[Sample B: Approval/Signature Sheet] - George Mason University

assassination plot. Noyes suggested that perhaps Brading posed as a secret service agent
to cover Oswald’s escape from the scene. Noyes accepted the Warren Commission’s
finding that Oswald shot the president, but disagreed about his true motivation.
In the years after the assassination, Brading had ties to organized crime figures
such as Jimmy Fratiano, who was described by a police official as “’the executioner for
the Mafia on the West Coast.” 405 Brading was also a member of the La Costa Country
Club in southern California, a reputed mob hang out. Noyes suggested that Brading was
a courier for the mob and may have been involved in taking millions of dollars skimmed
from Las Vegas casinos out of the country. The journalist declared that “In the
underworld, people like Gene Brading supply the brains; the Fratiannos supply the
muscle and gunpowder.” 406
How does Lee Harvey Oswald fit into all this? Noyes claimed that the Warren
Commission ignored Oswald’s ties to Ferrie, which would connect him with the New
Orleans mob and anti-Castroites. Noyes also accepted the testimony of anti-Castro
Cuban activist Sylvia Odio that Oswald appeared at her doorstep in September 1963 with
two other anti-Castroites. Noyes wrote that Odio had identified one of the other men as
Loran Eugene Hall, a member of the Minutemen paramilitary anti-Communist group that
was also known as Lorenzo Pascillo. During the Warren Commission investigation, Hall
originally had told the FBI that he had visited Odio’s residence with two other men and
that neither of them was Lee Harvey Oswald. Even though the FBI investigation was not
405 Noyes, 51.
406 Noyes, 52.
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