Frank Sturgis Frank Anthony Sturgis ( December 9 , 1924 – December 4 , 1993 ) , born Frank Angelo Fiorini , was one of the five Watergate burglars . He served in several branches of the United States military , aided Fidel Castro in the Cuban revolution of 1958 , and worked as an undercover operative . Early life and military service . When still a child , his family 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 Col . " Red Mike " Merritt A . Edson in the First Marine Raider Battalion in the Pacific Theater 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 18 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 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 , 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 . Fiorini attended the Virginia Polytechnic Institute before becoming the manager of the Whitehorse Tavern in Norfolk , Virginia . While in Norfolk , Virginia he attended a few classes at Old Dominion University before joining the Norfolk Police Department . Intelligence activities 1952 - 1962 . 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 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 . Moves to Cuba , joins Castro forces . 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 . 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 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 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 . 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 . " Watergate burglary 1972 . 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 . The burglars had made an earlier successful entry to 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 . 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 . 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 . ” JFK conspiracy allegations . Early allegations : Sturgis as one of the " three tramps " . " The Dallas Morning News " , the " Dallas Times Herald " , and the " Fort Worth Star - Telegram " photographed three transients under police escort near the Texas School Book Depository shortly after the assassination of Kennedy . The men later became known as the " three tramps " . According to Vincent Bugliosi , allegations that these men were involved in a conspiracy originated from theorist Richard E . Sprague who compiled the photographs in 1966 and 1967 , and subsequently turned them over to Jim Garrison during his investigation of Clay Shaw . Appearing before a nationwide audience on the December 31 , 1968 episode of " The Tonight Show " , Garrison held up a photo of the three and suggested they were involved in the assassination . Later , in 1974 , assassination researchers Alan J . Weberman and 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 . 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 . Immediately after obtaining the photographs , Gregory held a press conference that received considerable coverage and his charges were reported in " Rolling Stone " and " Newsweek " . 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 . 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 " . 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 . 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 . 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 . 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 . 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 . Posthumous allegations : Hunt ' s " deathbed confession " . After the death of Hunt in 2007 , Howard St . John Hunt and David Hunt stated that their father had recorded several claims about himself and others being involved in a conspiracy to assassinate John F . Kennedy . In the April 5 , 2007 issue of " Rolling Stone " , Howard St . John Hunt detailed a number of individuals purported to be implicated by his father including Sturgis , as well as Lyndon B . Johnson , Cord Meyer , David Sánchez Morales , David Phillips , Lucien Sarti , and William Harvey . 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 possibly perjury charges . 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 . The " Los Angeles Times " said they examined the materials offered by the sons to support the story and found them to be " inconclusive " . Later life . In 1979 , 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 . In 1981 he went to Honduras to train the US backed 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 . Since Sturgis was 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 .