Clearing the Fog of War

Emotional testimony continues at Hasan trial

FORT HOOD — Prosecutors presented 10 more witnesses Friday morning who recalled in dramatic detail the mass shooting on Nov. 5, 2009.

From the witness stand, former Staff Sgt. Shawn Manning mimicked the way the gunman opened fire, holding a pistol with both hands and firing rapidly at Station 13, a formation of 45 folding chairs in four rows at the Soldier Readiness Processing Center. Manning, who was in the middle of the front row, was hit six times.

“I figured that the shooter would finish me off if he thought I was still alive,” said Manning, who got choked up as he recalled seeing Army Reserve Capt. John Gaffaney, lying unconscious.

Gaffaney, a psychiatric nurse who volunteered to rejoin the service after 9/11, was one of 13 people killed in the worst mass shooting on a U.S. military base.

Once the shooting began, those inside the building initially were stunned, uncertain of what was going on. Sgt. 1st Class Paul Martin was among those looking for cover.

“If he can't see me, he can't shoot me again,” Martin said he told himself.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/default/article/Emotional-testimony-continues-at-Hasan-trial-4720183.php

Eyewitness recalls Fort Hood center's floor 'covered in blood'

FORT HOOD — Sgt. 1st Class Maria Guerra had just sat down to lunch at a facility she supervised that was packed with soldiers on their way to the war zone when a voice cut through the air.

She jumped from her chair, demanded to know what was happening and heard popping sounds that some mistook for firecrackers going off.

“What the (expletive) is going on in my building?!” asked Guerra, the noncommissioned officer in charge of the Soldier Readiness Processing Center. “And somebody yelled, 'Shooter! Shooter!”

What happened next was as fresh in mind Thursday as it was nearly four years ago when witnesses said they saw an Army psychiatrist, Maj. Nidal Hasan gun down 13 soldiers in the SRP, also called Building 42003.

A tough NCO who took charge of triaging the patients that day, barking orders at her overwhelmed staff, the process required her to coolly place a blue absorbent pad on the heads of the dead and mark “D” on it along with the time of death.

Those memories have stuck with her as well as others who've never shaken visions of the dead and mortally wounded, one of them a soldier who never got out of his fold-out chair.

They told the court in frequently emotional testimony of wide-open eyes that didn't blink, labored breathing that comes with the final moments of life, and the blood — especially at Station 13, a waiting area where dozens of soldiers sat, waiting in a long line of chairs.

“It was covered in blood,” said retired Sgt. Monique Archuletta, who was in the office with Guerra as the attack began Nov. 5, 2009. “It was a huge puddle of blood.”

The testimony, the most emotional yet in a rare military capital murder that is in its third day, put Hasan at the scene of the shooting, with Guerra providing the best eyewitness account yet of how he fired on soldiers and civilians in the facility.

Read more here: http://www.mysanantonio.com/default/article/Eyewitness-recalls-Fort-Hood-center-s-floor-4716860.php

Likely first witness in Hasan trial 'still alive and kicking'

FORT HOOD — Retired Staff Sgt. Alonzo Lunsford first locked eyes with Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan on Nov. 5, 2009, moments before the Army psychiatrist shot Lunsford seven times, partially blinding him.

The second time came nearly one year later, when the two men met again at an evidentiary hearing about the mass shooting at Fort Hood, the worst ever on any U.S. military post. After taking the stand, Lunsford's one good eye caught Hasan glaring at him.

When opening statements in Hasan's murder trial begin Tuesday, nearly four years after the massacre, Lunsford, as the likely leadoff witness for the military, expects to meet the eyes of his shooter for the third time.

Go to ExpressNews.com to read more about retired Staff Sgt. Alonzo Lunsford.

 

Read more here: http://www.mysanantonio.com/default/article/Likely-first-witness-still-alive-and-kicking-4708724.php

Shattered lives left in wake of Fort Hood rampage

Maj. Nidal Hasan, 42, is accused of committing the deadliest act of criminal violence ever on a U.S. military base.

The Nov. 5, 2009, rampage left 13 people dead and 32 wounded. He was paralyzed in a shootout with police and has since admitted his actions.

As Hasan goes on trial nearly four years later, and as victims prepare to testify as key witnesses, those at the scene that day and the families of the victims struggle to move on.

Read more about the victims' shattered lives on ExpressNews.com.

More on ExpressNews.com:

 Widow following legal case, hoping for closure

 Mother misses son with a love of learning

 After shooting, ex-GI is 21 'going on 15'

 Fort Hood Massacre: The 13 who died

 

G.I.'s life unraveled in wake of assault

Army Spc. Rebekah Lampman had fallen asleep after drinking two beers with another soldier a couple of weeks before Christmas 2011 in a coed barracks at Fort Hood when she awoke to find him on top of her, naked.

She recalled pushing him off, throwing on her clothes and rushing to an office at the barracks to report the sexual assault, triggering an Army investigation that would lead to his conviction.

Her case was one of 200 sexual-misconduct reports filed at Fort Hood over the past 20 months, part of the growing crisis of sexual assaults in the military.

The reports don't break down how many of the cases occurred at Fort Hood or off the post. The complaints ranged from sexual assault to sexual harassment.

The Pentagon announced this month that an estimated 26,000 troops were victims of sexual assaults last year, an increase of 35 percent over 2011. Yet only 11 percent of the victims reported the assaults, much lower than the civilian reporting rate.

Troops surveyed by the Defense Department said they didn't report the crimes for a variety of reasons, including a fear of retaliation, and many didn't think the military would prosecute the offenders.

After a seven-month investigation, the San Antonio Express-News reported this week that assault victims from across the armed services often were forced out of the military after they reported the incidents to their superiors.

In thousands of cases over the past decade, many of the victims were declared mentally unfit for service and booted out.

The crisis has reached epidemic proportions, with members of Congress drafting legislation to remove prosecutions out of military control and President Barack Obama demanding the Pentagon to hold offenders accountable.

On Friday, Obama told Naval Academy graduates the surge in assaults could erode public trust in the military.

At Fort Hood, Lampman, a two-tour veteran of the Iraq war, said word of her December 2011 rape spread quickly.

She said commanders initially didn't believe her, and her attacker, Spc. Christopher Tatum, was allowed to stay in her barracks for another eight months.

Lampman reported her assault to Fort Hood's Sexual Harassment Assault Response & Prevention office. But she said the program failed miserably.

“I refused to go there anymore,” Lampman, 25, said about the program. “I felt like that trust, that bridge, was burned.”

She said a SHARP representative charged with acting on her behalf with superiors, “treated me just as badly as my first Army commander as far as just trying to shooing me away, making it not a big deal when it really was a big deal.”

Lampman was an Army broadcast journalist who traveled in her job while posted to southern Iraq from 2008-09. A second tour, this time in Baghdad, followed the next year. She came under fire and later was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from combat.

On the night of her attack, Lampman was on anti-anxiety medication, a common prescription for troops back from the combat zone. She and another soldier were with Tatum in his room drinking beer and hanging out. When the other GI left, they stayed, watching TV.

Lampman said she drank a little more than two beers before falling into a deep sleep. When she awoke early Dec. 8, 2011, she said, “He was raping me.”

Rushing out, she went to the charge of quarters desk and reported what happened. Her first sergeant came there and took her to the Darnall Army Medical Center ER at Fort Hood. A victim advocate was called, as was the post's Criminal Investigation Command.

Lampman was taken to Scott & White Memorial Hospital in Temple, which she said did a rape kit. By the time she got home, word of the incident had spread.

“My phone was blowing up with, 'Hey, uh, is this true? I heard about blah-blah-blah. Hey, is this true? Blah-blah-blah. Within 12 hours, like your whole entire personal business is put out there,” Lampman said.

Things got worse.

“It kick-started a drinking problem. I was drinking all the time, I didn't feel safe anywhere, I didn't trust anybody, I was really paranoid,” she said.

Nancy Parrish, founder of the victim advocacy group Protect Our Defenders, said Lampman's story is “all too common.”

“Rebekah stood tall, reported the crime and the perpetrator was convicted, yet she faced retaliation,” said Parrish, whose group helped coordinate testimony before a congressional hearing earlier this year on the sex-abuse scandal at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland. “For a commander to allow this to occur on their base is rotten.”

Tatum was convicted in March and sentenced to a year in jail and a bad-conduct discharge.

Disciplined for a drinking problem she admits was out of control, Lampman said she's now on an anti-anxiety drug for trauma stemming from her rape.

Friday was her 50th day of sobriety. But she is haunted by an exchange she had with one NCO a month after the rape.

Saying she wanted him to see things from her point of view, Lampman said he told her, “'I do not sympathize or empathize with you at all. You are a soldier and you need to get up and move on.'”

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/military/article/GI-s-life-unraveled-in-wake-of-assault-4547882.php#ixzz2V6UDjK6F

Beyond Lackland courtroom, a victim's suffering

When Air Force basic training instructor Peter Vega Maldonado cut a plea bargain and went on trial a year ago this week, some may not have seen what was coming – a series of seemingly endless trials.

But another basic training instructor faces a special court-martial today, and after Staff Sgt. William Romero is tried, two others will follow this month.

He could get a year in jail if convicted of having illicit relationships with four women in technical training as well as committing adultery, but there is more to the Air Force’s worst-ever sex scandal than the banging of a gavel and a judge’s ruling on guilt or innocence.

Ask Virginia Messick about that.

Or her parents.

Now living in California, Messick is 21 and wrestling with demons that resemble combat PTSD, but were born in Air Force basic training. Her training instructor, then-Staff Sgt. Luis Walker, was supposed to be a role model for every recruit, the very embodiment of the Air Force’s core values  of integrity, service before self and excellence.

He wasn’t.

Busted to the lowest rank and now doing 20 years at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., he preyed on 10 women in basic training, one of them Messick. He lured her to a vacant dormitory, where they had sex. Messick now says she was raped, but the allegation wasn’t made at Walker’s trial last summer and he wasn’t convicted of it.

Whatever happened, she’s a much different person these days.

Messick doesn’t get out much. A shut-in much of the time, she carries a knife in her purse. She won’t answer the door if someone knocks. She notices if anything in the house has been moved.

And in addition to hyper-vigilance, a classic PTSD trait, she has trouble sleeping. And there are nightmares.

As a child and later a teenager, Virginia Messick was the kid no one worried about, a cheerleader at Baker High School in Florida who made friends easily.

“She was the one you didn’t have to worry about when she went to school. There was never going to be a question of her grades. She got it, she picked it right up,” said her father, retired Air Force Tech. Sgt. Tracy Simmons, 49, of Midwest City, Okla.

“She could make friends in a heartbeat. She was bubbly, she was happy. She didn’t become a cheerleader by being a wallflower. She was outgoing, she was scared of nothing.”

After basic training, she was lost, disillusioned angry and sometimes out of control.

“In one act by one person, she went to the complete opposite end of the spectrum,” her dad said.

Marla Simmons described her daughter as strong and self-sufficient, and proud of following her father and a grandfather into the Air Force. But she could tell something was wrong even when Messick was in technical training. Things later got so much worse, Simmons wanted to commit her daughter.

“Jenny went though all the stages of being raped. There was denial and then there was shame, then she wanted to hurt herself. She was angry,” said Simmons, 47, of Baker, Fla.

“It’s all come in stages and my daughter, you d never have to look at her and wonder if she was happy until after it happened. Then you could see would be OK one minute and then she would be completely unglued the next.”

Original link here: http://blog.mysanantonio.com/military/2013/04/beyond-lackland-courtroom-a-victims-suffering/

Lackland instructor's victim speaks of trauma, fear

Airman Basic Virginia Messick walked into the office of a vacant dormitory one day in April 2011 but couldn't see the person who had called her to the room. The door closed behind her.

Staff Sgt. Luis Walker, her basic training instructor at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, grabbed her and threatened to destroy her career after ordering her into the empty dorm, Messick said.

A few weeks earlier, he stuck a hand down her shirt and kissed her when they were alone in his office, so she said she knew what he wanted. Alone, she said, she had no way out. There were no other recruits nearby to cry out to and no security cameras to monitor the area.

“He just looked at me, and he grabbed me and pulled me next to the bed and started taking my top off and he pulled his pants down” and indicated he wanted her to perform oral sex, she said. “And I just looked at him, and he just said, 'I told you what you are going to do, so you'd better do it.'”

Walker is serving 20 years in prison for raping another recruit and having illicit relationships with 10 women in basic training. Messick and prosecutors said at his trial in July that the dormitory encounter was consensual, but she now calls it rape and accuses Air Force investigators of botching her interrogation.

The Air Force said Messick never alleged during the investigation that she was raped or that nonconsensual sex took place. Later, at trial, defense attorneys pointed out that Messick had said in the statement, “It wasn't sexual assault. I engaged willingly.”

She says she was too scared at the time to tell the truth.

Nearly two years after the incident, Messick says she is talking with the media for one reason: to persuade other victims to report their crimes and get psychological help.

She says she suffers emotional trauma that resembles post-traumatic stress disorder in combat troops. Hyper-vigilant, she keeps the blinds closed at her home in Marysville, Calif., and carries a knife in her purse. If someone knocks on the door, she won't answer. At 21, Messick doesn't have a job and isn't sure she could keep one.

On medications to cope with anxiety and stress, Messick says she screams at people, cries for no apparent reason, struggles to sleep and has nightmares — one so bad she punched her husband in the face. There are days she can't get out of bed.

Like virtually every other victim in a scandal that has seen 33 basic training instructors fall under investigation for allegations of misconduct with 63 recruits and technical training students, she didn't report the incident.

When confronted by investigators, Messick said she feared for her career and didn't tell them she was raped. She said the interrogation turned contentious, with a male agent slamming a document on the table and telling her that if she would sign it, they would leave.

She did, offering a vague recollection of a tryst, not rape.

“How do you want to talk about what happened to you when you have two strangers come into a room and one of them is getting hostile with you? And in whose right mind would you want to say, 'This is what happened to me?'” Messick said.

Read more here: http://www.mysanantonio.com/default/article/Lackland-instructor-s-victim-speaks-of-trauma-4398889.php

A charmed life ends in a horrid death

GRAND PRAIRIE — The photo album, “The Journey of Becca & Ian — Our Story,” shows a happy couple after their engagement.

In a snapshot, she leans into the attack helicopter pilot, smiling broadly, her eyes closed as he kisses her. One word, written on the binder next to the picture, captures the mood: “Forever.”

Perhaps it was blind optimism, but Capt. Ian Morrison and his young wife, Rebecca, had reason to bet against the specter of death and disillusionment that has shadowed many American troops and their families after a decade of war.

A West Point graduate some friends jokingly called “Capt. Brad Pitt” because of his Hollywood A-list looks, Morrison flew AH-64D Apache Longbow gunships in Iraq.

Back home near his post at Fort Hood, his wife was the attractive girl next door working on a master's degree.

His yearlong tour in Iraq was smooth, but Ian began to lose control after his return a year ago.

He slept poorly, was anxious and, as time passed, aware of feeling depressed. While not uncommon issues for troops back from war, he mostly appeared to cope as GIs often do.

Then one evening last March, everything unraveled.

Sitting in the bedroom of his home in Copperas Cove just west of the post, Ian Morrison put a .38-caliber handgun to his throat. There was no note and no explanation, no alcohol or drugs in his blood.

He died instantly.

At 26, he was one of two Iraq veterans living in Copperas Cove to commit suicide during a 48-hour period that week.

“He was a highly successful, accomplished Apache pilot, and certainly not someone that you would think would be in the category of people who would commit an act like that,” said Copperas Cove Justice of the Peace John Guinn, who pronounced Morrison dead at the scene. “There were some stressors in his life, stressors that obviously we don't understand.”

Overall, 2012 will mark a new, bleak record for Army suicides, exceeding the 305 deaths recorded two years ago. And the toll throughout the rest of the military is grim.

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/military/article/A-charmed-life-endsin-a-horrid-death-4189855.php#ixzz2HtBUpU00

Three years after shooting, is Hasan's case a reset or do-over?

FORT HOOD – When Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan appears in a Fort Hood courtroom today, his new judge will have a big decision to make.

Three years after Hasan was accused of killing 13 people and wounding 32 in a shooting spree, Col. Tara Abbey Osborn will preside over a reset of his proceedings.

The reset was ordered Dec. 3 by a military appeals court that removed the first trial judge. The hearing could lead the court to revisit every decision Fort Hood's chief circuit judge, Col. Gregory Gross, made over 17 months of hearings. No one can say how long that would take.

“I expected a delay, certainly, because the judge is going to have to review the case, she's going to have to figure out if there's anything she wants to address,” said Keely Vanacker, a Kerrville high school counselor whose father, retired Chief Warrant Officer 2 Michael Cahill, was killed trying to stop the Nov. 5, 2009, rampage.

“I just hope it's not a complete start-over. I hope it is not going to be a complete redo of every decision that's been made,” she said.

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As Pearl Harbor was attacked, routine job turned surreal

As duties went, the one given Seaman 1st Class Richard Cunningham was routine: Take a small boat from the USS West Virginia along the Southeast Loch at Pearl Harbor and tie up at an officers' club landing 10 minutes away.

Halfway there, his ho-hum job turned surreal.

“At 7:55, we heard a loud explosion and we turned around and looked toward Ford Island and saw a plane peeling off, and saw two meatballs (the Rising Sun insignia of the Empire of Japan); so we knew immediately that we were at war,” he said. “And then we turned around, and the torpedo planes were coming in.”

A relative handful of Americans were on the ground floor 71 years ago today for the nation's entry into World War II, and Cunningham had a front-row seat.

His 28-foot-long officers' boat was well into the loch when the first Japanese torpedo bombers roared past.

The aircraft swooped 20 feet over the channel on their attack runs, releasing torpedoes that came close to the boat but miraculously missed.

Cunningham, 91, of the small town of Hewitt, near Waco, can still see the faces of the pilots as they delivered a body blow to an American fleet that included eight battleships — all sunk or badly damaged.

“They had these tight leather helmets and these goggles, and you could see them grinning real wide, ear to ear,” he said. “They were enjoying it. It was a success for them.”

Surprise was the critical element in the attack, which sank or damaged 19 U.S. ships, killed 2,403 Americans and left 1,178 wounded.

Japan lost 29 aircraft, five midget submarines and 129 men in a lopsided victory but missed the biggest targets — four aircraft carriers that were out to sea.

Many more could have died, Cunningham among them. He had close calls as the torpedo planes took aim. One explosion was so close it singed his eyebrows and the hair on his hands.

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