Books: With Salinger

WITH KENNEDY by Pierre Salinger. 391 pages. Doubleday. $5.95.

“What I have attempted to write down on these pages,” notes the author, “is a view of life at the center of power.” Well, not quite. Pierre Salinger was at the White House during the entire Kennedy Administration, and highly visible. But as press secretary, he was not privy to history-making conversations; thus, he has little that is fresh to add to the anecdotal history of the time.

He has one story of considerable interest, however. He believes that Nikita

Khrushchev helped Kennedy win the 1960 presidential election.

During a visit to the Soviet Union in 1962, Salinger got into a discussion with Khrushchev on the subject of Richard Nixon. Khrushchev reminded Salinger of the incident in July 1960 when a U.S. Air Force RB-47 was shot down over the Barents Sea. Nixon, said Khrushchev, tried to use the incident to his advantage. Through an unnamed “high-ranking” Republican, explained Khrushchev, Nixon “approached us with the request to release the crew members of the American RB-47. We of course understood that Nixon wished to make political capital out of this for himself in advance of the elections.”

Writes Salinger: “I responded that the release of the RB-47 flyers before the election might very well have won it for Nixon. ‘Of course,’ said Khrushchev. ‘For this reason, I said it would not be proper to do this. For you see, Nixon wanted to make it appear as if he had already arranged certain contacts with the Soviet government. And this, of course, would have played a decisive role in the election. That is why we decided to wait a while until Kennedy came to power, and only after that release the American flyers.’ “

It was clear that Khrushchev wouldn’t have lifted a finger to help Nixon get elected dogcatcher. The Communist boss described Nixon as “an intellectually limited” man who “produces the impression of a slightly fraudulent, petty storekeeper, capable of selling tainted herring or representing kerosene-soaked sugar as good merchandise.” (The statement was made some time before Khrushchev himself came to be regarded by his own associates as a handy fellow with a tainted herring.)

This conversation is the newsiest part of Salinger’s book. He also touches on the Cuban missile crisis by printing portions of the reports sent to the President by John Scali, the newscaster who had been chosen by the Soviets as an intermediary in the early stages of the negotiation. “I participated in the decision to ask Scali to hold his silence on negotiations,” Salinger writes.

The best that can be said of Salinger’s book is that it does not alter the figure of the President or the record of the Kennedy years. Salinger writes of what he observed, but that was from a position just one step closer than a White House reporter.