Military training facility on Indian reservation is revealed

By J. Harry Jones
Thursday, April 14, 2011 at 2:15 a.m.

Miles deep into the largest Indian reservation in San Diego County, a company with ties to at least one former Blackwater Worldwide executive is building a training facility with firing ranges, a helipad and what was described as mock Afghan villages.

Two men told visitors to the remote site last week that Marines and other troops would engage in cultural, language-immersion and ambush exercises there, although in a later interview one stressed there would be no combat training.

The facility, located on the Los Coyotes Indian Reservation northeast of Warner Springs, follows a similar effort by Blackwater to create a military and paramilitary training center in Potrero. Blackwater abandoned that proposal amid community opposition in 2008.

It’s unclear when or how the tribe became involved in the current project, which came to public light by chance on April 6.

A reporter and photographer for The San Diego Union-Tribune were on a ride-along with sheriff’s deputy Erik Munzenmaier for a story about law enforcement in the backcountry when the deputy decided to enter the 25,000-acre reservation.

After heading east for a few miles in mountainous terrain, Munzenmaier drove up to a locked gate guarded by two men. The men let Munzenmaier’s vehicle go through.

A short way up the road, Munzenmaier passed two firing ranges and then reached a construction site where workers were configuring shipping containers on recently graded land.

Two men met Munzenmaier on the road. One introduced himself as Brian Bonfiglio.

Bonfiglio was a vice president of Blackwater Worldwide and the main public contact during the private security firm’s 2006 bid to create the training facility in Potrero. Blackwater, now called Xe Services, pulled out in 2008 as residents protested its wartime activities in Iraq and raised concerns about increased traffic, noise and wildfire dangers linked to munitions exercises.

The second man, Sean Roach, is a motivational speaker, entrepreneur and former business executive. His name appears in the incorporation records for several companies in Nevada and San Diego County, and he is a board member for Big Brothers Big Sisters of San Diego County.

At the reservation, Bonfiglio and Roach told Munzenmaier that Eagle Rock LLC runs the facility as a Department of Defense outsourcing project and that troops would train there. They said the company was leasing the land from the tribe and that plans call for construction of five villages of different sizes and configurations to be built out of shipping containers spray-foamed and painted to resemble mud huts.

Eventually, they said, “real Afghansâ€