Given how tight knit some organizations are, I'd be willing to bet someone was being protected. Out that person, and you are likely to start the dominoes falling. It may not have been an official hangman's noose, but I'm sure the message got through as intended.

bertha dear, many decades ago I was a member of IATSE. I remember being tested on knots at the old Labor Temple in Belltown. There were a few that looked like nooses and that might have been one of them.