Editing Frank Sturgis (section)

==Anti-Castro Activities and Alleged Operation 40==
Sturgis claimed membership in Operation 40, a CIA-sponsored counterintelligence group of Cuban exiles formed to seize control of Cuba post-Bay of Pigs Invasion (1961), operating from Mexico and Miami. He trained exiles for the invasion, which failed disastrously, and was linked to assassination plots against Castro, though the 1975 Rockefeller Commission report stated he was “not an employee or agent of the CIA either in 1963 or at any other time.” Declassified CIA memos, such as one from Commander Anderson to Robert Trumbull Crowley (January 9, 1961), confirm Sturgis’s role as a “power behind the scene” in exile groups, it is not unusual for the CIA to deny someone works for them. They have hundreds of front companies that employee their agents so they have plausible deniability.

In the 1960s, Sturgis associated with anti-Castro figures like Orlando Bosch and Antonio Veciana, informing on groups like the MIRR (Movimiento Insurreccional de Recuperación Revolucionaria) for the CIA. He was arrested in 1958 for illegal arms possession in Florida, though prosecution was declined, and in 1968 faced charges for stealing cars with Max Gonzalez and Jerry Buchanan, reflecting his ties to organized crime.