A Salt Lake Tribune columnist wrote an opinion column reflecting on the role Mormons played in devising U.S. torture policies.

Salt Lake attorney David R. Irvine,  a former Utah state lawmaker and retired U.S. Army Reserve brigadier general, writes ^[1]:

[M]embers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints served as helpful enablers. Not only did they provide the legal architecture, they provided the “scientific” patina for the plunge into the barbaric business of torture

Irvine is referring to former White House deputy counsel Timothy E. Flanigan; former Office of Legal Counsel head Jay Bybee, and psychologists James E. Mitchell and John B. Jessen, who worked with the Air Force’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) programs. SERE was a program to help captured Americans learn techniques to survive torture, but elements of the program were “reverse engineered” to apply the methods to al-Qaeda detainees during the Bush administration.

Levine’s bio says he also taught prisoner of war interrogation and military law for 18 years for the Sixth United States Army Intelligence School.

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