Pseudonym: Pascillo, Lorenzo
1993.07.20.15:50:50:400600: LORAN EUGENE HALL, 1959-1977 (OS/SAG FILE FOR HSCA REVIEW)
Loran E. Hall of Wichita, Kansas, aka Lorenzo Pascillo aka Skip Hall was considered for debrief by the CIA's Domestics Contact Division after his release from Cuban prison in July 1959, but the FBI said he was interviewed by them that month and his credibility was questionable. The request for clearance was cancelled. He was polygraphed by the John Birch Society in Sept 1963 and he was described as "vehemently anti-Jewish." See 1993.08.05.14:39:14:810028 - p. 186 - notes of FBI interview with Hall on 7/28/59. Also see 104-10217-10296, p. 14, for more on the interview.
1/23/63, Larry Grove, Dallas Morning News - In his column "Poor Larry's Almanack", the headline is "Hemming Wages Own War Against Communist Cuba": The article is about INTERPEN members Gerry Hemming and Lorenzo Hall, "Old Cuba buddies". The focus is on the arrest of Hemming and 12 other men at Marathon Key for planning to violate the Neutrality Act - Hemming said they were only involved in training exercises. A photo of Hemming and Hall is featured in the article. See 180-10118-10115, p. 59-61, 98-102: Hemming introduced Hall to geologist Lester Logue and Gen. Edwin Walker in Jan. 1963. Hall met Logue again in the autumn of 1963, before his arrest, and Logue got him an attorney after his arrest. Hall had a background in military intelligence in the late 40s-early 50s.
Sept.-Oct. 1963: Lorenzo Pascillo aka Loran Hall and Skip Hall and Gerry Patrick aka Gerry Hemming were sent by Dick Watley to visit Richard Hatchcock in Los Angeles, who loaned them a 30 06 rifle when he learned they were broke. Hall retrieved the rifle on 9/18/13 and paid $50 for it. Dr. Tirso del Junco/AMBLESS-3 said he remembered Hall in the LA area in early 1963 as the campaign manager for the unsuccessful Congressional campaign of candidate Guy Gabaldon.
10/17/63, FBI memo by Harlan Brown: L.D. Stringfellow, Special Services Bureau, reported to the FBI that Loran Hall and William Seymour have been arrested for possession of dangerous drugs - paregoric, four dexedrine tablets and pills in a bottle labeled Appetrol. Hall asked to speak to the FBI. He reported these drugs were donated by doctors who were anti-Castro sympathizers. He claimed he was a CRC captain in Miami; and Seymour was also with the CRC. CRC directors Tony Varona/AMDIP-1 and Louise Botofill (an apparent reference to Luis Botifoll, CRC public relations chief) can always locate him. Hall's date of birth was 1/4/30, born in Newton, Kansas - his attorney was Walker confidant Robert Morris. Hall had spent two months with Gerry Hemming in Miami earlier that year.
1993.07.20.15:50:50:400600: LORAN EUGENE HALL, 1959-1977 (OS/SAG FILE FOR HSCA REVIEW)
10/17/63: Loran Hall wrote an article for the National Enquirer stating that on 10/17/63 he was offered $50,000 to kill JFK by a fascist at a right wing meeting. "I was in Dallas for two reasons. I had meetings with right wingers to discuss funding for La Sambra guerrilla raids. I also had to pick up a trailer load of guns, ammunition and medical aid for La Sambra. Before I met with the right wingers, cops picked me up on a fake charge of possessing dangerous drugs...I was being set up for the Kennedy killing. Not as a conspirator, or as a patsy, but as a smoke screen. My arrest was for the records. To show that Loran Hall, anti-Castro fighter, was in Dallas just before President Kennedy was killed. Anyone investigating the assassination would come up with my name, and figure this guy might have a reason for the killing, because Kennedy didn't back the anti-Castro movement. They would waste time investigating me while the real killers covered their tracks. That's in fact what happened...Sylvia Odio, an exiled Cuban...testified to the Warren Commission that she was certain Lee Harvey Oswald was one of the three men who visited her in her Dallas apartment in 1963...The FBI men (interviewed me) obviously wanted to rule out (Oswald) having visited Mrs. Odio. I told them nothing. (But the interview reported) I visited Mrs. Odio...The truth is I've never seen Mrs. Odio. I never approached her for funds..." 9/1/68 National Enquirer article, part 1.
Dick Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1992), pp. 481-482
Circa 10/17/63: Hall told interviewer Dick Russell that at he and William Seymour were visited in jail by agents from FBI, CIA, and military intelligence. The military man "wanted to know some areas where I'd been inside Cuba." Both Hall and Lawrence Howard believed they were being set up as "fall guys" in an Oswald-oriented conspiracy. Hall said he remembered a Dallas-based Cuban exile, Nico Crespi, saying "we're going downtown, Oswald's giving a talk, and we're going to harass him." Hall told Russell "when I read my supposed statements in the Warren Report, not one thing resembled what I'd said or the questions I'd been asked."
9/16/64 interview with Loran Hall by SA Leon F. Brown. Brown quotes Hall as saying he went to a home on Magellan Circle with William Seymour and Lawrence Howard, and "her name was possibly Odio". Says that Howard's alias was Alonzo Escurido. At p. 36: Howard says he remembers no contacts with a woman named Odio at Magellan Circle. At p. 39: Hall interviewed again on 9/20/64 by Brown, says that Odio statement was in error, although he knows her father Amador Odio. Never saw her, and was with Seymour and Howard in separate trips to Dallas. Stayed two days at YMCA after arrest, then DA (Henry) Wade told him that the drug charges were dropped. At p. 45: Seymour interviewed on 9/18/64, states never met Odio and that he and Hall were together in Dallas in October, not September.
1993.08.05.14:39:14:810028: SECURITY FILE ON FRANK STURGIS
Michael Canfield and Alan Weberman, Coup D'Etat in America, Chapter 8 - Loran Hall and the Free Cuba Committees, pp. 135-137: "In the early fall of 1963 Hall, towing a trailer-load of arms to the INTERPEN-IAB training camp at No Name, was arrested by federal agents...(Howard told the FBI that he knew Kiki Masferrer, the brother of Rolando Masferrer/AMBLYGON)...Rolando was a member of the Christian Democratic Movement, which shared personnel with (Frank Sturgis') IAB...Hall's timing was perfect. His first statement to the FBI (in the 9/16/64 report, before it was corrected in the follow-up 9/20/64 report) was included on page 324 of the Warren Report...'the Commission has concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was not at Ms. Odio's apartment in September of 1963.' No mention was made of the fact that Hall retracted his statement or that when the Odio sisters were shown pictures of Hall, Seymour, Howard and a certain Mr. Alba they said these were certainly not the men who had visited them...(also, Richard) Hatchcock volunteered the information that Hall paid for the rifle with a check drawn on "The Committee to Free Cuba"...(this could have led to a can of worms - "Free Cuba Committee" was led by Eladio Del Valle; Citizens for a Free Cuba was led by Guy Bannister; Crusade to Free Cuba was led by the CRC; Citizens Committee for a Free Cuba, Cuban Freedom Committee, and Free Cuba Committee were all based in one DC and all one organization, led by Paul Bethel.
1993.07.20.15:50:50:400600: LORAN EUGENE HALL, 1959-1977 (OS/SAG FILE FOR HSCA REVIEW)
"...(After two suspicious car accidents in April 1968), "I figured Garrison was the best man to tell after he assured me there would be no conspiracy charge, I went to New Orleans voluntarily on May 5, and told him everything. I spent 18 hours with Garrison and his investigators. Evidence that Garrison showed me, but I cannot reveal, convinced me that I was right in believing the radical right wingers certainly killed President John Kennedy and Martin Luther King. And the CIA was in it up to their necks. The triggermen were different, but the planning was done by the same people...I hope now I can fade out of the spotlight." Jim Garrison issued a statement on 5/10/68 stating that "Hall proved to be a helpful witness for our inquiry because of his extensive experience in anti-Cuban raids from Florida in the early 1960s...our office is indebted to him for his help in our investigation."