Frank Sturgis

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Various images of Sturgis

Frank Anthony Sturgis , born as Frank Angelo Fiorini , (born December 9, 1924 in Norfolk (Virginia) , † December 4, 1993 in Miami ) was one of the five burglars into the headquarters of the Democrats in the Watergate affair in 1972 .

Sturgis participated in World War II as a member of the US Marine Corps in the Pacific. In 1952 he had his name changed and took the family name of his stepfather, whom his mother had married in 1937. Later he came into contact with the armed resistance movement in Cuba through the Cuban ex-president Carlos Prío, who was overthrown by Fulgencio Batista in 1952 and has since lived in exile in Florida . Sturgis initially participated in supplying the rebel army with weapons before later joining the rebels in the Sierra Maestra, led by Fidel Castro , as a battle-tested instructor. From the end of 1958 to mid-1959 he had contacts with CIA employees in Cuba, for whom he claimed to have recruited agents free of charge within the civilian government and the military.

After the victory of the revolution in early January 1959, he was hired by Castro to lead the investigation into the criminal backgrounds of various US-American owners of gambling casinos in Havana and sought cooperation with the Miami police authorities. When it became clear that Castro, contrary to previous assurances , was diverting the revolution to a pro- communist course, Sturgis formed anti-communist combat units, for which he received some financial support from the same casino owners. He left Cuba in June 1959 and has lived in Florida ever since, from where he again supported the armed resistance movement (now directed against Castro) by smuggling fighters and material into the country and by dropping leaflets over Cuban territory. He was one of the trainers of the Cuban exiles who carried out the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 . According to the German Marita Lorenz , with whom Castro had started a love affair in Havana in 1959, Sturgis recruited her as a CIA agent and tried to win her over to assassinate Castro.

He was also a friend of columnist Jack Anderson . He introduced Anderson to another burglar, the "photographer" of the burglar group Eugenio Martínez . At the time of the break-in, room 314 in the Watergate Hotel was rented to Sturgis and Virgilio R. González . Other burglars included Bernard Barker and James W. McCord, Jr. In the Watergate trial, he pleaded "guilty".

literature

  • Jim Hunt and Bob Risch: Warrior: Frank Sturgis - The CIA's # 1 Assassin-Spy, Who Nearly Killed Castro But Was Ambushed by Watergate. Forge, New York 2011, ISBN 978-0765328632 (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Miami, junio 2 de 1959: Emisario de Castro ( Memento from April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) in: EIchikawa.com from June 2, 2012, accessed on June 2, 2012 (Spanish)
  2. ↑ Testimony of Frank Sturgis , p. 7, accessed on June 2, 2012 (English)
  3. ↑ Testimony of Frank Sturgis , p. 15, accessed on June 2, 2012 (English)
  4. ↑ Marita Lorenz: Dear Fidel. My life, my love, my betrayal p. 70 u. 88, Munich: List, 2nd edition 2001, ISBN 3-471-78079-3
personal data
SURNAME Sturgis, Frank
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fiorini, Frank; Fiorini, Frank Angelo (full name at birth); Sturgis, Frank Anthony (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American burglar in the "Watergate Affair"
DATE OF BIRTH December 9, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Norfolk (Virginia)
DATE OF DEATH 4th December 1993
Place of death Miami