His father, Herbert Salinger, was a New York City-born mining engineer, and his mother, Jehanne (née Biétry), was a French-born journalist.

[3] After his family moved to Canada, his parents discovered his innate talent at the piano and he was enrolled into the Toronto Conservatory of Music, where he was groomed to become a concert pianist.

[4] He continued studying piano after they returned to San Francisco and was able play scores by Bach, Debussy, Beethoven and George Gershwin, whom he once met.

[4] His talent and love of music carried over into his career as press secretary when, at the behest of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy,[5][a] he would invite musicians such as Pablo Casals and Igor Stravinsky to the White House.

[3] After serving with the United States Navy to the rank of Lieutenant, junior grade during World War II, he finished his studies at the University of San Francisco, earning a BS in 1947.

[8] He began his journalism career as "Lucky Pierre", a horse racing columnist and later reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle and as a contributing editor to Collier's in the 1940s and 1950s.

[9] After Salinger researched and wrote a number of articles in 1956 about labor union leader Jimmy Hoffa, Robert F. Kennedy hired him to be legal counsel for the Senate Select Committee investigating organized crime.

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",[3] which made him a "celebrity in his own right".

[13] At the time of President Kennedy's assassination in November 1963, Salinger was on a plane to Tokyo with six Cabinet members, including Secretary of State Dean Rusk.

[15] Salinger appeared in the January 4, 1968, episode of the ABC Television series Batman portraying "Lucky Pierre," a lawyer who defends Catwoman and the Joker in a trial.

Salinger claimed that Jim McManus, who was also working on the campaign, said to him, "I've got to get the message to Los Angeles, under no circumstances should Bobby go through that kitchen ... there's usually grease on the floor.

[7] Later in 1968, he became director of Great America Management and Research Company (GRAMCO), a mutual investment fund in US real estate aimed at foreigners.

He became the network's chief European correspondent based in London in 1983 when Peter Jennings moved to New York to become sole anchor of ABC World News Tonight after the death of Frank Reynolds.

[3] In 1981, Salinger was bestowed with a George Polk award for his scoop that the US government was secretly negotiating to free Americans held hostage by Iran.

In the 1980s, he was well known as a member of Amiic (World Real Estate Investment Organization, Geneva), with François Spoerry, Paul-Loup Sulitzer and Jean-Pierre Thiollet.

[20] In a November 1989 report for ABC's Prime Time Live, Salinger claimed that Iran had paid Syria and Ahmed Jibril, the head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), to carry out the Pan Am 103 bombing.

The network 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.

In November 2000, he became exasperated when he was denied permission to give exonerating evidence as part of his testimony before the Scottish Court in the Netherlands trying two Libyans for the December 21, 1988, bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.