Since the release of the Senate torture report yesterday, one thought has refused to leave me: we contributed to this. Not just in the sense that Mormons overwhelming supported the Bush administration that implemented this approach nor in the sense that Mormons reportedly are very overrepresented in the intelligence community. No, two Mormons were very prominent in the drafting and the implementation of these policies and they are, by all accounts, considered to be good Mormons. Our brothers did this; so are we their keepers or no?
Bruce Jessen and Jay Bybee are our fellow saints. Jessen was called to be a bishop in 2012, years after having made a cool $80 million by developing the guidelines for developing the torture techniques used on Al-Qaeda terrorists and, possibly, anybody else who happened to wind up in the CIA’s black sites. He resigned from his calling one week after accepting it. Bybee, at the time a Justice Department Official, gave the protocols legal authorization, in spite of the fact that before and since a host of legal scholars and other politicians have declared the protocols illegal under international and U.S. law. Bybee has since become a federal judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and he continues to defend his decisions as legally correct (although, reportedly, he has expressed regret behind closed doors).
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