-1959); Press secretary to Senator John F. Kennedy (1959-1960); Press Secretary to the President (1961-1964). Pierre Emil Salinger first served as Senator Kennedy’s press secretary and later as his press officer in the 1960 presidential campaign. In 1961 he was appointed White House press secretary and held this position through 1964, when he resigned to run for US Senate.
White House Staff Files (1960-1964) consist of correspondence, press briefings, announcements, press releases, press conferences, news clippings, job applications, telephone memorandums, classified background briefing material, subject files, and publishers luncheons file.
Papers (1959-1964) consist of Salinger's press briefings, interim reports, bound house and senate committee reports, and miscellaneous campaign information.
Oral History Interviews (1965, 1969, 1970): Salinger completed two interviews for the John F. Kennedy Oral History Program and two interviews for the Robert F. Kennedy Oral History Program: JFK#1 interview, 7/19/1965; JFK#2 interview, 8/10/1965; RFK#1 interview, 5/26/1969; RFK#2 interview, 4/18/1970. In the first JFK interview, Salinger discusses his work with Robert F. Kennedy on the Senate Select Committee to Investigate Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field; his introduction to John F. Kennedy (JFK) and work coordinating press relations on JFK’s 1960 presidential campaign; the 1960 Democratic primaries in Wisconsin and West Virginia; the 1960 Democratic National Convention; the Kennedy-Nixon debates, and the possibility of a recount in the 1960 presidential election. In the second JFK interview, he discusses the White House press corps, TV network news coverage of the White House, press conferences, the press secretaries of executive agencies, and his own role as a liaison between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, including ferrying secret correspondence between JFK and Nikita S. Khrushchev, and Salinger’s May 1962 visit to the Soviet Union, among other issues. The RFK interviews are not yet online.