Retired CBS correspondent Bob Orr moves to SWFL, talks about events

NAPLES, Fla.- Retired CBS News Correspondent Bob Orr has moved to southwest Florida, and spoke Wednesday at the Honor the Free Press event put on by the Marine Corps League and the Naples Press Club.

Orr was on the Justice and Homeland Security beat for CBS when he retired.

He tells WINK News, he has no belief that Dzhokar Tsarnaev, on trial in Boston for the bombing in 2013, was a follower.

“He was fully indoctrinated into the ideology. Any thought that he was just following his brother, or he was a home-grown terrorist only, not so,” said Orr. “The scroll he wrote in the boat where they found him, that was his message to all of us that they did this (the bombing) for Allah, and because we had attacked their lands.”

Orr says one story in his 43 years in TV news touched him like no other — the massacre at the school in Sandy Hook, Connecticut in 2012.

“It makes no sense to gun down first-graders. It brought tears to my eyes, I found it hard to go on the air with the story,” he recalls.

Orr says he won’t miss middle of the night phone calls, telling him of a terrorist threat, and he says he’s enjoyed the weather in Southwest Florida, even though it’s been a tad on the warm side recently!

“My wife and I are enjoying it, people have been very welcoming.  It’s 36 days into retirement, and so far, so good.”