WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio — The defense took aim at the credibility of the prosecution’s whistleblower in the third and final day of the Article 32 hearing for Chief Master Sgt. William Gurney.
Gurney, the former command chief of Air Force Materiel Command, is facing 17 specifications stemming from alleged inappropriate conduct with 10 female airmen, some dating as far back as 2005. Prosecutors are asking investigating officer Col. Michael O’Sullivan to consider an additional six specifications — including one charge of rape — based on the evidence he collected during the hearing.
Gurney, a 26-year veteran of the service, was relieved of his job as the top enlisted airmen in AFMC on Nov. 13, 2009, and has since been reassigned a desk job.
Five defense witnesses and 13 prosecution witnesses testified during the three-day hearing. Gurney never testified and declined to make a comment after the hearing adjourned.
The case stems from a complaint by a senior airman assigned to Brooks City-Base, Texas. That airman’s former supervisor, Staff Sgt. Aprielle White, said Friday the airman seemed “almost proud” when she thought her complaints about Gurney might make big news.
“Soon, everybody will know,” White said the airman told her. “It’s something really big.”
At the time, though, the airman didn’t specifically name Gurney. And White didn’t ask.
“I didn’t want to know,” she said. “I didn’t want anything to do with it.”
White admitted she didn’t like the airman and found her “pretty dishonest.” She also said she made up her mind that the airman was lying about her interactions with Gurney.
Another former supervisor of the airman, Staff Sgt. Janeth Cubeddu, testified she often had to counsel the airman and felt that she didn’t act with integrity and trustworthiness.
Cubeddu testified the airman would change her stories about going to see the doctor or feign ignorance about an upcoming PT test. She also said the airman confided in her that “something happened in Ohio” — a reference to the alleged groping of the airman by Gurney at Wright-Patterson last year — and that she had reported it. But when Cubeddu reported it to her leadership, no such record could be found.
Also on Friday, the superintendent who oversees the work of a technical sergeant who testified she had sex with Gurney told defense lawyers said she felt surprised when Gurney pushed for the technical sergeant to attend a conference in late 2008. Another airman had been selected, Chief Master Sgt. Jennifer Thompson testified.
When she told Gurney she couldn’t send the technical sergeant, he e-mailed saying he needed her expertise but said the decision was OK with him.
The prosecution’s final witness, a master sergeant based at the Air Force Academy, Colo., testified how her sexual relationship with Gurney began when both were on a temporary duty trip to Alabama. Gurney had her phone number because she tasked to help him at the conference. At the bar with a group, he played footsie with her and they traded sexual innuendoes. They had sex several times that trip, she testified.
They slept together again in July 2008 when he visited Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., she testified, and when both traveled to San Antonio that summer for the Air Force Sergeants Association, she engaged in a threesome several times with Gurney and his wife, Tracie.
Gurney and the master sergeant had sex six more times until November 2009, and the two engaged in threesomes with Tracie Gurney several times again in September 2008.
“He made me feel sexy,” testified the sergeant, who has been married 17 years. “He made me feel attractive.”
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