October 22, 2009 in City

In brief: Woman reports rape at survival center

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An employee at Fairchild Air Force Base’s Survival Training Center is accused of raping a woman in an interrogation room.

Michael W. Fassbender, 32, was in Spokane County Jail on $20,000 bail after appearing Wednesday in Spokane County Superior Court on one count of first-degree rape.

Deputies responded about 1 a.m. Tuesday to Fairchild, where a woman said that Fassbender had choked her into unconsciousness while raping her and that “she feared for her life,” according to a probable cause affidavit. Deputies found blood on a desk and chair in an interrogation room at the center, and the woman reportedly had red marks and bruises on her arms, chest and legs.

Fassbender, who a public defender said has no criminal history, is an employee with SERE Solutions, a Spokane-based company that provides contracted instructors to the military.

Meghann M. Cuniff

City Ethics Committee puts off French review

The city’s Ethics Committee will delay for at least a month its review of Spokane Councilman Al French’s ties to a bus bench advertising company.

French requested the review in August after critics questioned his successful push to change city regulations to allow bus bench advertising. At the time, French reportedly was working as an architect for Thomas Hamilton, co-owner of Emerald Outdoor Advertising, on an apartment complex. Emerald sells bus bench advertising.

French disputes any suggestion that his ties to Hamilton created a conflict of interest, arguing he’d supported bus bench advertising for years.

Wednesday’s delay came because too few of the Ethics Committee’s members were able to meet. The committee is scheduled to meet again Dec. 2.

Jonathan Brunt

Detectives on lookout for missing love seat

Detectives are looking for a love seat that was removed recently from the home of a homicide victim, the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office said Wednesday.

Detectives on Tuesday searched the home of Jesus Torres Valdovinos, 25, at 623 E. Vicksburg Ave. in north Spokane, where they found carpet impressions where a love seat had been.

A witness “familiar with the home” told detectives the love seat matched a couch still at the residence, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

“Although they don’t yet know the significance of the missing piece of furniture, the fact that it has disappeared piqued their interest,” Sgt. Dave Reagan said.

The love seat may have been dumped along a road or alley in north Spokane or left in a vacant lot or trash pile, detectives said.

Valdovinos’ body was found Sunday wrapped in a pair of blankets along the shoulder of Day-Mt. Spokane Road.

Anyone with information about the love seat is asked to call Crime Check at (509) 456-2233.

Meghann M. Cuniff

Eight comments on this story so far. Add yours!

• 

  Bob_Knows on October 22 at 7:57 a.m.

  It would be surprising if even 8% of rape accusations have any basis in fact at all. Give the blue gun thugs a “Nifong” award.

• 

  Megan_B on October 22 at 11:31 a.m.

  Only 20,000 in bail?!? This woman will have to live with this trauma for the rest of her god-forsaken life! He could easily slip out of jail by paying 10% of the bail money and go after his next victim. If only we took rape for the very serious issue it is… But I suppose as long as it is considered a woman’s issue that won’t be the case.

• 

  CONCERNEDREADER on October 22 at 2:36 p.m.

  Bob_Knows…… you KNOW NOTHING ! As a rape victim, your comments are so offensive - you and people with opinions like you, are the reason that women fail and are afraid to report rape…. I would like you to look at photos of every knife cut, cuts from the crowbar, bite marks, bruises and injuries that I had after my neighbor on the southhill broke into my house and attacked and raped me for over 2 hours in my own home as I was getting out of the shower…… and those are the injuires that you can see - the psychological injuries stay with you forever - thank goodness I had a great support system in my friends and family - I would hate to have had you as a “friend” after I was raped… I hope that no one you know gets raped and if they do, you are a bit more sensitive to that person than your above comments….. Dont use and assume the Duke Lacrosse Rape case applies to every rape accusation - It does NOT

• 

  arroyoribera on October 30 at 12:23 a.m.

  None of this should be in the least surprising.

  First, look at the questions asked by Ann Wright, a 29 year US Army/Army Reserve Colonel and 16 year U.S. diplomat: (quote) Do Special Operations Forces of the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force practice on detainees the interrogation techniques they are subjected to during their Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) training at Ft. Bragg, NC, Fairchild, Air Force Base, WA and Naval Air Stations in Brunswick, ME and North Island, San Diego, CA? What are the limits of abusive interrogation techniques taught to CIA and CIA contract interrogators in the various CIA training areas around the Washington, DC and other locations in the US? What is the effect of torture and abusive behavior on the perpetrators? (end quote) http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/15839/print

  Second, take a look at this excerpt from a trip report to Fairchild in 1992 by Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, an independent, non-partisan public policy organization specializing in military personnel issues. In 1984, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger appointed her to the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS) for a 3-year term, and in 1992, President George H.W. Bush appointed her to the Presidential Commission on Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces. (excerpt) During her 2-day trip to Fairchild AFB, Washington, August 9-11, 1992, Donnelly talked to instructors about their realistic “rape scenario,” in which male trainees are taught to manage more intense feelings when a female colleague is threatened with sexual assault or worse, so that enemy captors cannot exploit those emotions. Donnelly described parts of the SERE training that she saw at Fairchild Air Force Base during her visit. (end excerpt) See her report and descriptions at http://www.law.duke.edu/shell/cite.pl?14+Duke+J…

  Here is a little more information on SERE Solutions, which in reality is just one part of an extensive network of military contractor firms in the Spokane area involved in the most abusive and heinous aspects of the so-called “global war on terror”. Like CIA contractors Mitchell and Jessen who “reverse engineered” SERE survival techniques to create the “more effective” and illegal “torture techniques” employed at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and at U.S. secret black site around the world, much of these contractor activities are torture related and implicate Spokane in some of the darkest chapters of recent U.S. gross human rights abuses. A number of links about SERE, CIA, and SERE Solution abuses and their Spokane connections can be found at http://spokanepoliceabuses.wordpress.com/tortur…

  SERE SOLUTIONS, INC — SERE Solutions, Inc., is owned by Spokane-based contractor Michael Lyons. In 2006 Lyons received a $47 million US Air Force grant with the 336th SERE Training Group at Fairchild AFB after 2 years of extensive assistance from the Washington State College of Business Small Business Development Center. (The SBDC website used to contain information on the help it provided to SERE Solutions at http://www.wsbdc.org/21087/main/Content/ImageLi… but that document has been removed.) Lyons operation employs more than 50 people at various locations (including Fairchild, Ft. Rucker, and Maxwell AFB), per his website SereSolutionsInc.com.

  SERE Solutions, Inc. previously listed an address of 6603 S. Shelby Ridge Rd., Spokane, WA. Currently it shows an address at the Spokane International Airport at 3707 S Godfrey Blvd Bldg 1378 Suite 104

  Previously reported business information for SERE Solutions stated: SERE SOLUTIONS INC (6603 S SHELBY RIDGE RD; small business): $2,161,904 in 2 contracts in 2006 $2,146,904 with Air Force for Training/Curriculum Development. Signed on 2006-03-20. Completion date: 2006-09-30. $15,000, same as above. Signed on 2006-06-28. Completion date: 2006-09-30.

  David Brookbank — “Hasta donde debemos practicar las verdades?”

• 

  arroyoribera on November 01 at 1:25 p.m.

  For the most recent on Fassbender and the crime at the SERE site, here is the link to the Air Force Times article of 10/30/09.
  http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2009/10/airforce_fairchild_rape_103109w/

  The site can be viewed by driving past or typing into google maps the following: 11604 W Newkirk Rd, Spokane, WA 99224, USA. This is just north of the casino in Airway Heights.
  
  And here is the photo of the site — known as the JPRA/SERE White Bluffs site — from the Spokesman-Review.
  http://www.spokesmanreview.com/media/photos/20081211_JPRApsychologists.jpg

  And here is a link to the new $11 million contract for two new stand-alone buildings on the site which was just put out in September 2009. What’s up here?
  https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&tab=core&id=7400b4c04fbf53350ab2170f9b595a0a&_cview=1

• 

  arroyoribera on November 03 at 7:17 p.m.

  I am trying to wait a few days between posts to allow others to post and so as not to dominate this commentary but the issue is important.

  These SERE facilaties are very secure U.S. government facilities. People do not just walk in, get access to a room, carry out a rape, and have no one else aware. These facilities are full of 24 hour surveillance cameras, persons responsible for the sites, and other types of security. Who was aware of Fassbender’s entrance and movements on site? Who are these witnesses? Are they being interviewed?

  In addition, this is not a place that you just walk in with a date and no attention paid to who that date is. Was this a date or was this a SERE student who was raped by her “instructor” or in some other way subjected to a “process” gone wrong?

  How many other incidents and crimes have been committed at these facilities? Remember the U.S. Air Force Academy sex scandal of the 1990’s? It involved SERE training which emphasizes sexual intimidation, humiliation, and threats. It was removed from the curriculum at the Academy after a major investigation.

  Who paid Michael Fassbender’s bond? Tate, Inc? SERE, Inc? The U.S. Air Force? The CIA?

  There are a lot of questions for the excellent and aggressive reporters of the Spokesman-Review and other local media.

  It is time to bring the three SERE locations into the light of day.

  It is also time to seriously evaluate the corrosive effect on what is left of our democracy and civil society as a result of this increasing privatization of the military.

  In addition, given that former SERE employees and contractors are members of area police forces, including the SPD, it is questionable whether or not those agencies should be carrying out the “investigation” of Fassbender, whose history is undoubtably much, much more interesting than anything we will learn without access to his top secret file.

  Spokane has been dragged deeply into the slime of the Bush administrations war crimes, torture regime, and human rights abuses. Fassbender is just a manifestation of that and is just one example of the fall out which will plague our society for years to come as a result of this misguided “war on the globe” in which the U.S. is currently engaged.

• 

  arroyoribera on November 04 at 7:32 p.m.

  For some concerned about this situation, it boils down to their belief that contractors should not be getting double or more the pay doing under contract what U.S. soldiers are doing but for duty and patriotism. (It would be nice to hear from some of those with this particular concern as well).

  For others, like myself, the issue is the business of torture and the reverse engineering of SERE survival techniques to produce more “effective” torture which has produced the gross abuses we have seen at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere. We start to get into the parts of the SERE program which are the source of those abuses at page 60 (Chapter 17 Resistance) of the SERE Specialist Career Field Education and Training manual http://www.af.mil/shared/media/epubs/CFETP1T0X1.pdf

  My concern has long been (&d I think time will bear me out) that if you bring world class pilots, soldiers, spies, etc to Spokane to be trained in resistance to torture, you would also bring in world class interrogators, & ultimately torturers to pit against them. Once they are here, it is not a very long step to bringing in “high value detainees” from around the world to Spokane’s Fairchild SERE program. All this is particularly true since there are a variety of CIA & DOD contractors here who have been able to study, practice & refine their fine arts, contractors such as CIA torture master-minds Jessen & Mitchell as well as the likes of their business partners Randall W. Spivey and Roger L. Aldrich, & probably others in the Spokane area with Department of Defense and CIA contracts & contacts (such as Dr. Gregory Belenky, the a retired Army Colonel and regimental psychiatrist as well as currently Research Professor and Director of the Sleep and Performance Research Center at Washington State University campus in Spokane who was the Director of the Division of Neuropsychiatry at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and Professor in the Department of Psychiatry of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and who from 1984-2004, Dr. Belenky lead the U.S. Army’s program of research in sleep, sleep loss, fatigue, & human performance.)

  The SERE School at Fairchild makes a natural partner for contractors like SERE Solutions, Inc, & Tate, Inc. Obviously similarly compromised U.S. government agencies and civilian contractors exist around the other SERE sites around the country. But the one we need to be concerned about here is ours.

  Searches for SERE at F-16.net, forums.military.com, community.armystudyguide.com, www.paratrooper.net, flyingsquadron.com, and baseops.com turn up some interesting discussions about SERE training, etc. and in a number of occasions reveal the danger that some of the egos involved in such programs represent. However, most of these discussions involve the training to survive, evade, resist, and escape, not the part that has been subverted to turn U.S. forces, contractors, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies into Geneva Conventions & human rights violators, and, in the process, further jeopardizing the lives of U.S. personnel. Given the illegal nature of U.S. invasions and occupations around the world and the criminal nature of our support for brutal regimes around the world for at least 60 years, we do ourselves no favors by adding to our bombings of civilian wedding parties by sodomizing, torturing, and humiliating people around the world, significant numbers of whom turn out to be innocent.

  Again, Spokane—because of the presence of SERE, Mitchell/Jessen, Fassbender, Sere Solutions, Tate, & others— has a significant role to play in scrutinizing, unearthing, reporting, and, as necessary, prosecuting the violations and crimes that have been committed in our names in this community.

  Just as Spokane has a large amount of blood on its hands for massive bombing of Southeast Asia during the Vietnam “war” and genocide, it has large amounts of blood and moral shame on its hands today.

• 

  arroyoribera on December 20 at 1:29 p.m.

  Now that the story of possible judicial misconduct has surfaced in this case, it wants more attention.

  http://www.bloggernews.net/123132#comment-1469128

  So, keep your eyes closely on this story but not so closely that you don’t ask more questions about the SERE/JPRA sites in Spokane (Newkirk Road north of the casino and west of Spokane off I-90, among others). And especially watch these private contractors. Drive past the SERE sites to take a look yourself. Don’t forget that the CIA, other secret U.S. government agencies, private contractors, and foreign governments are involved in these contracts and these facilities. And most importantly, understand that some of the activity at the SERE locations are pretty much identical to what you have seen in some of the pictures of Abu Ghraib and heard descibed about Bagram, i.e., SERE students being subjected to waterboarding, pummelings, blinded-folded and marched up and down the halls naked, sexual humilitaion and other barbarities. Call it training to survive capture and to learn resistance and evasion if you want. However, I would suggest finding some folks involved with the whole operation and talking to them about their disgust at seeing these private contractors, outside the accountability of the government yet earning earning incredibly more than our soldiers, abusing the process, turning these operations into circuses, and, at this point, having turned the U.S. into a global pariah, what is properly called a torture state (Abu Ghraib, Bhagram, Guantanamo, Diego Garcia, and our secret CIA black sites all over the world.) The program at SERE is intended to break guys down as fast as they can be, that is why it was used as a laboratory to reverse engineer the SERE training to produce infallible torture techniques. Type “Abu Ghraib photos” into Google to get an idea of what it is all about and to understand what is being “simulated” at SERE in Spokane and its other locations around the country. Type “Mitchell and Jessen” to find out about the CIA psychologist who had their offices at Riverside and Washington until not long ago.

  Following these links to the reporting are some comments that might be of interest.

  http://www.kxly.com/news/21386664/detail.html

  http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2009/oct/22/in-brief-woman-reports-rape-at-survival-center/

  http://www.spokesmanreview.com/tools/story_breakingnews_pf.asp?ID=10496

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagram_torture_and_prisoner_abuse