I Heard JFK's Death Shots: A Reporter's Look Back At President John F. Kennedy's 1963 Assassination After 50 Years Page 2

rewrite desk as a “green grassy knoll.” Days later, returning to the scene, I noted that autumn frost had turned the color to brown. Why had I reported the color green? The bus windows wore a fashionable green tint designed to dull sunshine! Mystery solved.

  In my view except for the grass color, subsequent years of research and reflection on those fateful seconds remain the same. Essentially, the same information was reported immediately by UPI, me included, and most other responsible media. On-the-spot reports and long hard investigative accounts weeks, months and years following the assassination all reached the same conclusions.

  Yet, in my observations during the past half century, large numbers of people still do not believe what, to me, is rather strongly substantiated truth. Reviews in keeping with what was reported on that day in November have unfolded and have been repeatedly told in newscasts and print media by independent reporters working for non-government media without censorship or official guidance.

  Even the keen work of the Warren Commission convened by President Lyndon B. Johnson drew critics. Despite these respectful works, many people prefer fiction to facts and cannot be dissuaded.

  Cynical lies promulgated throughout the history of civilization give solid basis for the public’s skepticism that lingers and that is common around the globe.

  Steadily throughout that deadly day one of JFK’s murder, a consistent story unfolded and was moved quickly worldwide on UPI, Associated Press, Reuters, Tass and other news wires and in broadcasts by newsmen on the scene.

  There absolutely was neither censorship nor any government controls that I met nor heard about from any honest journalist. Hard reporting and triple checking facts were the norm. The First Amendment—freedom of the press as guaranteed by the United States Constitution—was tested and proven effective.

  For United Press International, the best writing and editing was by Jack Fallon who sat at a desk in the UPI bureau on McKinley Street in Dallas.

  The dean of the White House press corps, UPI’s Merriman Smith, would justly earn a Pulitzer Prize for his work that day. It reflected a long career covering presidents. Fallon deserved the prize equally although I don’t recall his by-line on a single story or on any dispatch on the UPI news wires. His writing was fast, clear and accurate. Most of the stories carried the traditional and trusted “Merriman Smith” byline.

  I, Joseph H. Carter Sr., happened to be assigned as “back-up” reporter for Smith and a second link with Fallon who wrote and controlled dispatches from a desk in the UPI Dallas news bureau.

  At one point later that year, a couple of agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation came to the UPI bureau seeking insider dope about something that had been reported. Fallon in effect told them to “go to hell” and with guts that were anchored in the Constitution, he ordered them off UPI property where the government agents have no special rights for information under the First Amendment.

  Jack Fallon did most of the critical and massive writing for UPI. Fallon never slacked off. He remained in the bureau, catching naps on a couch, until Wednesday—five nights and days following the shooting.

  After Oswald opened fire at 12:30 p.m., quick-witted Fallon within four minutes had dispatched a “bulletin” on several UPI wires that three shots were fired. This warned editors to “stop the presses” and broadcasters to get on their toes.

  What Fallon dictated, teletype operator Jim Tolbert typed then sent around the world:

  “BULLETIN PRECEDE KENNEDY

  “DALLAS, NOV. 22 (UPI) – THREE SHOTS WERE FIRED TODAY AT PRESIDENT KENNEDY’S MOTORCADE IN DOWNTOWN DALLAS.

  “JT1234PCS.”

  I was aboard one of two press buses located a few cars behind the White House limousine. Quickly regaining speed following the hard left turn at Dealey Plaza, the bus sped down the expressway toward the Dallas Trade Mart where a luncheon was being served.

  At the Trade Mart, I bolted from the bus, slugged a dime into a pay phone and called Fallon. (Cell phones had not been invented.) Fallon confirmed the shots that I had heard and ordered me to “get to Parkland Hospital.”

  Quickly, I dictated details about what I had seen and heard. Then I raced back toward the press bus. Traffic had clogged any chance of a timely exit by the bus.

  Nearby, I noticed an idling limousine with a lone official and a driver. I leaped in the front seat and said: “The President has been shot. Let me show you the way to Parkland Hospital.” In fact, I had no idea where the then little known but soon-to-be-famous institution was located. Red flashing lights and sirens actually guided our race.

  The hospital parking lot was quickly filling. Merriman Smith and other “pool” reporters aboard the press car along with acting Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff followed the bloodied limousine to Parkland ahead of my vehicle.

  Later, I learned, Smith had glanced at the White House limousine and saw that President Kennedy appeared to be dead. Smith watched as emergency room attendants first removed painfully wounded Texas Governor John Connally to clear the way so that President Kennedy could be placed on a stretcher.

  Along with colleagues and Kilduff, Smith then rushed inside the Emergency Room.

  The limousine I had boarded turned into the hospital area. I leaped out and ran up steps to the second floor—the first of newsmen except for the “pool” reporters to reach the hospital.

  Luckily I commandeered a pay telephone on the hospital’s second floor. It cost a dime to call the UPI Dallas bureau.

  Some fifty feet distance from the telephone was a second story window and view of the emergency room parking area where many men like Congressman Jim Wright, later to become Speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives, watched helplessly with tearful eyes.

  Vice President and Mrs. Johnson seemed to have vanished quietly. Mysteriously, it seemed. The limousine that the Johnsons had shared with U. S. Senator Ralph Yarborough of Texas was parked and deserted.

  As fellow reporters arrived on the press bus and began whispering around the make-shift news briefing area, Lyndon Johnson’s safety, condition and whereabouts became a secondary cause of concern.

  Later, we learned that Secret Service Agent Rufus Youngblood wisely had whisked both Johnsons to Air Force One at Love Field using back streets with the Secret Service agent trying to shield their bodies from possible new attacks or assassins.

  The radiant Jackie Kennedy hovered inside the Emergency Room where physicians immediately realized that any treatment was hopeless. Much of JFK’s brain still was in the open-top limousine. A priest had administered last rites.

  “How badly was he hit?” UPI’s Smith asked Secret Service Agent Clint Hill, as he alighted from the car at the hospital parking lot.

  “He’s dead,” Smith later wrote in quoting Agent Hill. To my knowledge, in a questionable act linked with his appreciation of national security, Smith never reported this conversation immediately for the wire. He waited for the official announcement that would come when security of Lyndon Johnson, his wife and other senior officials was somewhat assured. It was understandable and probably prudent thinking on Smith’s part.

  I was the one—there on the second floor of Parkland Hospital—who would use a pay telephone to relay the official announcement to Fallon for the worldwide wires of United Press International which, at that time, was a meaningful force in journalism.

  Texas Governor John Connelly, seriously wounded by a bullet that had passed though Kennedy’s body, was inside the Emergency Room. His uninjured wife, Nellie, walked into the hospital beside his stretcher and remained vigilant as doctors operated, saved his life and left him in a condition to later change parties from Democrat to Republican and become Secretary of the Treasury under President Richard M. Nixon.

  From my pay phone, as minutes elapsed, I passed along facts and my observations to Fallon and warned him that telephones were scarce. I needed help to safeguard my ten-cent investment necessary to continue commandeering the pay phone. Later, we heard that there only were seven
Southwestern Bell telephone trunk lines into the hospital. Telephones were a premium.

  Fellow newsmen were ranting about their inability to find means to call their newsrooms.

  “Damn it, tell me what you know and I’ll get your information on the UPI wires,” I told two reporters who wanted me to surrender my access to the lone pay telephone.

  Over the line, Fallon heard the commotion and quickly dispatched cub reporter Wilborn Hampton to Parkland to assist me on the second floor. Hampton, who lacked a coveted press badge like the one on my lapel, helped keep control of the pay telephone while I cascaded around the second floor. Critical during those long moments UPI owned one line for my dime.

  As the White House press corps news folk mingled in anticipation of a news conference, I kept watch on the growing, milling crowd in the emergency room parking lot. Famous faces were forlorn. Some men wept. They knew nothing more than were visible in the blood and brains left on the presidential Lincoln Continental limousine. I would race back and forth to my coveted pay phone relaying tidbits.

  Quietly, an ambulance-like vehicle drove into the arena and stopped. Minutes passed. The rear door was opened by two attendants.

  “Perhaps,” I wrote to a colleague days later, “I never realized the full gravity of the event until I saw the men wheel out a closed bronze casket, roll it across the parking area,