1977 Critics Conference

[Steve Thomas]

I was reading through the transscript of a Conference Robert Blakey had with people like Mary Ferrell, Sylvia Meagher, Larry Harris, Gary Shaw, Peter Dale Scott and Josiah Thompson.

Pretty interesting stuff, including the names of some of the residents at 1026 N. Beckley.

They also said that half of the people at the Sportsdrome shooting range at the time LHO was supposed to have been there were Dallas Policemen.

You can find it here:

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/....do?docId=10375

There was some interest expressed in a guy named Manuel Rodriguez Alcaldero.

Anybody ever heard of him?

[J. Raymond Carroll]

I was reading through the transscript of a Conference Robert Blakey had with people like Mary Ferrell, Sylvia Meagher, Larry Harris, Gary Shaw, Peter Dale Scott and Josiah Thompson.

Pretty interesting stuff, including the names of some of the residents at 1026 N. Beckley.

They also said that half of the people at the Sportsdrome shooting range at the time LHO was supposed to have been there were Dallas Policemen.

You can find it here:

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/....do?docId=10375

There was some interest expressed in a guy named Manuel Rodriguez Alcaldero.

Anybody ever heard of him?

Good job on posting this. I read this transcript some years ago, but it is great to have it in electronic form (I have so many papers lying around that I could never find this particular item, but now I can find it via computer).

I am up to page 71, and it is hard to stop laughing at the efforts to find a link between Jack Ruby and Lee Oswald. It reminds me of Ray and Mary La Fontaine. So far, the most intelligent and knowledgable person in the room is Sylvia Meagher, though it seems no one can hear her. Josiah Thompson is the most intelligent MAN in the room, but so far he hasn't said much, beyond scorning Garrison.

This is a historic document, make no mistake.

[Brian LeCloux]

What these critics failed to recognize was that there wasn't going to be a real investigation by the time of this conference. Harold Weisberg had told the first director, Richard Sprague that if he had actually tried to investigate the case---as he did with Robert K. Tanenbaum assisting---he'd be "cut off at the knees", which of course, he was by the corporate mainstream media, Congress and the CIA. That's why Tanenbaum wouldn't carry on after Sprague was terminated. There wasn't going to be a real murder investigation and there never has been an official one in all these years. And that's maybe why some of the "A Team" of critics: Weisberg, David R. Wrone, Howard Roffman, etc. wouldn't have anything to do with this committee and this meeting.

[Steve Thomas]

There was some interest expressed in a guy named Manuel Rodriguez Alcaldero.

Anybody ever heard of him?

In researching something else, I believe that this is a garbled version of the name, Manolito Rodriguez, aka

Manuel Rodriguez Occarberro.

According to Dave Reitzes in the alt.assassination.jfk Usenet Group:

Rodriguez, born in Cuba in 1928 and living in the US since 1960, was in 1963

the President of the Dallas Chapter of Alpha-66, the anti-Castro paramilitary

group based in Miami and funded by the CIA through David Atlee Phillips, aka

"Maurice Bishop." Rodriguez was also an officer of an organization called the

Second National Front of Escambray. Rodriguez told the FBI (in Spanish) that

Alpha-66 held meetings at 3126 Hollandale in Oak Cliff, and that he had no

contact "with any American persons or other persons" concerning arms purchases

(FBI report of SA Wallace Heitman).

The CIA sent a teletype to the Miami FBI office that an informant called "'D'

reports one Manuel Rodriguez (matronym unknown) living in Dallas, Texas, was

known to be violently anti-President Kennedy" (CIA 88-27). The Secret Service

also received this report and rather belatedly issued a Protective Research

Memorandum on Manuel Rodriguez Occarberro, describing him as "violently

anti-Kennedy." On the evening following the assassination, an informant

reported to Deputy Sheriff Buddy Walthers that Oswald had been seen attending

meetings of the Alpha-66 group at "3128 Hollendale" in Oak Cliff (7 H 548; 19 H

503, 505).

The CIA -- Alpha-66's sponsor -- denied that any such address existed. The FBI

revealed in 1975 that the actual address at 3126 Harlendale Street; it had been

vacated about a week before the assassination. The Bureau turned up 1963

Alpha-66 fundraising letters mailed from this address signed by "Manuel

Rodriguez, General Secretary of Alpha-66."

Steve Thomas