Frank Sturgis

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For the president of the New York Stock Exchange from 1892–1894, see Frank K. Sturgis.

Frank Anthony Sturgis
Born
Frank Angelo Fiorini

(1924-12-09)December 9, 1924
Norfolk, Virginia, United States
DiedDecember 4, 1993(1993-12-04) (aged 68)
Miami, United States
Occupation(s)Military, spies
Watergate scandal
The Watergate complex in 2006
Events
List
People
Watergate burglars
Groups
CRP
White House
Judiciary
Journalists
Intelligence community
Congress
Related

Frank Anthony Sturgis (December 9, 1924 – December 4, 1993), born Frank Angelo Fiorini, was one of the five Watergate burglars whose capture led to the end of the presidency of Richard Nixon.[1]

He served in several branches of the United States military and in the Cuban Revolution of 1958, worked as an undercover operative for the Central Intelligence Agency,[2] and was alleged to be involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Early life and military service

When still a child, his family moved to

Second World War.[3]

"On April 14, 1942,

guerrilla tactics and gathering intelligence, which became useful in his later events.[citation needed
]

Honorably discharged as a

Virginia Polytechnic Institute but left college and joined the Norfolk Police Department on June 5, 1946.[6] 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 18 months, he managed the Havana-Madrid tavern in Norfolk that catered to foreigners, mostly Cuban merchant seamen.[citation needed
]

On November 9, 1947, Fiorini joined the

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 Soviet Union. Fiorini started to believe Russia was a threat, and he became a lifelong militant. 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.[7]

On September 23, 1952, Frank Fiorini filed a petition in the Circuit Court of the City of Norfolk, Virginia, to change his name to Frank Anthony Sturgis, adopting the surname of his stepfather Ralph Sturgis, whom his mother had married in 1937. His new name closely resembled that of Hank Sturgis, the fictional hero of E. Howard Hunt's 1949 novel, Bimini Run, whose life parallels Frank Sturgis's life from 1942 to 1949 in certain salient respects.[8]

Moves to Cuba, joins Castro forces

In 1956, Sturgis moved to Cuba, and went to Mexico, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama and Honduras. Sturgis moved to Miami in 1957, where the Cuban wife of his uncle Angelo Vona introduced him to former Cuban president Carlos Prío, who joined with other Cubans opposing dictator Fulgencio Batista to plot their return to power. Now Frank had gotten together with an old friend, Richard Sanderlin who was also a Norfolk, Virginia native. Once they had relocated to Miami, Florida, they began an arms and munition smuggling operation into Cuba, bound for the rebels of Fidel Castro. They were sending money to Mexico to support Fidel Castro, whose 26th of July Movement had arranged a meeting between CIA Inspector General Lyman Kirkpatrick and their representatives in 1957 by Pepín Bosch, an executive of the Bacardi Corporation.[9] Prio asked Sturgis to go to Cuba to join up with Castro and to report back to the exiled powers in Miami, so he went down and met with Castro.[10] While Richard Sanderlin traveled to the Sierra Maestra Mountains in Oriente Province Cuba, where he began training the Castro rebels, in military strategy, tactics, weapon handling, and hand to hand fighting.

In 1958, Frank made contact with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Cuba at the US Consulate in Santiago. He worked as an informer for the agency with his control officer Sam Jenis. Sturgis also became involved running guns to Cuba,[2] along with mobster Santo Trafficante,[11] and not surprisingly was arrested for illegal possession of arms, but released without charge. In 1959, Sturgis had contact with casinos in Cuba and some say met Lewis McWillie, mobster Traficante's man in Cuba, and the manager of the Tropicana Casino who by his own testimony[12] was a known acquaintance of Jack Ruby.[13]

Sturgis met up with Castro and his 400 rebels in the

International Armament Corporation in Alexandria, Virginia. Sturgis explained later that he chose to throw in with Castro rather than Prío because Fidel was a soldier, a man of action, whereas Prío was a politician, more a man of words.[14]

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.[15] When Castro seized power, a rebel firing squad on San Juan Hill executed 71 of their opponents on January 11, 1959, into an awaiting 40-foot (12.2 m) ditch that had been opened with a bulldozer. Although Sturgis did not take part in the execution, he was photographed afterwards holding a rifle on top of the covered mass grave.[16]

Sturgis, with a 26 of July Movement armband, stands on a mass grave of 71 Batista supporters at San Juan Hill on Jan. 11, 1959.

His friend Richard Sanderlin, completed the training of Raul Castros Second Front, and led a guerrilla band into combat operations against the Cuban army of Batista.

Castro then 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 Movement.[17] Sturgis went to Miami on June 2, 1959, with Alan McDonald while "supervising the investigation of several American gamblers with criminal records that operate casinos in Havana." They requested from Metropolitan Criminal Intelligence Supervisor Frank Kappel information on "Meyer and Jake Lansky, Joe Silesi aka Joe Rivers and Santos Trafficante," that was provided to them six days later after the Cuban government sent an official written request.[18] He was introduced to two men that were transported to Cuba from Venezuela to assist in the organization of the revolution and Frank saw they were clearly communist. He began to sound out those that he knew were anti-communist including Camilo Cienfuegos, as he knew leaders like Raúl Castro and Che Guevara were communist, but he was unsure about Fidel Castro. Sturgis defected the following month with Revolutionary Air Force chief Commandant Pedro Luis Díaz Lanz[19] and they joined the anti-Castro exile opposition.

Sturgis participated with him a few months later in an anti-Castro leaflet-dropping raid over Cuba. Sturgis formed the Anti-Communist Brigade which Hans Tanner in his book "Counter-Revolutionary Agent", says the organization was "being financed by dispossessed hotel and gambling owners" from Cuba. The Border Patrol in Miami reported that Sturgis was involved in a CIA operation being financed by Sergio Rojas (former Cuban Ambassador to Great Britain) to overthrow Castro. It has been claimed, with little in the way of evidence, that Sturgis was involved in helping the CIA organize the

House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA).[24]

Sturgis was claimed to be a member of

Cuban government after the Bay of Pigs Invasion.[26]
The operation was concentrating on Cuba and were operating out of Mexico.

Despite his claimed involvement in numerous CIA sponsored operations including the Bay of Pigs invasion, the 1975

Rockefeller Commission succinctly states that "Frank Sturgis was not an employee or agent of the CIA either in 1963 or at any other time."[27]

Watergate burglary 1972

Frank Sturgis and Bernard Barker, 1960 (top) and 1972
Main article: Watergate scandal

On June 17, 1972, Sturgis,

Watergate office complex in Washington. The White House office telephone number of CIA officer E. Howard Hunt was found in address books of the burglars. Reporters were able to link the break-in to the White House. The burglars had successfully entered into the same location several weeks earlier, but returned to fix a malfunctioning device and to photograph more documents. 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.

Sturgis was portrayed in All the President's Men, the 1976 film retelling the events of the Watergate scandal, by Ron Hale.

Prison and later investigations

In January 1973, Sturgis, Hunt, Gonzalez, Martinez, Barker, G. Gordon Liddy and James W. McCord were convicted of conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping.

Sturgis was convicted in 1973 with Max Gonzalez and

Eglin, Florida.

Sturgis leaves the Miami federal courthouse building in handcuffs after being convicted in 1973 of taking cars stolen in Texas to Mexico.

After leaving prison, Sturgis served as a Miami police informant and continued providing intelligence on the anti-Castro activities of Dr. Orlando Bosch.[30]

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 these operations even to American political leaders".[31] In response to Sturgis' repeated braggadocio to the news media, the CIA issued a public statement on May 30, 1975, indicating that he had never been connected with them "in any way."[32]

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."

Sturgis was denied a pardon by President Jimmy Carter.[33]

JFK conspiracy allegations

Sturgis has been the subject of various allegations regarding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He also made claims that other individuals were involved in the assassination of Kennedy.

Early allegations: Sturgis as one of the "three tramps"

Main article: Three tramps
The Three Tramps, Sturgis allegedly the one in the middle

Michael Canfield compared photographs of the men to people they believed to be suspects involved in a conspiracy and said that two of the men were Watergate burglars Hunt and Sturgis.[36] Comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory helped bring national media attention to the allegations against Hunt and Sturgis in 1975 after obtaining the comparison photographs from Weberman and Canfield.[36] Immediately after obtaining the photographs, Gregory held a press conference that received considerable coverage and his charges were reported in Rolling Stone and Newsweek.[36][37][38]

The

Rockefeller Commission reported in 1975 that they investigated the allegation that Hunt and Sturgis, on behalf of the CIA, participated in the assassination of Kennedy.[39] The final report of that commission stated that witnesses who testified that the "derelicts" bore a resemblance to Hunt or Sturgis "were not shown to have any qualification in photo identification beyond that possessed by an average layman".[40] Their report also stated that FBI Agent Lyndal L. Shaneyfelt, "a nationally-recognized expert in photoidentification and photoanalysis" with the FBI photographic laboratory, had concluded from photo comparison that none of the men were Hunt or Sturgis.[41] In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations reported that forensic anthropologists had again analyzed and compared the photographs of the "tramps" with those of Hunt and Sturgis, as well as with photographs of Thomas Vallee, Daniel Carswell, and Fred Lee Chrisman.[42] According to the committee, only Chrisman resembled any of the tramps but determined that he was not to be in Dealey Plaza on the day of the assassination.[42] In 1992, journalist Mary La Fontaine discovered the November 22, 1963 arrest records that the Dallas Police Department had released in 1989, which named the three men as Gus W. Abrams, Harold Doyle, and John F. Gedney.[43] According to the arrest reports, the three men were "taken off a boxcar in the railroad yards right after President Kennedy was shot", detained as "investigative prisoners", described as unemployed and passing through Dallas, then released four days later.[43]

Sturgis makes his own allegations

In 1976, Sturgis claimed that he was assigned to investigate any possible role that Cuban exiles may have played in the assassination of Kennedy.

Ramiro Valdés and "an Argentine woman who is believed to have been a Russian KGB agent".[44][45] He said that Ruby had also made several trips to Havana in the months before the assassination in order to arrange deals in which arms would be sold to Cuba and in which illegal drugs from Cuba would be smuggled into the United States.[44] Sturgis also claimed that Lee Harvey Oswald was involved in the conspiracy, and that other governments either were involved in the conspiracy or knew of the conspiracy.[44] He said that his investigation did not reveal that Cuban exiles were involved in the assassination.[44]

Sturgis declined to specifically identify the sources of his information, but noted he said that they included members of the "anti-Castro Cuban underground."[44][45] He further claimed that associates of his involved in intelligence had independently confirmed his report.[44][45] According to Sturgis, his report was made in early 1964 and that it was given to "certain American intelligence agencies, including the Senate Internal Security Committee."[45] He said that he did not know if it had been forwarded to the Warren Commission.[44] Similarly, Sturgis said that information about the 1964 reports had been provided to the Rockefeller Commission as well as the Church Committee's intelligence subcommittee chaired by Richard Schweiker, but that he did not know if they received the actual reports.[44][45]

Sturgis stated he was revealing that he made the reports in order to refute "the leftist element in the country" who claimed the CIA was involved in the assassination of Kennedy.[46] Jack Ruby's brother, Earl, responded to the allegations as "outlandish," "ridiculous," and "absolutely false".[47][48]

In a 1977 television interview conducted by Bill O'Reilly, Sturgis indicated that Alexander Butterfield had notable "associations" with CIA officials, associating himself with the position taken by L. Fletcher Prouty who had made headlines nationwide with his allegation that Butterfield was operating on behalf of the CIA.[49]

Marita Lorenz: Sturgis with Oswald

In September 1977, Marita Lorenz told Paul Meskil of the New York Daily News that she met Oswald in the fall of 1963 at an Operation 40 safe house in the Little Havana section of Miami.[23] According to Lorenz, she met him again before the Kennedy assassination in 1963 in the house of Orlando Bosch, with Sturgis, Pedro Luis Díaz Lanz, and two other Cubans present.[23] She said the men studied Dallas street maps and that she suspected that they were planning on raiding an arsenal.[23] Lorenz stated that she joined the men traveling to Dallas in two cars and carrying "rifles and scopes", but flew back to Miami the day after they arrived.[23] In response to her allegations, Sturgis said he did not recall ever meeting Oswald and reiterated his previous denials of being involved in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy.[23]

On October 31, 1977, Sturgis was arrested in Lorenz's apartment after Lorenz told police that Sturgis threatened her in an attempt to force her to change her testimony to federal investigators.

Manhattan Criminal Court, charges against Sturgis were dropped after the prosecutor told the judge that his office found no evidence of coercion or harassment.[50] Recapping the series of events, Timothy Crouse of The Village Voice described Sturgis and Lorenz as "two of the most notoriously unreliable sources in America".[52]

Posthumous allegations: Hunt's "deathbed confession"

After the death of Hunt in 2007, John Hunt and David Hunt revealed that their father had recorded several claims about himself and others being involved in a conspiracy to assassinate John F. Kennedy.[53][54] In the April 5, 2007 issue of Rolling Stone, John Hunt detailed a number of individuals implicated by his father including Sturgis, as well as Cord Meyer, David Sánchez Morales, David Atlee Phillips, William Harvey and an assassin he termed "French gunman grassy knoll" who many presume was Lucien Sarti.[54][55] The two sons alleged that their father cut the information from his memoirs, American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate and Beyond, to avoid possible perjury charges.[53] According to Hunt's widow and other children, the two sons took advantage of Hunt's loss of lucidity by coaching and exploiting him for financial gain.[53] The Los Angeles Times said they examined the materials offered by the sons to support the story and found them to be "inconclusive".[53]

Portugal, 1980: Camarate Affair

Sturgis is also linked to the assassination, on December 4, 1980, of

Camarate affair. He was named by two of his alleged accomplices, Fernando Farinha Simões and José Esteves, in a written confession,[56]
as the person who pressed the button of the detonator to activate the bomb on the plane.

Later life

In 1979, Sturgis traveled to

Yassir Arafat in Tunis. Arafat shared elements of his peace plan, and Sturgis was debriefed by the CIA on his return.[57]

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 named Autumn.[1]

Notes

  1. ^ a b "Frank A. Sturgis, Is Dead at 68; A Burglar in the Watergate Affair". The New York Times. New York. December 5, 1993. Retrieved December 14, 2014.
  2. ^ a b c Jim Hunt and Bob Risch, Cuba on My Mind: The Secret Lives of Watergate Burglar Frank Sturgis (New York: A Forge Book, December 30, 2009, p. 35.
  3. ^ Jim Hunt and Bob Risch (2011). Warrior. New York: A Forge Book, pp. 25–26.
  4. ^ Central Intelligence Agency. Behind Japanese Lines in Burma: The Stuff of Intelligence Legend (2001). Retrieved 30 May 2012.
  5. ^ Peers, William R. and Dean Brelis. Behind the Burma Road: The Story of America's Most Successful Guerrilla Force. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1963, back cover.
  6. ^ "Frank Fiorini (Sturgis)". Spartacus Educational. September 1997. Retrieved May 5, 2015.
  7. ^ Jim Hunt and Bob Risch, Warrior (New York: A Forge Book, May 2011), pp. 30–44.
  8. Rockefeller Commission
    report denied the suggestion that Sturgis took his present name from the Hunt character, or that the name change was associated in any way with Sturgis' knowing Hunt before 1971 or 1972.
  9. ISBN 9780670019786
    .
  10. ^ Jim Hunt and Bob Risch, Warrior (New York: A Forge Book, May 2011), p. 38.
  11. ^ "Full text of "Hearing 03-16-77 Trafficante"". archive.org.
  12. ^ "TESTIMONY OF LEWIS McWILLIE, LAS VEGAS, NEV". mcadams.posc.mu.edu.
  13. ^ "The Jack Ruby Connection". January 31, 2014.
  14. ^ Jim Hunt and Bob Risch, Warrior (New York: A Forge Book, May 2011), p. 39.
  15. ^ Jim Hunt and Bob Risch, Warrior (New York: A Forge Book, May 2011), p. 43.
  16. ^ Cuba latinamericanstudies.org
  17. ^ Jim Hunt and Bob Risch, Warrior (New York: A Forge Book, May 2011), p. 57.
  18. ^ Official document. Request latinamericanstudies.org
  19. ^ Official document. Cuban revolt latinamericanstudies.org
  20. ^ "The Story of Marita Lorenz: Mistress, Mother, C.I.A. Informant, and Center of Swirling Conspiracy Theories". Vanity Fair. November 1993.
  21. ^ Paterson, Tony (October 7, 2000). "The teenager, Castro and the CIA poison plot" – via www.telegraph.co.uk.
  22. ^ Johnston, Laurie (November 4, 1977). "Police Studying Arrest of Sturgis, Who Denies Threatening Accuser". The New York Times.
  23. ^ a b c d e f g Meskil, Paul (September 20, 1977). "Ex-Spy Says She Drove To Dallas With Oswald & Kennedy 'Assassin Squad'" (PDF). New York Daily News. New York. p. 5. Retrieved March 7, 2013.
  24. ^ "JFK: Gaeton Fonzi on Marita Lorenz". www.jfk-online.com.
  25. ISBN 9781438130187
    . Retrieved October 5, 2015.
  26. ^ Bartlett, Charles (May 11, 1961). "Cuban Terror Unit Barred?". The Palm Beach Post. Palm Beach, Florida. p. 9. Retrieved May 7, 2015.[permanent dead link]
  27. ^ Report to the President by the Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States Chapter 19
  28. ^ Appeal latinamericanstudies.org
  29. ^ Letter to Judge latinamericanstudies.org
  30. ^ Deposition latinamericanstudies.org
  31. ^ Confessions of a Watergate Burglar jfk.hood.edu
  32. ^ CIA demial latinamericanstudies.org
  33. ^ "Ehrlichman Seeks a Pardon for Watergate Crimes". The New York Times. New York. AP. August 15, 1987. Retrieved December 14, 2014.
  34. ISBN 978-0-393-04525-3
    .
  35. ^ a b c Bugliosi 2007, p. 930.
  36. ^ a b c Bugliosi 2007, p. 931.
  37. ISBN 9780932551108
    .
  38. ^ Dallas: new questions and answers, Newsweek, 28 April 1975, pp. 37–38
  39. ^ "Chapter 19: Allegations Concerning the Assassination of President Kennedy". Report to the President by Commission on CIA Activities in the United States. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office. June 1975. p. 251.
  40. ^ Report to the President by Commission on CIA Activities in the United States, Chapter 19 1975, p. 256.
  41. ^ Report to the President by Commission on CIA Activities in the United States, Chapter 19 1975, p. 257.
  42. ^ a b "I.B. Scientific acoustical evidence establishes a high probability that two gunmen fired at President John F. Kennedy. Other scientific evidence does not preclude the possibility of two gunmen firing at the President. Scientific evidence negates some specific conspiracy allegations". Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office. 1979. pp. 91–92.
  43. ^ a b Bugliosi 2007, p. 933.
  44. ^ a b c d e f g h i j "Sturgis Says He Gave Report Of Ruby Plotting With Castro". Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Sarasota, Florida. UPI. July 9, 1976. p. 2E. Retrieved October 20, 2014.
  45. ^ a b c d e f "Ex-operative says Ruby met with Castro". Lawrence Journal-World. Lawrence, Kansas. AP. July 10, 1976. p. 24. Retrieved October 20, 2014.
  46. ^ "Jack Ruby visited Castro". Delaware County Daily Times. Chester, Pennsylvania. Associated Press. July 10, 1976. p. 2. Retrieved October 20, 2014.
  47. ^ "Ruby's Brother Contradicts Story". Florence Times Tri-Cities Daily. Vol. 107, no. 190. Florence, Alabama. UPI. July 10, 1976. p. 5. Retrieved October 20, 2014.
  48. ^ "Claim False; Brother of Ruby Says". The Victoria Advocate. Victoria, Texas. AP. July 12, 1976. p. 7A. Retrieved October 20, 2014.
  49. ^ SMU Jones Film. "Bill O'Reilly Interviews Frank Sturgis 1977" (video interview). WFAA Collection.
  50. ^ a b "Sturgis Charges Dropped". Observer-Reporter. Washington, Pennsylvania. AP. November 5, 1977. p. A-5. Retrieved October 20, 2014.
  51. ^ Dunleavy, Steve (November 3, 1977). "Sturgis' Exclusive Story; Marita Pressured By Reds" (PDF). New York Post. New York. pp. 3, 14. Retrieved March 7, 2013.
  52. ^ Crouse, Timothy (November 21, 1977). "Crime and Punishment; Page One Hoax from a Cloak & Dagger Duo". The Village Voice. New York. Retrieved October 20, 2014.
  53. ^ a b c d Williams, Carol J. (March 20, 2007). "Watergate plotter may have a last tale". Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles. Retrieved December 30, 2012.
  54. ^ a b Hedegaard, Erik (April 5, 2007). "The Last Confessions of E. Howard Hunt". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on June 18, 2008.
  55. ISBN 9781597974899
    . Retrieved December 30, 2012.
  56. ISBN 978-9896573430
    .
  57. ^ Jim Hunt and Bob Risch (2011). Warrior. New York: A Forge Book, pp. 313–314.

Bibliography

External links
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Frank_Sturgis&oldid=1216578338"