Journalist covering JFK assassination condemns Robert Kennedy Jr.

Jul. 31—A Norman resident said he still has nightmares from Nov. 22, 1963, the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas.

Joe Carter Sr., who formerly served as a reporter for United Press International, trailed the president in the White House press bus where he was supposed to report on the president's reelection speech. He was offered a free meal while he was supposed to take notes on what the president would have said.

Carter never had lunch that day, and he didn't report on the president's speech.

At 12:30 p.m., Carter heard three rifle shots, and moments later, he witnessed the president's wife's pink dress, which was dripping in blood and covered in brain fragments.

For the following weeks, Carter edited stories that pertained to the tragedy, and he did his own investigative journalism.

"He squeezed three shots, and I heard three shots," Carter told The Transcript.

Carter said these nightmarish memories are coming back to him, particularly in light of the news that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Kennedy's nephew, has made unsupported claims that the CIA was responsible for the 1968 assassination.

"There's a 60-year cover up. The Warren Commission was Allen Dulles, who was head of the CIA who my uncle fired," said Robert Kennedy Jr. on Fox News. "It was a plot. It was a conspiracy. There were multiple people involved."

His claim has since been denounced by different members of the Kennedy family, as well as the CIA.

Carter said he edited the work of "scores of reporters" who were on the case.

"It always came back to Lee Harvey Oswald," Carter said. "By chance, he had a job where he had an open window. It was an easy shot."

He said since that time, many have hypothesized different theories to circumvent evidence presented by law enforcement and reporters, but none of them can explain the basis of these events beyond a reasonable doubt.

"Literally scores of top notch news men had covered that story, including the actual shooting. We made a good telling for Lee Harvey Oswald being the lone assassin," Carter said. "Nobody has come up with anything credible to refute that."

Two days after the assassination, Jack Ruby, a nightclub owner, infiltrated a photo op where Oswald was being transferred from the station to the nearby county jail. In front of reporters and live TV, he shot and killed Oswald, according to the Warren Commission.

"Jack Ruby did a very awful thing by killing Lee Harvey Oswald," Carter said. "He denied him the right of trial by jury where the real evidence could be presented as collected by law enforcement. During our reporting, we covered this story. We covered the policemen, the FBI, Secret Service, and Dallas Police, and they all came up with the same conclusion."

To Carter, the case is closed. He called it a "black and white" issue, as overwhelming evidence supports what many journalists reported.

"[Robert Kennedy Jr.] just figures everything in his mind, and he belches it out," Carter said. "He really does a disservice to democracy and the work of really great news people."

On April 5, Robert Kennedy Jr. filed to run for president as a Democrat against President Joe Biden. He has been accused by multiple news outlets and prominent politicians for making baseless claims to garner attention for his campaign.

Carter was born in Enid, Oklahoma in 1932. He said his father was an unemployed cowboy who was pushed to work as a railroad employee amid the Dust Bowl.

A member of the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame, Carter was an aide to Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Jimmy Carter and served as a White House Council on Wage and Price Stability. In the 1970s, he worked as the press secretary for Oklahoma Governor David Hall, and he worked as the communications director for the Democratic National Committee under Chairman Robert S. Strauss.

On the day of Kennedy's assassination, Carter made the call to UPI that notified the world about what had just happened. He said at the time, cell phones hadn't been invented, so he made a call by payphone.

"I discovered I was out of dimes. There was a woman standing there with a dime out. I rushed out and said, 'I need to use that,' he said. "She handed me the phone, and then I said, 'I need to use your dime, too'"

"I called in and gave the news that LBJ was president, that he was alive, and that he was flying back to Washington."

Joe Carter Jr., Carter's son, said his father has been around rifles his whole life, so when he heard the three gunshots, he knew exactly what kind of gun he would have used, and about what range it would have been used at.

"He was in the Army during the Korean War and was trained to be a marksman at the same level as Lee Harvey Oswald and had the same guns," Carter Jr. said. "[His family] hunted and had rifles. My dad has a fragment in his leg from a gun accident that he had as a kid. He knew what guns sounded like."

Carter Jr. went to the site with his father where he told him what happened.

"We were in the bus right behind Kennedy," he said, mimicking his dad, "'The shot came from right here, and I heard it,' he said as he pointed out the window toward the Book Depository Building. There was no doubt in his mind that it occurred the way it was presented."

Carter Jr. said he was raised west of Moore, but when he set up his veterinary practice, his father moved to Norman to be closer to grandkids and great grandkids.

Brian King covers education and politics for The Transcript. Reach him at bking@normantranscript.com.