1. Frank 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, and was alleged to be involved in the assassination of John F Kennedy.
Frank Sturgis soon discovered a corrupt payoff system and brought it to the attention of his superiors, who told him to overlook the illegal activities.
Frank Sturgis was honorably discharged on August 30,1948, and joined the United States Army the next day.
Frank Sturgis 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.
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.
In 1956, Frank Sturgis moved to Cuba, and went to Mexico, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama and Honduras.
Frank Sturgis moved to Miami in 1957, where the Cuban wife of his uncle Angelo Vona introduced him to former Cuban president Carlos Prio, who joined with other Cubans opposing dictator Fulgencio Batista to plot their return to power.
Now Frank Sturgis had gotten together with an old friend, Richard Sanderlin who was a Norfolk, Virginia native.
Prio asked Frank 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.
In 1958, Frank Sturgis made contact with the Central Intelligence Agency in Cuba at the US Consulate in Santiago.
Frank Sturgis worked as an informer for the agency with his control officer Sam Jenis.
Frank Sturgis 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, Frank 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.
Frank Sturgis met up with Castro and his 400 rebels in the Sierra Maestra mountains.
Castro accepted the offer, but he had an immediate need for guns and ammunition, so Frank Sturgis became a gunrunner.
Frank 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, Frank 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.
Frank Sturgis 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.
Frank Sturgis began to sound out those that he knew were anti-communist including Camilo Cienfuegos, as he knew leaders like Raul Castro and Che Guevara were communist, but he was unsure about Fidel Castro.
Frank Sturgis defected the following month with Revolutionary Air Force chief Commandant Pedro Luis Diaz Lanz and they joined the anti-Castro exile opposition.
Frank Sturgis participated with him a few months later in an anti-Castro leaflet-dropping raid over Cuba.
Frank 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 Frank Sturgis was involved in a CIA operation being financed by Sergio Rojas to overthrow Castro.
Frank 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.
Lorenz stated that she joined Frank Sturgis traveling to Dallas after the meeting.
Frank Sturgis was claimed to be a member of Operation 40, a CIA-sponsored counterintelligence group composed of Cuban exiles.
Frank Sturgis was portrayed in All the President's Men, the 1976 film retelling the events of the Watergate scandal, by Ron Hale.
Frank Sturgis was convicted in 1973 with Max Gonzalez and Jerry Buchanan in a federal court in Miami of transporting cars stolen in Texas into Mexico.
Frank Sturgis served 14 months in the minimum security federal prison in Eglin, Florida.
Frank Sturgis said "that the Castro government suspected the CIA did not tell the whole truth about these operations even to American political leaders".
Frank Sturgis made claims that other individuals were involved in the assassination of Kennedy.
The final report of that commission stated that witnesses who testified that the "derelicts" bore a resemblance to Hunt or Frank Sturgis "were not shown to have any qualification in photo identification beyond that possessed by an average layman".
In 1976, Frank Sturgis claimed that he was assigned to investigate any possible role that Cuban exiles may have played in the assassination of Kennedy.
Frank Sturgis stated that his investigation revealed that ten weeks prior to the assassination, Jack Ruby met with Fidel Castro in Havana, Cuba to discuss "the removal of the President" in order to neutralize the threat of invasion by the United States.
Frank Sturgis said that Ruby had 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.
Frank Sturgis 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.
Frank Sturgis said that his investigation did not reveal that Cuban exiles were involved in the assassination.
Similarly, Frank 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.
Frank 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.
Frank Sturgis said the men studied Dallas street maps and that she suspected that they were planning on raiding an arsenal.
On October 31,1977, Frank Sturgis was arrested in Lorenz's apartment after Lorenz told police that Frank Sturgis threatened her in an attempt to force her to change her testimony to federal investigators.
Later that week in Manhattan Criminal Court, charges against Frank Sturgis were dropped after the prosecutor told the judge that his office found no evidence of coercion or harassment.
Frank Sturgis is linked to the assassination, on December 4,1980, of Portuguese prime minister Francisco de Sa Carneiro and 6 other people aboard a Cessna aircraft, in what became known as the Camarate affair.
Frank Sturgis was named by two of his alleged accomplices, Fernando Farinha Simoes and Jose Esteves, in a written confession, as the person who pressed the button of the detonator to activate the bomb on the plane.
In 1979, Frank Sturgis traveled to Angola to help rebels fighting the communist government, which was supported by Cuba and the Soviet Union, and to teach guerrilla warfare.
Frank Sturgis made a second trip to Angola and trained rebels in the Angolan bush for Holden Roberto.
Arafat shared elements of his peace plan, and Frank Sturgis was debriefed by the CIA on his return.