Richard Threlkeld, a CBS News correspondent who survived covering everything from the Vietnam War to Tiananmen Square, was killed in a car crash yesterday when his 2008 Mini Cooper struck a propane tanker, police said.

Threlkeld, 74, of East Hampton, LI, was northbound on Cross Highway in Amagansett when he slammed into the big rig.

His car careened off the road and landed up against a fence. EMS technicians rushed him to Southampton Hospital, but doctors there pronounced him dead.

The driver of the tanker, Earl Fryberger Jr., 57, of Coatesville, Pa., was not injured. East Hampton Town police investigators said it did not appear the accident involved any criminality.

Threlkeld began his career at CBS in 1966 and was among the last journalists evacuated from Phnom Penh and Saigon when they fell to the communists.

He is survived by his wife, former CNN anchor Betsy Aaron.