The former intelligence school student recalled sitting with a fellow female airman at the home of one of their commanders, Maj. David Quinene, drinking and becoming intoxicated.

As the evening went on, the talk turned to sex, who the women were seeing and details of their intimate lives.

Later that Sunday night, after becoming violently ill, the student, a lieutenant at the time, said she emerged from the bathroom to find the other woman on Quinene's lap, both fully clothed and kissing, oblivious to her presence.

Feeling a rush of alarm, the lieutenant texted a friend, asking for help.

“I wasn't scared in that I thought (Quinene) was going to, like, force himself on me or make us do anything we didn't want to do,” the woman, who asked not to be identified, told the San Antonio Express-News. “But my thing was like, ‘Hey, I've gone in over my head, I've got to get the hell out of here.’”

An Air Force commander-directed investigation substantiated her account of the events that night with Quinene, the director of operations of the squadron that trained the two women and other students at Goodfellow AFB in San Angelo. It also uncovered misconduct on the part of the 315th Training Squadron’s commander, Lt. Col. Karen Rolirad, that witnesses said damaged morale.

Both Rolirad — now deputy director of the city of San Antonio’s Office of Military Affairs, earning $102,500 a year — and Quinene, who later worked as City Councilman Cris Medina’s chief of staff — saw their Air Force careers end in the wake of the investigation.

The probe, released under the federal Freedom of Information Act several weeks ago, substantiated allegations against Quinene and Rolirad dating from May 2009 through as late as July 2011, including abuse of authority by adversely affecting students’ permanent-duty assignments, incidents of drunkenness, accepting gifts from lower-ranking officers and, in Quinene’s case, having unprofessional relationships with female airmen.

Allegations against three others at the training squadron were not substantiated and they faced no disciplinary action.

In a prepared statement, Rolirad on Thursday denied any misconduct and said she still lived by “the same high standards I was imbued with throughout my military career.”

More than a dozen supporters contacted the Express-News — several of them said it was at her behest — and praised her as tough but fair, an honorable and compassionate leader who once sat with a student in the hospital after she had a miscarriage and was supportive of two airmen who had cancer.

Some of the students who had been under their command, meanwhile, expressed anger at how the case was handled and said they believed Rolirad and Quinene deserved harsher punishment.

The Air Force said six of seven misconduct allegations were substantiated against Rolirad, including three of conduct unbecoming an officer and one of dereliction of duty. Three dealt with acceptance and solicitation of gifts, which were rolled into a single offense — acceptance of gifts — when administrative action was rendered.

Quinene, her subordinate, was found to have committed 11 violations of military law or regulations. The Air Force said the offenses included developing a personal intimate relationship with two female students and making sexual advances toward three others, one specification of being drunk and disorderly and one specification of conduct unbecoming an officer. He was cleared of one claim.

The Air Education and Training Command did not specify the punishment they received, but the Express-News learned Rolirad was given a letter of admonishment and Quinene faced an Article 15, a more severe disciplinary procedure. She retired from the Air Force, while Quinene left before he could retire, exiting as a major. He now works for a Colorado Springs firm as a contractor in Saudi Arabia.

Rolirad declined to be interviewed. Quinene did not respond to requests for comment.

“Since my first day as cadet at the United States Air Force Academy, and throughout my 22 years of honorable military service, I always did my best to uphold and enforce the Air Force's high standards of conduct and professionalism. I was consistently fair when rewarding exceptional performance, as well as holding those that failed to meet the Air Forces' high standards accountable,” Rolirad’s statement said.

“This was no different when I was entrusted with the privilege of commanding over 3,000 airmen at the 315th Training Squadron,” the statement said, noting the unit was “recognized as the 17 Training Wing's Squadron of the Year.”

The Office of Military Affairs, established in 2007, works to develop and strengthen relations with key area military leaders, support Joint Base San Antonio and serve as a link between the military community and support organizations that help roughly a quarter-million veterans living in Bexar County, according to its director and Rolirad’s boss, retired Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Juan Ayala.

Ayala, who, like Rolirad, also arrived in February and said he makes about $120,000 a year, expressed confidence in Rolirad, saying in a statement that she received the equivalent of a “mild chewing out” about “the command climate” in her squadron and noting it didn’t result in the loss of her security clearance or prevent her from attending an Air War College masters program.

Jeff Coyle, a spokesman for the city, said municipal officials were unaware of the probe until the commander-directed investigation was released on a social media site several weeks ago, but hired her last February knowing she had received an honorable discharge.

The training command’s spokesman, Col. Sean McKenna, said AETC took the allegations of leadership conduct in the squadron, where officers and enlistees trained in various intelligence courses, “very, very seriously” and that the disciplinary actions “made it highly unlikely they would secure advancements. … Both were not subsequently promoted and did not receive further command or leadership assignments.”

Both had staff jobs for what remained of their military careers. Neither was again responsible for airmen in training.

Student remarks spark probe

The probe into Rolirad’s training squadron was ordered when commanders heard complaints made in end-of-course comments and unit climate assessments.

Rolirad and Quinene were accused of overseeing a squadron where favoritism, capricious actions and even cruelty were common, with one airman from the school telling the investigating officer: “When Lt. Col. Rolirad and (Quinene) were the leadership of the 315th Training Squadron, there was constantly an atmosphere of fear, intimidation and hostility.”

The report concluded that airmen were unfairly graded and often berated. It said Quinene and Rolirad abused their authority by improperly holding back or failing students and adversely affecting their permanent-duty assignments.

Ten former students repeated that assessment in recent interviews.

“Those two guys were like, no joke, the evil empire. Everybody was almost terrified of them because there was no telling what the punishment would be if you didn’t do something right,” said one former airman, Christopher Troy Davenport, who did not want his hometown revealed because he fears retaliation.

“They did everything they could to dehumanize us, to separate us, to break us down, to make us turn against each other, anything and everything they could,” said another former airman who attended the school.. “As far as I am aware, the intel school curriculum does not include anything about how to handle yourself in a prisoner-of-war situation.”

One defender of Rolirad, who said he was a highly decorated intelligence officer with more than 20 years in the Air Force but would not give his name because he still is on duty, said he worked directly for her after she left Goodfellow and believes she “is the victim of sour grapes from previous students.”

Not all of Rolirad’s defenders served with her at Goodfellow, but a few ranked her among the finest officers they had served with.

“I’m going to tell you she’s an amazing lady, she’s a strong leader and she is a role model for women in the military to follow, and I would follow her any day,” said Master Sgt. Stefanie Hinson, who worked with Rolirad after she left San Angelo.

Retired Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Dennis Wright, 57, of Helotes ticked off the service’s core values of “integrity first, service before self and excellence in all we do,” and said Rolirad believes them, “not just as a bumper sticker. They are a part of her.”

Rolirad assumed command of the squadron May 31, 2009. Quinene arrived later and deployed for six months the following year. Both left in July of 2011.

Students told the investigating officer that during “knife fights,” slang for events in which leaders would assign airmen to their first jobs, Rolirad provided those she favored with good assignments and handed less-desired posts to those she didn’t like.

Displaying such a bias violates an Air Force instruction prohibiting personal relationships with students, and the report said Quinene also broke that rule.

A witness told the investigating officer that Rolirad and Quinene at one such session “participated in demeaning some of the students to include vulgar and sexually laced comments,” with “most of the vitriol … aimed at specific female” officers. Rolirad and Quinene denied the allegations, but the CDI substantiated them.

The investigating officer found Rolirad “did knowingly fail” to meet her command responsibilities to prevent substantiated dissolute and immoral practices.

“For the Air Force to harp core values and everything, and ‘integrity first’ and all this, it’s just like, where is that integrity?” said Davenport, the former intel student.

Conduct unbecoming

Other command issues were revealed in the 85-page report. Alcohol and the squadron’s high-pressure atmosphere mixed in a combustible way, with students saying they believed the booze could make a difference in getting highly prized intel jobs or avoiding dead-end assignments.

The CDI found Rolirad and Quinene solicited and accepted gifts worth more than $300 from lower-ranking officers. The gift typically was alcohol, to be consumed at “knife fights” and parties called “moxie missions” and “job drops.” The report said students were told what alcohol to buy for such social events, including that Quinene had a taste for Glenfiddich, an expensive Scotch.

Rolirad told investigators gifts of alcohol were placed in a room for the entire squadron’s use, and said that while going-away gifts to instructors had been given over the years, all she received during her tenure there was a wine glass.

Twenty-five of 36 witnesses told the investigating officer that Quinene was drunk, in uniform, at a job drop party at a downtown San Angelo club.

“At one point, I asked him to slow down and remember families are here,” one officer said.

The report said a witness recalled Quinene responding with an obscenity.

One student said her fellow airmen spent $600 on alcohol “and hated the idea, too, but we all pretty much agreed that we had to do it to get our jobs.”

Asked by the investigating officer why she didn’t report the incident, the student said, in a comment strikingly similar to testimony frequently given in more than two dozen trials stemming from an instructor misconduct scandal during the same period at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, “We thought it would get back to them and our jobs would be changed or we’d be punished for it.”

Students told the investigating officer and the Express-News that two camps emerged at the training squadron at Goodfellow — one that responded well to the commanders and another that was repelled by them.

Students who got close to the leaders appeared to have an edge, the report revealed, and at least a few knew it and played up to them. Both women describing the incident at Quinene’s home told the investigating officer that he not only invited some airmen to his office, where they shared beer, but also appeared ready to exact retribution — even at the whim of a favored student.

One student — the woman who Quinene kissed that Sunday evening at his home in February 2011 — told the investigator that he “offered to wash people back … if I didn’t like them” but she also was “under the impression that if I didn’t do what he wanted, I might get washed back,” delaying her graduation. “He never verbatim said it, but he’d say things like, ‘Probably not in your best interest to piss me off.’”

Though intoxicated, she drove her friend home, later telling the investigating officer: “All I could think about was getting away before something worse happened.”

“The next day he called my cellphone from his office and said, ‘We cool, LT?’” she told the investigator. “I said, ‘Yes.’ What else was I supposed to say?”

The investigating officer said an initially nervous and emotional Rolirad expressed “frustration over any allegations of wrongdoing” when she was interviewed for the investigation and “seemed genuine in her regret.”

Quinene, too, appeared nervous but denied allegations he’d been drunk or made advances toward female students. At one point in the interview, he reached out and touched the investigating officer’s knee in an apparent attempt to show sincerity, according the report.

The investigating officer, who is female, wrote that he “does not have the proper concept of appropriate work behavior.”

Both Rolirad and Quinene, she wrote, “stated they thought they were doing what was in the best interest of the Air Force and to send quality intelligence officers into the force. They also stated they tried to generate a high esprit de corps. The irony is that witness testimony stated that esprit de corps and morale was at its lowest point” during their command.

sigc@express-news.net