Frank Sturgis
Encyclopedia
Frank Anthony Sturgis born Frank Angelo Fiorini, was one of the Watergate burglars.
. On October 5, 1942, in his senior year of high school, seventeen year old Frank Angelo Fiorini joined the United States Marine Corps
and served under Col. "Red Mike" Merritt A. Edson
in the First Marine Raider Battalion in the Pacific during the Second World War. Honorably discharged as a corporal in 1945, he joined the Norfolk police force on June 5, 1946. He soon discovered a corrupt payoff system and brought it to the attention of his superiors who told him to overlook the illegal activities. On October 5, 1946 he had a confrontation with his sergeant and resigned the same day. For the next eighteen months he managed the Havana-Madrid tavern in Norfolk that catered to foreigners, mostly Cuban merchant seamen.
On November 9, 1947, Fiorini joined the United States Naval Reserve at the Norfolk Naval Air Station and learned to fly while still working at the tavern. He was honorable discharged on August 30, 1948 and joined the United States Army
the next day. He was sent immediately to West Berlin where Russia had closed the land routes during the Berlin Blockade
and he became a member of General Lucius Clay
's honor guard. Two weeks after Russia reopened the land routes on May 11, 1949, Frank was honorably discharged. As a Marine Raider, Fiorini had worked behind enemy lines gathering intelligence, and during his Army tenure in Berlin and Heidelberg, he had a top secret clearance and worked in an intelligence unit whose primary target was the Russian communist totalitarian government. Fiorini saw the threat that Russia posed to the United States, and he became a life-long ardent anti-communist. Returning to Norfolk in 1952, he took a job managing the Cafe Society tavern, then partnered with its owner, Milton Bass, to co-purchase and manage The Top Hat Nightclub in Virginia Beach.
Sturgis attended the Virginia Polytechnic Institute before becoming the manager of the Whitehorse Tavern. While in Norfolk, Virginia
Sturgis attended a few classes at Old Dominion University
.
, to change his name to Frank Anthony Sturgis, adopting the surname of his stepfather Ralph Sturgis, whom his mother had married in 1937. Whether coincidence or not, his new name resembled that of Hank Sturgis, the fictional hero of E. Howard Hunt
's 1949 novel, Bimini Run, whose life parallels Frank Sturgis' life from 1942 to 1949 in certain salient respects.
Sturgis moved to Miami in 1957 where the Cuban wife of his uncle Angelo Vona introduced him to former Cuban president Carlos Prio, who with other anti-Batista Cubans were plotting their return to power. They were sending money to Mexico to support Fidel Castro. Prio asked Sturgis to go to Cuba
to join up with Castro and to report back to the exiled powers in Miami.
Sturgis met up with Castro and his 400 rebels in the Sierra Maestra mountains. Sturgis offered to train Castro’s troops in guerrilla warfare. Castro accepted the offer, but he also had an immediate need for guns and ammunition, so Sturgis became a gunrunner. Using money from anti-Batista Cuban exiles in Miami, Sturgis purchased boatloads of weapons and ammo from CIA weapons expert Samuel Cummings
's International Armament Corporation in Alexandria, Virginia
. Sturgis explained later that he chose to throw in with Castro rather than Prio because Fidel was a soldier, a man of action, whereas Prio was a politician, more a man of words. In March 1958, Sturgis opened a training camp in the Sierra Maestra mountains, where he taught Che Guevara
and other 26th of July Movement
rebel soldiers guerrilla warfare. When the revolution ended in January 1959, Castro appointed Sturgis gambling czar and director of security and intelligence for the air force in addition to his position as a captain in the 26th of July Brigade.
He also spent time in Mexico
, Venezuela
, Costa Rica
, Guatemala
, Panama
, and Honduras
. It is believed that during this time Sturgis worked as a soldier of fortune
or a contract agent for the Central Intelligence Agency
. The 1975 Rockefeller Commission
report, however, found that "Frank Sturgis was not an employee or agent of the CIA either in 1963 or at any other time."
Sturgis also became involved in gunrunning
to Cuba. On July 30, 1958, Sturgis was arrested for illegal possession of arms but was released without charge. There is some evidence that in 1959, Sturgis had contact with Lewis McWillie
, the manager of the Tropicana Casino.
After Fidel Castro
gained control of Cuba, Sturgis formed the International Anti-Communist Brigade. In his book Counter-Revolutionary Agent, Hans Tanner claims that the organization was "being financed by dispossessed hotel and gambling owners" who previously had operated freely under Fulgencio Batista
.
In 1959, Sturgis became involved with Marita Lorenz
, who was then having an affair with Fidel Castro. In January 1960, Sturgis and Lorenz took part in a failed attempt to poison Castro. It is also believed that Sturgis was involved in helping the CIA organize the Bay of Pigs invasion
.
Sturgis was also a member of Operation 40
, a CIA sponsored organization. He later explained: "this assassination group (Operation 40) would upon orders, naturally, assassinate either members of the military or the political parties of the foreign country that you were going to infiltrate and if necessary some of your own members who were suspected of being foreign agents. We were concentrating strictly in Cuba at that particular time. Actually, they were operating out of Mexico, too."
in Miami, Florida
shortly before the assassination of John F. Kennedy
. Buchanan claimed that Oswald had tried to infiltrate the International Anti-Communist Brigade. When he was questioned by the FBI about this story, Sturgis claimed that Buchanan had misquoted him regarding his comments about Oswald.
According to a memo sent by L. Patrick Gray
, acting FBI Director, to H. R. Haldeman
in 1972: "Sources in Miami say he (Sturgis) is now associated with organized crime activities". In his book, Assassination of JFK (1977), Bernard Fensterwald
claims that Sturgis was heavily involved with the Mafia
, particularly with Santo Trafficante
's and Meyer Lansky
's activities in Florida.
The Rockefeller Commission
of the U.S. Congress in 1974 investigated Sturgis and E. Howard Hunt
in connection with the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy
. Specifically, it investigated allegations that E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis were CIA agents and were present in Dallas at the time of the assassination and could have fired the alleged shots from the grassy knoll. Some support for Hunt's involvement came from Kerry Wendell Thornley, who believed he had conversed with Hunt (who Thornley claimed used the alias "Gary Kirstein") on numerous occasions from 1961 to 1963 regarding plans to assassinate John F. Kennedy. Newsweek
magazine reported and printed photographs of three men, including two supposedly resembling Hunt and Sturgis, who were detained at the grassy knoll shortly after the assassination. The Newsweek article stated the official reports that the men were released and were only "railroad bums" who would find shelter sleeping in the boxcars of the trains located near the grassy knoll. According to Newsweek, the men were released without further inquiry.
According to the 1975 Rockefeller Commission
report, Hunt testified that he had never met Sturgis before they were introduced by Bernard Barker
in Miami in 1972. Sturgis testified to the same effect, except that he did not recall whether the introduction had taken place in late 1971 or early 1972. Sturgis further testified that while he had often heard of "Eduardo," a CIA political officer who had been active in the work of the Cuban Revolutionary Council in Miami prior to the Bay of Pigs operation in April 1961, he had never met him and did not know until 1971 or 1972 that "Eduardo" was E. Howard Hunt.
In a deathbed statement released in 2007, Hunt named Sturgis as one of the participants in "The Big Event", which Hunt's son claims to be the code name for the assassination. However Hunt never mentions Kennedy, Oswald, Dallas, or the assassination in any way in the "confession".
On June 17, 1972, Sturgis, Virgilio González, Eugenio Martínez
, Bernard Barker
and James W. McCord, Jr.
were arrested while installing electronic listening devices in the national Democratic Party
campaign offices located at the Watergate office complex in Washington. The phone number of Hunt was found in address books of the burglars. Reporters were able to link the break-in to the White House. Bob Woodward
, a reporter working for the Washington Post was told by a source (Deep Throat
) who was employed by the government that senior aides of President Richard Nixon
had paid the burglars to obtain information about his political opponents.
and James W. McCord were convicted of conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping. While in prison, Sturgis gave an interview to Andrew St. George. Sturgis told St. George: "I will never leave this jail alive if what we discussed about Watergate
does not remain a secret between us. If you attempt to publish what I've told you, I am a dead man."
St. George's article was published in True
magazine in August 1974. Sturgis claims that the Watergate burglars had been instructed to find a particular document in the Democratic Party offices. This was a "secret memorandum from the Castro government" that included details of CIA covert actions. Sturgis said "that the Castro government suspected the CIA did not tell the whole truth about this operations even to American political leaders".
In an interview with New York Daily News
reporter Paul Meskil on June 20, 1975, Sturgis stated, “I was a spy. I was involved in assassination plots and conspiracies to overthrow several foreign governments including Cuba, Panama, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti. I smuggled arms and men into Cuba for Castro and against Castro. I broke into intelligence files. I stole and photographed secret documents. That’s what spies do.”
In 1976, Sturgis gave a series of interviews where he claimed that the assassination of John F. Kennedy had been organized by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara
. According to Sturgis, Lee Harvey Oswald had been working in America as a Cuban agent.
In November 1977, Marita Lorenz gave an interview to the New York Daily News
in which she claimed that a group called Operation 40, that included Sturgis and Lee Harvey Oswald, were involved in a conspiracy to kill both John F. Kennedy and Fidel Castro.
In August 1978, Victor Marchetti
published an article about the assassination of John F. Kennedy in the Liberty Lobby
newspaper, The Spotlight
. In the article, Marchetti argued that the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) had obtained a 1966 CIA memo that revealed Sturgis, Hunt and Gerry Patrick Hemming
had been involved in the plot to kill Kennedy. Marchetti's article also included a story that Marita Lorenz had provided information on this plot. Later that month, Joseph Trento and Jacquie Powers wrote a similar story for the Sunday News Journal.
The House Select Committee on Assassinations did not publish this alleged CIA memo linking its agents to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Hunt now decided to take legal action against the Liberty Lobby and, in December 1981, he was awarded $650,000 in damages. Liberty Lobby appealed to the United States Court of Appeals. It was claimed that Hunt's attorney, Ellis Rubin
, had offered a clearly erroneous instruction as to the law of defamation. The three-judge panel agreed and the case was retried. This time Mark Lane
defended the Liberty Lobby against Hunt's action.
Lane eventually discovered Marchetti's sources. The main source was William Corson. It also emerged that Marchetti had also consulted James Angleton and Alan J. Weberman before publishing the article. As a result of obtaining depositions from David Atlee Phillips
, Richard Helms
, G. Gordon Liddy, Stansfield Turner
and Marita Lorenz, plus a skillful cross-examination by Lane of E. Howard Hunt, the jury decided in January 1995 that Marchetti had not been guilty of libel when he suggested that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated by people working for the CIA.
Lorenz also testified before the House Select Committee on Assassinations where she claimed that Sturgis had been one of the gunmen who fired on John F. Kennedy in Dallas. Sturgis testified that he had been engaged in various "adventures" relating to Cuba, which he believed to have been organized and financed by the CIA.
Sturgis denied that he had been involved in the assassination of Kennedy. Sturgis testified that he was in Miami throughout the day of the assassination, and his testimony was supported by that of his wife and a nephew of his wife. The House committee dismissed Lorenz's testimony, as they were unable to find any other evidence to support it. In 1986, he was interviewed on the television show Inside Edition
claiming that the KGB
was responsible for the assassination.
to help rebels fighting the communist government, which was supported by Cuba
and the Soviet Union
, and to teach guerrilla warfare. In 1981 he went to Honduras
to train Contras
who were fighting Nicaragua
's Sandinista government, which was supported by Cuba and the Soviet Union; the Army of El Salvador; and the Honduras death squads. He made a second trip to Angola and trained rebels in the Angolan bush for Holden Roberto
. He interacted with Venezuelan terrorist Carlos the Jackal
. In 1989 he visited Yassir Arafat in Tunis. Arafat shared elements of his peace plan and Sturgis was debriefed by the CIA on his return.
In an obituary published December 5, 1993, the New York Times quoted Sturgis' lawyer, Ellis Rubin
, as saying that Sturgis died of cancer a week after he was admitted to a veterans hospital in Miami, five days shy of his 69th birthday. It was reported that doctors diagnosed lung cancer that had spread to his kidneys, and that he was survived by a wife, Jan, and a daughter. The Marine Corps performed a twenty-one gun salute and "Taps" at his funeral. As a war veteran, the Veterans Administration
was supposed to provide a headstone, but never did. Sturgis was buried in an unmarked grave in a cemetery south of Miami.
Early Life and Military Service
When still a child, his family moved to Philadelphia, PennsylvaniaPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...
. On October 5, 1942, in his senior year of high school, seventeen year old Frank Angelo Fiorini joined the United States Marine Corps
United States Marine Corps
The United States Marine Corps is a branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for providing power projection from the sea, using the mobility of the United States Navy to deliver combined-arms task forces rapidly. It is one of seven uniformed services of the United States...
and served under Col. "Red Mike" Merritt A. Edson
Merritt A. Edson
Major General Merritt Austin Edson , known as "Red Mike", was a general in the United States Marine Corps. Among the decorations he received was the Medal of Honor, two Navy Crosses, the Silver Star, and two Legions of Merit...
in the First Marine Raider Battalion in the Pacific during the Second World War. Honorably discharged as a corporal in 1945, he joined the Norfolk police force on June 5, 1946. He soon discovered a corrupt payoff system and brought it to the attention of his superiors who told him to overlook the illegal activities. On October 5, 1946 he had a confrontation with his sergeant and resigned the same day. For the next eighteen months he managed the Havana-Madrid tavern in Norfolk that catered to foreigners, mostly Cuban merchant seamen.
On November 9, 1947, Fiorini joined the United States Naval Reserve at the Norfolk Naval Air Station and learned to fly while still working at the tavern. He was honorable discharged on August 30, 1948 and joined the United States Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
the next day. He was sent immediately to West Berlin where Russia had closed the land routes during the Berlin Blockade
Berlin Blockade
The Berlin Blockade was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War and the first resulting in casualties. During the multinational occupation of post-World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway and road access to the sectors of Berlin under Allied...
and he became a member of General Lucius Clay
Lucius Clay
Lucius Clay may refer to:*Lucius D. Clay , American military governor of Germany after World War II*Lucius D. Clay, Jr. , American commander of the Air Defense Command...
's honor guard. Two weeks after Russia reopened the land routes on May 11, 1949, Frank was honorably discharged. As a Marine Raider, Fiorini had worked behind enemy lines gathering intelligence, and during his Army tenure in Berlin and Heidelberg, he had a top secret clearance and worked in an intelligence unit whose primary target was the Russian communist totalitarian government. Fiorini saw the threat that Russia posed to the United States, and he became a life-long ardent anti-communist. Returning to Norfolk in 1952, he took a job managing the Cafe Society tavern, then partnered with its owner, Milton Bass, to co-purchase and manage The Top Hat Nightclub in Virginia Beach.
Sturgis attended the Virginia Polytechnic Institute before becoming the manager of the Whitehorse Tavern. While in Norfolk, Virginia
Norfolk, Virginia
Norfolk is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. With a population of 242,803 as of the 2010 Census, it is Virginia's second-largest city behind neighboring Virginia Beach....
Sturgis attended a few classes at Old Dominion University
Old Dominion University
Old Dominion University is a state university located in Norfolk, Virginia, United States, and is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools...
.
Intelligence activities 1952-1962
On September 23, 1952, Frank Fiorini filed a petition in the Circuit Court of the City of Norfolk, VirginiaNorfolk, Virginia
Norfolk is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. With a population of 242,803 as of the 2010 Census, it is Virginia's second-largest city behind neighboring Virginia Beach....
, to change his name to Frank Anthony Sturgis, adopting the surname of his stepfather Ralph Sturgis, whom his mother had married in 1937. Whether coincidence or not, his new name resembled that of Hank Sturgis, the fictional hero of E. Howard Hunt
E. Howard Hunt
Everette Howard Hunt, Jr. was an American intelligence officer and writer. Hunt served for many years as a CIA officer. Hunt, with G...
's 1949 novel, Bimini Run, whose life parallels Frank Sturgis' life from 1942 to 1949 in certain salient respects.
Sturgis moved to Miami in 1957 where the Cuban wife of his uncle Angelo Vona introduced him to former Cuban president Carlos Prio, who with other anti-Batista Cubans were plotting their return to power. They were sending money to Mexico to support Fidel Castro. Prio asked Sturgis to go to Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
to join up with Castro and to report back to the exiled powers in Miami.
Sturgis met up with Castro and his 400 rebels in the Sierra Maestra mountains. Sturgis offered to train Castro’s troops in guerrilla warfare. Castro accepted the offer, but he also had an immediate need for guns and ammunition, so Sturgis became a gunrunner. Using money from anti-Batista Cuban exiles in Miami, Sturgis purchased boatloads of weapons and ammo from CIA weapons expert Samuel Cummings
Samuel Cummings
Samuel Cummings, was an American small arms dealer. He founded the International Armament Corporation in 1953, a company which came to dominate the free world market in private arms sales.-Biography:Cummings was born in Philadelphia and became interested in weapons after acquiring a Maxim Gun...
's International Armament Corporation in Alexandria, Virginia
Alexandria, Virginia
Alexandria is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of 2009, the city had a total population of 139,966. Located along the Western bank of the Potomac River, Alexandria is approximately six miles south of downtown Washington, D.C.Like the rest of northern Virginia, as well as...
. Sturgis explained later that he chose to throw in with Castro rather than Prio because Fidel was a soldier, a man of action, whereas Prio was a politician, more a man of words. In March 1958, Sturgis opened a training camp in the Sierra Maestra mountains, where he taught Che Guevara
Che Guevara
Ernesto "Che" Guevara , commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat and military theorist...
and other 26th of July Movement
26th of July Movement
The 26th of July Movement was the revolutionary organization planned and led by Fidel Castro that in 1959 overthrew the Fulgencio Batista government in Cuba...
rebel soldiers guerrilla warfare. When the revolution ended in January 1959, Castro appointed Sturgis gambling czar and director of security and intelligence for the air force in addition to his position as a captain in the 26th of July Brigade.
He also spent time in Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
, Venezuela
Venezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...
, Costa Rica
Costa Rica
Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east....
, Guatemala
Guatemala
Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...
, Panama
Panama
Panama , officially the Republic of Panama , is the southernmost country of Central America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the northwest, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The...
, and Honduras
Honduras
Honduras is a republic in Central America. It was previously known as Spanish Honduras to differentiate it from British Honduras, which became the modern-day state of Belize...
. It is believed that during this time Sturgis worked as a soldier of fortune
Mercenary
A mercenary, is a person who takes part in an armed conflict based on the promise of material compensation rather than having a direct interest in, or a legal obligation to, the conflict itself. A non-conscript professional member of a regular army is not considered to be a mercenary although he...
or a contract agent for the Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
. The 1975 Rockefeller Commission
United States President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States
The U.S. President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States was set up under President Gerald Ford in 1975 to investigate the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies within the United States...
report, however, found that "Frank Sturgis was not an employee or agent of the CIA either in 1963 or at any other time."
Sturgis also became involved in gunrunning
Gunrunning
Arms trafficking, also known as gunrunning, is the illegal trafficking or smuggling of contraband weapons or ammunition.The 1997 Report of the UN Panel of Governmental Experts on Small Arms provides a more refined and precise definition, which has become internationally accepted...
to Cuba. On July 30, 1958, Sturgis was arrested for illegal possession of arms but was released without charge. There is some evidence that in 1959, Sturgis had contact with Lewis McWillie
Lewis McWillie
Lewis McWillie testified at the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations Sept. 27, 1978.-References:* at www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk* at www.archives.gov...
, the manager of the Tropicana Casino.
After Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...
gained control of Cuba, Sturgis formed the International Anti-Communist Brigade. In his book Counter-Revolutionary Agent, Hans Tanner claims that the organization was "being financed by dispossessed hotel and gambling owners" who previously had operated freely under Fulgencio Batista
Fulgencio Batista
Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar was the United States-aligned Cuban President, dictator and military leader who served as the leader of Cuba from 1933 to 1944 and from 1952 to 1959, before being overthrown as a result of the Cuban Revolution....
.
In 1959, Sturgis became involved with Marita Lorenz
Marita Lorenz
Marita Lorenz is a German woman who had an affair with Fidel Castro in 1959 and in January 1960 was involved in an assassination attempt by the CIA on Castro's life. She later had a child with the Venezuelan former dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez.In the 1970s she testified regarding the John F...
, who was then having an affair with Fidel Castro. In January 1960, Sturgis and Lorenz took part in a failed attempt to poison Castro. It is also believed that Sturgis was involved in helping the CIA organize the Bay of Pigs invasion
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs Invasion was an unsuccessful action by a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba, with support and encouragement from the US government, in an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. The invasion was launched in April 1961, less than three months...
.
Sturgis was also a member of Operation 40
Operation 40
Operation 40 was a Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored undercover operation in the early 1960s, which was active in the United States and the Caribbean , Central America, and Mexico. It was created by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in March 1960, after the January 1959 Cuban Revolution, and was...
, a CIA sponsored organization. He later explained: "this assassination group (Operation 40) would upon orders, naturally, assassinate either members of the military or the political parties of the foreign country that you were going to infiltrate and if necessary some of your own members who were suspected of being foreign agents. We were concentrating strictly in Cuba at that particular time. Actually, they were operating out of Mexico, too."
Alleged JFK assassination connections
In an article published in the South Florida Sun Sentinel on December 4, 1963, James Buchanan, former reporter for the Pompano Beach Sun-Sentinel, claimed that Sturgis had met Lee Harvey OswaldLee Harvey Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald was, according to four government investigations,These were investigations by: the Federal Bureau of Investigation , the Warren Commission , the House Select Committee on Assassinations , and the Dallas Police Department. the sniper who assassinated John F...
in Miami, Florida
Miami, Florida
Miami is a city located on the Atlantic coast in southeastern Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, the most populous county in Florida and the eighth-most populous county in the United States with a population of 2,500,625...
shortly before the assassination of John F. Kennedy
Assassination of John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States, was assassinated at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas...
. Buchanan claimed that Oswald had tried to infiltrate the International Anti-Communist Brigade. When he was questioned by the FBI about this story, Sturgis claimed that Buchanan had misquoted him regarding his comments about Oswald.
According to a memo sent by L. Patrick Gray
L. Patrick Gray
Louis Patrick Gray III was acting Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from May 2, 1972 to April 27, 1973. During this time, the FBI was in charge of the initial investigation into the burglaries that sparked the Watergate scandal, which eventually led to the resignation of President...
, acting FBI Director, to H. R. Haldeman
H. R. Haldeman
Harry Robbins "Bob" Haldeman was an American political aide and businessman, best known for his service as White House Chief of Staff to President Richard Nixon and for his role in events leading to the Watergate burglaries and the Watergate scandal – for which he was found guilty of conspiracy...
in 1972: "Sources in Miami say he (Sturgis) is now associated with organized crime activities". In his book, Assassination of JFK (1977), Bernard Fensterwald
Bernard Fensterwald
Bernard "Bud" Fensterwald Jr. was an American lawyer who defended James Earl Ray and James W. McCord Jr. Other notable clients included Mitch WerBell, Richard Case Nagell and the widow of John Paisley.-Early life:...
claims that Sturgis was heavily involved with the Mafia
Mafia
The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...
, particularly with Santo Trafficante
Santo Trafficante, Jr.
Santo Trafficante, Jr. was one of the last of the old-time Mafia bosses in the United States. He allegedly controlled organized criminal operations in Florida and Cuba, which had previously been consolidated from several rival gangs by his father, Santo Trafficante, Sr...
's and Meyer Lansky
Meyer Lansky
Meyer Lansky , known as the "Mob's Accountant", was a Polish-born American organized crime figure who, along with his associate Charles "Lucky" Luciano, was instrumental in the development of the "National Crime Syndicate" in the United States...
's activities in Florida.
The Rockefeller Commission
United States President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States
The U.S. President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States was set up under President Gerald Ford in 1975 to investigate the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies within the United States...
of the U.S. Congress in 1974 investigated Sturgis and E. Howard Hunt
E. Howard Hunt
Everette Howard Hunt, Jr. was an American intelligence officer and writer. Hunt served for many years as a CIA officer. Hunt, with G...
in connection with the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
. Specifically, it investigated allegations that E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis were CIA agents and were present in Dallas at the time of the assassination and could have fired the alleged shots from the grassy knoll. Some support for Hunt's involvement came from Kerry Wendell Thornley, who believed he had conversed with Hunt (who Thornley claimed used the alias "Gary Kirstein") on numerous occasions from 1961 to 1963 regarding plans to assassinate John F. Kennedy. Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
magazine reported and printed photographs of three men, including two supposedly resembling Hunt and Sturgis, who were detained at the grassy knoll shortly after the assassination. The Newsweek article stated the official reports that the men were released and were only "railroad bums" who would find shelter sleeping in the boxcars of the trains located near the grassy knoll. According to Newsweek, the men were released without further inquiry.
According to the 1975 Rockefeller Commission
United States President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States
The U.S. President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States was set up under President Gerald Ford in 1975 to investigate the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies within the United States...
report, Hunt testified that he had never met Sturgis before they were introduced by Bernard Barker
Bernard Barker
Bernard Leon Barker , known as "Macho" or by his mother's maiden name, "Terry", was a Watergate burglar, and burglar of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office....
in Miami in 1972. Sturgis testified to the same effect, except that he did not recall whether the introduction had taken place in late 1971 or early 1972. Sturgis further testified that while he had often heard of "Eduardo," a CIA political officer who had been active in the work of the Cuban Revolutionary Council in Miami prior to the Bay of Pigs operation in April 1961, he had never met him and did not know until 1971 or 1972 that "Eduardo" was E. Howard Hunt.
In a deathbed statement released in 2007, Hunt named Sturgis as one of the participants in "The Big Event", which Hunt's son claims to be the code name for the assassination. However Hunt never mentions Kennedy, Oswald, Dallas, or the assassination in any way in the "confession".
Watergate burglary 1972
On June 17, 1972, Sturgis, Virgilio González, Eugenio Martínez
Eugenio Martínez
Eugenio Rolando Martinez was a member of the anti-Castro movement in the early 1960s, and later was one of the five men recruited by G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt in 1972 for the Memorial Day weekend Watergate first break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C...
, Bernard Barker
Bernard Barker
Bernard Leon Barker , known as "Macho" or by his mother's maiden name, "Terry", was a Watergate burglar, and burglar of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office....
and James W. McCord, Jr.
James W. McCord, Jr.
James Walter McCord, Jr. is a former CIA agent, later involved, as an electronics expert, in the Watergate burglaries .-Career:...
were arrested while installing electronic listening devices in the national Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
campaign offices located at the Watergate office complex in Washington. The phone number of Hunt was found in address books of the burglars. Reporters were able to link the break-in to the White House. Bob Woodward
Bob Woodward
Robert Upshur Woodward is an American investigative journalist and non-fiction author. He has worked for The Washington Post since 1971 as a reporter, and is currently an associate editor of the Post....
, a reporter working for the Washington Post was told by a source (Deep Throat
Deep Throat
Deep Throat is the pseudonym given to the secret informant who provided information to Bob Woodward of The Washington Post in 1972 about the involvement of United States President Richard Nixon's administration in what came to be known as the Watergate scandal...
) who was employed by the government that senior aides of President Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
had paid the burglars to obtain information about his political opponents.
Prison and later investigations
In January 1973, Sturgis, Hunt, Gonzalez, Martinez, Barker, G. Gordon LiddyG. Gordon Liddy
George Gordon Liddy was the chief operative for the White House Plumbers unit that existed from July–September 1971, during Richard Nixon's presidency. Separately, along with E. Howard Hunt, Liddy organized and directed the Watergate burglaries of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in...
and James W. McCord were convicted of conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping. While in prison, Sturgis gave an interview to Andrew St. George. Sturgis told St. George: "I will never leave this jail alive if what we discussed about Watergate
Watergate scandal
The Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement...
does not remain a secret between us. If you attempt to publish what I've told you, I am a dead man."
St. George's article was published in True
True (magazine)
True, also known as True, The Man's Magazine, was published by Fawcett Publications from 1937 until 1974. Known as True, A Man's Magazine in the 1930s, it was labeled True, #1 Man's Magazine in the 1960s. Petersen Publishing took over with the January 1975, issue...
magazine in August 1974. Sturgis claims that the Watergate burglars had been instructed to find a particular document in the Democratic Party offices. This was a "secret memorandum from the Castro government" that included details of CIA covert actions. Sturgis said "that the Castro government suspected the CIA did not tell the whole truth about this operations even to American political leaders".
In an interview with New York Daily News
New York Daily News
The Daily News of New York City is the fourth most widely circulated daily newspaper in the United States with a daily circulation of 605,677, as of November 1, 2011....
reporter Paul Meskil on June 20, 1975, Sturgis stated, “I was a spy. I was involved in assassination plots and conspiracies to overthrow several foreign governments including Cuba, Panama, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti. I smuggled arms and men into Cuba for Castro and against Castro. I broke into intelligence files. I stole and photographed secret documents. That’s what spies do.”
In 1976, Sturgis gave a series of interviews where he claimed that the assassination of John F. Kennedy had been organized by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara
Che Guevara
Ernesto "Che" Guevara , commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat and military theorist...
. According to Sturgis, Lee Harvey Oswald had been working in America as a Cuban agent.
In November 1977, Marita Lorenz gave an interview to the New York Daily News
New York Daily News
The Daily News of New York City is the fourth most widely circulated daily newspaper in the United States with a daily circulation of 605,677, as of November 1, 2011....
in which she claimed that a group called Operation 40, that included Sturgis and Lee Harvey Oswald, were involved in a conspiracy to kill both John F. Kennedy and Fidel Castro.
In August 1978, Victor Marchetti
Victor Marchetti
Victor Marchetti is a former special assistant to the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and a prominent paleoconservative critic of the United States Intelligence Community and the Israel lobby in the United States....
published an article about the assassination of John F. Kennedy in the Liberty Lobby
Liberty Lobby
Liberty Lobby was an American political advocacy organization founded in 1958 that went bankrupt in 2001. It was founded by Willis Carto. In their own words,-Antisemitic world-view:...
newspaper, The Spotlight
The Spotlight
The Spotlight was a weekly newspaper in the United States, published in Washington, D.C. from September 1975 to July 2001 by the now-defunct Liberty Lobby...
. In the article, Marchetti argued that the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) had obtained a 1966 CIA memo that revealed Sturgis, Hunt and Gerry Patrick Hemming
Gerry Patrick Hemming
Gerald Patrick "Gerry" Hemming, Jr. was a former U.S. Marine, mercenary and Central Intelligence Agency operative associated with attacks against on Cuba in the 1960s.-Early background:One of eleven children, Hemming born in Los Angeles, California on March 1, 1937...
had been involved in the plot to kill Kennedy. Marchetti's article also included a story that Marita Lorenz had provided information on this plot. Later that month, Joseph Trento and Jacquie Powers wrote a similar story for the Sunday News Journal.
The House Select Committee on Assassinations did not publish this alleged CIA memo linking its agents to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Hunt now decided to take legal action against the Liberty Lobby and, in December 1981, he was awarded $650,000 in damages. Liberty Lobby appealed to the United States Court of Appeals. It was claimed that Hunt's attorney, Ellis Rubin
Ellis Rubin
Ellis S. Rubin was an American attorney in Miami, Florida who gained national fame for handling a variety of highly publicized cases in a legal career that spanned 53 years. He was famous for his innovative defenses and his propensity for handling lost causes. Rubin won the first case in Florida...
, had offered a clearly erroneous instruction as to the law of defamation. The three-judge panel agreed and the case was retried. This time Mark Lane
Mark Lane (author)
Mark Lane is an American lawyer who has written many books, including Rush to Judgment, one of two major books published in the immediate wake of the John F. Kennedy assassination that questioned the conclusions of the Warren Commission. Another book, Plausible Denial, published in 1991, continued...
defended the Liberty Lobby against Hunt's action.
Lane eventually discovered Marchetti's sources. The main source was William Corson. It also emerged that Marchetti had also consulted James Angleton and Alan J. Weberman before publishing the article. As a result of obtaining depositions from David Atlee Phillips
David Atlee Phillips
David Atlee Phillips was a Central Intelligence Agency officer for 25 years, one of a handful of people to receive the Career Intelligence Medal. He rose to become the CIA's chief of all operations in the Western hemisphere...
, Richard Helms
Richard Helms
Richard McGarrah Helms was the Director of Central Intelligence from 1966 to 1973. He was the only director to have been convicted of lying to the United States Congress over Central Intelligence Agency undercover activities. In 1977, he was sentenced to the maximum fine and received a suspended...
, G. Gordon Liddy, Stansfield Turner
Stansfield Turner
Stansfield M. Turner is a retired Admiral and former Director of Central Intelligence. He is currently a senior research scholar at the University of Maryland, College Park School of Public Policy....
and Marita Lorenz, plus a skillful cross-examination by Lane of E. Howard Hunt, the jury decided in January 1995 that Marchetti had not been guilty of libel when he suggested that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated by people working for the CIA.
Lorenz also testified before the House Select Committee on Assassinations where she claimed that Sturgis had been one of the gunmen who fired on John F. Kennedy in Dallas. Sturgis testified that he had been engaged in various "adventures" relating to Cuba, which he believed to have been organized and financed by the CIA.
Sturgis denied that he had been involved in the assassination of Kennedy. Sturgis testified that he was in Miami throughout the day of the assassination, and his testimony was supported by that of his wife and a nephew of his wife. The House committee dismissed Lorenz's testimony, as they were unable to find any other evidence to support it. In 1986, he was interviewed on the television show Inside Edition
Inside Edition
Inside Edition is a thirty-minute American television syndicated news program, first aired on CBS on October 9, 1988. It was originally similar to the programs Hard Copy and A Current Affair, but now more closely resembles a condensed version of breakfast television, exclusively with pre-recorded...
claiming that the KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
was responsible for the assassination.
Later life
In 1979 Sturgis traveled to AngolaAngola
Angola, officially the Republic of Angola , is a country in south-central Africa bordered by Namibia on the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the north, and Zambia on the east; its west coast is on the Atlantic Ocean with Luanda as its capital city...
to help rebels fighting the communist government, which was supported by Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
and the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, and to teach guerrilla warfare. In 1981 he went to Honduras
Honduras
Honduras is a republic in Central America. It was previously known as Spanish Honduras to differentiate it from British Honduras, which became the modern-day state of Belize...
to train Contras
Contras
The contras is a label given to the various rebel groups opposing Nicaragua's FSLN Sandinista Junta of National Reconstruction government following the July 1979 overthrow of Anastasio Somoza Debayle's dictatorship...
who were fighting Nicaragua
Nicaragua
Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...
's Sandinista government, which was supported by Cuba and the Soviet Union; the Army of El Salvador; and the Honduras death squads. He made a second trip to Angola and trained rebels in the Angolan bush for Holden Roberto
Holden Roberto
Holden Álvaro Roberto founded and led the National Liberation Front of Angola from 1962 to 1999. His memoirs are unfinished.-Early life:...
. He interacted with Venezuelan terrorist Carlos the Jackal
Carlos the Jackal
Ilich Ramírez Sánchez , better known as Carlos the Jackal, is a Venezuelan pro-Palestinian currently serving a life sentence in France for shooting to death two French secret agents and a Lebanese informer in 1975....
. In 1989 he visited Yassir Arafat in Tunis. Arafat shared elements of his peace plan and Sturgis was debriefed by the CIA on his return.
In an obituary published December 5, 1993, the New York Times quoted Sturgis' lawyer, Ellis Rubin
Ellis Rubin
Ellis S. Rubin was an American attorney in Miami, Florida who gained national fame for handling a variety of highly publicized cases in a legal career that spanned 53 years. He was famous for his innovative defenses and his propensity for handling lost causes. Rubin won the first case in Florida...
, as saying that Sturgis died of cancer a week after he was admitted to a veterans hospital in Miami, five days shy of his 69th birthday. It was reported that doctors diagnosed lung cancer that had spread to his kidneys, and that he was survived by a wife, Jan, and a daughter. The Marine Corps performed a twenty-one gun salute and "Taps" at his funeral. As a war veteran, the Veterans Administration
United States Department of Veterans Affairs
The United States Department of Veterans Affairs is a government-run military veteran benefit system with Cabinet-level status. It is the United States government’s second largest department, after the United States Department of Defense...
was supposed to provide a headstone, but never did. Sturgis was buried in an unmarked grave in a cemetery south of Miami.
See also
- First Marine Raider Battalion
- Cuban RevolutionCuban RevolutionThe Cuban Revolution was an armed revolt by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement against the regime of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista between 1953 and 1959. Batista was finally ousted on 1 January 1959, and was replaced by a revolutionary government led by Castro...
- Operation 40Operation 40Operation 40 was a Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored undercover operation in the early 1960s, which was active in the United States and the Caribbean , Central America, and Mexico. It was created by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in March 1960, after the January 1959 Cuban Revolution, and was...
- Bay of Pigs InvasionBay of Pigs InvasionThe Bay of Pigs Invasion was an unsuccessful action by a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba, with support and encouragement from the US government, in an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. The invasion was launched in April 1961, less than three months...
- John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theoriesJohn F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theoriesThere has long been suspicion of a government cover-up of information about the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. There are also numerous conspiracy theories regarding the assassination that arose soon after his death and continue to be promoted today...
- Watergate burglaries
- Watergate ScandalWatergate scandalThe Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement...
- E. Howard HuntE. Howard HuntEverette Howard Hunt, Jr. was an American intelligence officer and writer. Hunt served for many years as a CIA officer. Hunt, with G...
- "Macho" Bernard BarkerBernard BarkerBernard Leon Barker , known as "Macho" or by his mother's maiden name, "Terry", was a Watergate burglar, and burglar of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office....