Neil Strawser, a former CBS News correspondent who became a spokesman for Capitol Hill committees, died December 31 at George Washington University Hospital after a heart attack. He was 78 and a resident of Washington, D.C.

Starting in 1952, Strawser spent 34 years at CBS in Washington and was mostly a radio correspondent. He also appeared on television, including one assignment to interview future first lady Jacqueline Kennedy on the presidential campaign trail in 1960 and another in 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis, when he was among the first newsmen admitted to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base.

On the radio, Strawser anchored four straight days of coverage of the John F. Kennedy assassination and its aftermath in 1963. He anchored weekend “News on the Hour” broadcasts and the Saturday edition of “CBS World News Roundup” for many years.

Strawser covered U.S. space launches; civil rights stories from Arlington to Oxford, Miss., and the 1973 “Saturday Night Massacre,” in which President Richard M. Nixon ordered the firing of a leading Justice Department official during the Watergate inquiry. In the early 1980s, his beat was the White House.

When CBS announced massive job cuts in 1985, Strawser took early retirement and became director of public affairs of the Joint Economic Committee. From 1987 until 1994, he was press officer of the House Budget Committee.

Strawser was born in Rittman, Ohio, and was an electronics technician in the Navy in the late 1940s.

He was a 1951 graduate of Oberlin College.