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Spy suspect taught at city high school

By Eric Stevick
Herald Writer

EVERETT -- Until June, Deborah Davila was a Cascade High School special education teacher.

Today, she is in FBI custody, accused of trying in 1999 to pass along stolen top-secret information related to U.S. chemical, nuclear and biological capabilities to white supremacists.

Davila, 46, and her ex-husband, Rafael Davila, 51, a former National Guard officer, were arrested this week for unauthorized possession of secret documents.

Davila, also known as Davila-Cummings during her tenure at Cascade, was hired at the high school in fall 2000. She resigned in June, according to Everett School District records.

Since then, she has been teaching special education for the Pasco School District. She was arrested Tuesday in College Place near Walla Walla.

The Spokesman-Review of Spokane on Thursday reported that the case involved documents that have been of interest to the Aryan Nations, a white supremacist group based in northern Idaho. The documents allegedly outline the possible deployment of U.S. troops during a domestic crisis, the newspaper said.

Davila apparently was aware of the FBI investigation before she accepted the job at Cascade. Her Spokane attorney, Chris Phelps, said his client retained him 2 1/2years ago when she first became aware of the investigation.

Davila would not have been hired if there had been any indication of criminal activity, said Gay Campbell, an Everett School District spokeswoman.

"As far as I know, no one in the district was aware of an investigation," she said.

Kim Mead, president of the 1,100-member Everett Education Association, spotted Davila's name in a news story Thursday morning but assumed it was someone else. When she read that the suspect was a special education teacher in Eastern Washington, the reality set in.

"It would be fair to say I was surprised," Mead said.

"Someone has been charged, but that doesn't mean they are guilty," she said.

News of the indictments shocked several of her former colleagues at Cascade.

"It was quite the conversation piece at lunch today," said Kari Averill, a social studies teacher who teaches classes about the Holocaust.

Averill demonstrated outside the Clearview Community Center in May, where a controversial British author was lecturing. The author disputes the number and manner of Jewish concentration camp deaths during World War II.

Even so, Averill isn't jumping to any conclusions about her former colleague.

"I didn't see any indication" that Davila could be connected to white supremacists, she said. "She is innocent until proven guilty."