Chapter Five
My father served 33 months in federal prison, the longest stretch at Danbury, Connecticut. Frank Sturgis, the Cuban freedom fighter, arch nemesis of Castro, plotter in assassination attempts, and co-conspirator in Watergate served his sentence at Danbury as well. It was after my father’s incarceration that the first accusations surfaced allegedly linking him and Sturgis to the murder of President Kennedy. I remember quite well how I first heard of this.
I had moved to Oakland, California and got a job driving a delivery truck for a local bakery. I stopped by a pay phone on my route, and as I was dialing the number something caught my eye. A familiar face stared at me from a crudely printed poster on a phone pole. It was my father! His was among several on a poster that read “CIA KILLED JFK.” I dropped the phone and carefully removed the poster. Back in my delivery van, I looked at what it said. Below the large heading, it showed six photos of at least three men; my father, Frank Sturgis, and a third I didn’t recognize. Below my father’s picture was someone who looked like my father, only older and dirty. Below Sturgis’ picture was one of someone who looked a lot like Frank except older, and the third man had the same photo twice, but one from a different angle. The copy below the photos proclaimed, “E. Howard Hunt; convicted Watergate burglar and CIA assassin in 1974 and in Dealey Plaza in 1963.” The poster advertised a lecture the following day in San Francisco by Dick Gregory and was sponsored by a group calling themselves the JFK Investigating Committee or something like that. I was in shock! I could barely make it through the rest of my route. I didn’t know what to think. I felt sick to my stomach. I couldn’t believe something this bad could be happening to my family again! Hadn’t we paid enough? Hadn’t my mother died for the sins of my father? Why would these people think such a thing? Where would it all end?
After I settled down, I began to think back and try to remember what happened the day Kennedy was shot. Surely this would clear up the question and perhaps I could attend the lecture and clear my father’s name, but as I thought about it, I began to feel a sickly, creeping suspicion in the pit of my stomach. I remember very well that I was nine years old and in the fifth grade at Brookmont Elementary School when they announced the news over the loudspeaker. Soon afterward, school was dismissed. I can’t remember how I got home, whether I was picked up, or took the bus, but when I arrived my mother was there and she was very upset. I tried to picture my father in the house that day, but couldn’t.
Then, like a bullet exploding in my brain, I remembered my mother telling me that my father had been in Dallas! I can’t place the exact time she told me or if she was speaking in reference to the assassination, but I clearly recall her telling me this around that time. It may have been before, but I also remembered something strangely coincidental; my father elected to have some sort of plastic surgery done to reduce the size and change the shape of his ears. In my mind these events occurred roughly at the same time. I looked at the poster, studying it over and over again. I thought of going to the lecture but chickened out. I didn’t want to know any more details or speculations. In the photos of the tramps, the one that is supposed to be my father looks amazingly like him. He has a very distinct nose and the shape of his mouth is also quite distinctive. I felt strongly that this could be him. Now, years later, we all know that the true identity of these tramps has been discovered due to the diligent research of devoted Kennedy assassination researchers. But for years, the accusations went on and on. Still, some feel that my father never told all of what he knew regarding this tragic chapter in our history.
My father always maintained that he was not involved in the assassination and didn’t know anyone who was involved. He maintained that he firmly believed Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and without any involvement from any intelligence agency, with the exception of the KGB. This is laughable; anyone who’s read the CIA’s own reports knows that Oswald had connections to the CIA and the FBI. The fact that he, a U.S. Marine, defected to Russia at the height of the Cold War and then returned, with no apparent consequences, is reason enough to draw suspicion. I wrote my father a letter asking him about the poster and its accusations. He wrote back to me that, “As you well know, I was at home that day, and we watched the news broadcasting the unfortunate events until late in the evening when you children went to bed. I was in the house all day.”
Later, under oath, he would change this story several times. He testified that he had actually been at work that day. He left the CIA office and drove home early. Later he changed it again, saying that he had stopped by his favorite Chinese grocery store to purchase some items for a home cooked meal. Still, he maintained that he was with his children throughout most of the day. When asked what the name of his favorite Chinese store was, he couldn’t remember. He did offer that it was located on a certain street in Chinatown in Washington D.C. When investigators checked all the Chinese stores in the city, none were close to that location. My father testified that he had been seen at work that day by one of his co-workers, yet when that co-worker was cross-examined, he could not specifically recall seeing my father, he only thought he “might” have seen him.
How could a man whose life was in the intelligence business not be able to recall, without fail, where he was and what he did on the day that the President of the United States was murdered? How is that possible? Why did he change his story so many times? If his children were his alibi, why wouldn’t his defense team call us to testify for him? This could have put the whole matter to rest once and for all. Why? Because it was a lie; I was at our home that day, and I never saw my father. That’s not saying that he murdered the president, but it does serve to underline the maze of lies and plausible deniability that was our life. I never spoke to my father about these outrageous contradictions, and he never addressed this topic … at least not until later … years later.