Frank Anthony Sturgis (December 9, 1924 – December 4, 1993), born Frank Angelo Fiorini, was an American CIA agent who was one of the five Watergate burglars whose capture led to the end of the presidency of Richard Nixon.
Sturgis 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,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. and is alleged by conspiracy theorists to have been involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Early life and military service When still a child, his family, which was of Italian heritage, moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. On October 5, 1942, in his senior year of high school, 17-year-old Frank Angelo Fiorini joined the United States Marine Corps and served under Colonel "Red Mike" Merritt A. Edson in the First Marine Raider Battalion in the Pacific Theater during the Second World War.Jim Hunt and Bob Risch (2011). Warrior. New York: A Forge Book, pp. 25–26.
"On April 14, 1942, William Donovan, as Coordinator of Information (forerunner of the Office of Strategic Services), activated units charged with gathering intelligence, harassing the Japanese through guerrilla actions, identifying targets for the Army Air Force to bomb, and rescuing downed Allied airmen."Central Intelligence Agency. Behind Japanese Lines in Burma: The Stuff of Intelligence Legend (2001). Retrieved May 30, 2012. This was what led to Stilwell's Chinese forces, Wingate's Raiders, and Merrill's Marauders involvement in the war,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. and Frank got trained in guerrilla tactics and gathering intelligence, which became useful in his later events.
Honorably discharged as a corporal in 1945, he enrolled at Virginia Polytechnic Institute but left college after only one year and joined the Norfolk Police Department 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 18 months, he managed the Havana-Madrid tavern in Norfolk, a bar that catered to sailors from the many foreign ships that visit the port to load and unload cargo.
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 honorably discharged on August 30, 1948, and joined the United States Army the next day. He was sent immediately to West Berlin, where the USSR had closed the land routes during the Berlin Blockade, and he became a member of General Lucius Clay's honor guard. Two weeks after the USSR reopened the land routes on May 11, 1949, Fiorini was honorably discharged. As a Marine Raider during WWII, 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 anti-communist 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.Jim Hunt and Bob Risch, Warrior (New York: A Forge Book, May 2011), pp. 30–44.
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.Chapter 19 of the 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.
Cuban Revolution 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 July 26 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. 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.Jim Hunt and Bob Risch, Warrior (New York: A Forge Book, May 2011), p. 38. 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, along with mobster Santo Trafficante, 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 was a known acquaintance of Jack Ruby.
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 and some suspect the CIA, Sturgis purchased boatloads of weapons and ammunition from CIA weapons expert Samuel Cummings' 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.Jim Hunt and Bob Risch, Warrior (New York: A Forge Book, May 2011), p. 39.
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.Jim Hunt and Bob Risch, Warrior (New York: A Forge Book, May 2011), p. 43. 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.Cuba latinamericanstudies.org 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 July 26 Movement.Jim Hunt and Bob Risch, Warrior (New York: A Forge Book, May 2011), p. 57. 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.Official document. Request latinamericanstudies.org 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 LanzOfficial document. Cuban revolt latinamericanstudies.org 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 Bay of Pigs Invasion, for whose ultimate failure he blamed President Kennedy. Sturgis recruited 19 year old Marita Lorenz, who was close to Fidel Castro, and she took CIA pills, which she hid in her face cream, to poison Castro, but the plot failed. According to Lorenz, she met Sturgis again before the Kennedy assassination in 1963 with others planning a big event. Lorenz stated that she joined Sturgis traveling to Dallas after the meeting. Lorenz later testified about this Kennedy assassination plot before the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA).
In 1975 Sturgis testified under oath that he was approached by an associate of mobster Meyer Lansky with an offer of $1 million to assassinate Castro. Sturgis said that he was willing to accept the offer but that he did not receive "the go-ahead from his contacts in the American embassy".
Sturgis was claimed to be a member of Operation 40, a CIA-sponsored counterintelligence group composed of Cuban exiles. The group was formed to seize control of the Cuban government after the Bay of Pigs Invasion. 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."Report to the President by the Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States Chapter 19
International Anti-Communist Brigade Shortly after abandoning the Cuban Revolution, Sturgis organized the International Anti-Communist Brigade, a mercenary group intended to operate in the Caribbean and Central America. The group was connected to a plot to assassinate Guatemalan President Kjell Eugenio Laugerud Garcia through Gerry Patrick Hemming, head of a sub-group in the Brigade known as the Intercontinental Penetration Force. Members of the Brigade, including Sturgis, Hemming, and Loran Eugene Hall have been connected to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The Intercontinental Penetration Force sub-group (particularly Loran Hall) was heavily connected to the assassination by Orleans Parish District Attorney Jim Garrison, but the suspicion was dropped when Hemming joined Garrison's investigation.
Watergate burglary 1972