He worked for Collier's magazine in the mid-1950s before becoming an investigator with Robert Kennedy on the Senate anti-racketeering committee from 1957 to 1959, when he went to work for Sen. John F. Kennedy.
Mr. Salinger, a ferocious poker player and two-fisted drinker who boasted of his many mistresses, was exceedingly popular with the overwhelmingly male reporting corps covering the White House. He was known for wearing colorful vests and smoked Havana-made cigars until the Cuban embargo, when he gave them up for Brazilian stogies.
After President Kennedy's assassination, Mr. Salinger worked for Johnson until March 1964, when he resigned to run for a Senate seat from California. He won the Democratic primary and was appointed by Gov. Edmund G. Brown (D) in August of that year to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Clair Engle (D). Mr. Salinger lost the general election to Republican George Murphy and went into corporate public relations.
By 1973, he was back in journalism as a roving editor for L'Express of Paris, and five years later moved to television, becoming ABC's Paris bureau chief, and later its chief foreign correspondent and senior editor for Europe. He retired in 1993 and became a consultant, working for Burson-Marsteller, and gave speeches.
In 1998, Mr. Salinger wrote an admiring preface to a book of short stories by Col. Moammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader.
He wrote a number of books, including a 1995 memoir, three novels and a 1991 book, "Secret Dossier: The Hidden Agenda Behind the Gulf Crisis."
A son, Marc, died in 1977, and his daughter, Suzanne, died in 1984. His first three marriages ended in divorce.
Survivors include his wife, Nicole Beuvillain de Menthon, and two sons: Stephen, of Los Angeles, from his first marriage, and Gregory, of Paris, from his third marriage.
Staff writer Matt Schudel contributed to this report.
