"So you say...leaving that aside for the moment I am curious about one other thing; did your men find anything while they were excavating the Jedi Tower?"
"Actually yes. The excavation teams found records of something called the 'Jedi Covenant' that existed around the time of Revan; according to what they could piece together they were a sect in the Order that...took extreme measures to deal with potential Sith."
"Internal purges and the like?"
"The information they found was hazy but pointed in that direction. Nothing that practical but it is an...interesting piece of history that I'm positive the Order would try to bury."
"I'm half tempted to tell you to make an exhibit on them."
"So was I, but I realized that would probably be a bit too provocative as it were. It'll just go in the databanks here if anyone cares to read about them."
That is an understatement. If you ever wanted to cripple the credibility of the Jedi Order, the story of the Jedi Covenant would sink their reputation faster than Anakin Skywalker's landing strategies.
Long story short, five Jedi Masters had a Force Vision which appeared to show one of their padawans turning to the Dark Side, bringing about the return of the Sith and the destruction of Taris. So they decided, like good, responsible and fanatical extremists, to kill their padawans during a fake Knighting Ceremony and blame it on the more unstable of the Padawans. The leader of the group even lied, saying that the Jedi Council had given them permission.
Unfortunately, things went wrong one of the Padawans was late due to chasing after a criminal and the one they planned to blame it on figured out something was wrong forcing their hand early. Pinning the blame on the late Padawan, the situation spiralled out of control as a manhunt ensued. They did capture him once, but he escaped with the aid of the criminal he'd previously captured by playing on their fears by recreating the Masters' Force Vision to make them think a Sith was attacking them.
The audacity of such a high profile escape led to mass panic in the streets and a loss on confidence in the Jedi Order. So the Jedi High Council (who was completely in the dark about the truth of the matter) decided it would be better to recall the Masters and split them up and disperse them all over the Galaxy, until the fallout died down. This situation of chaos on the planet was the perfect situation of somebody called Mandalore The Ultimate to kick off The Mandalorian Wars by invading Taris.
The Padawan and his criminal friend where later (in a series of wacky adventures) able to reveal the Conspiracy to the Jedi High Council (with the aid of one of the guilt ridden Masters), dismantle Jedi Covenant and helped stop an attempted coup by one of the more fanatical members to take over the Jedi Order. The Council, not wanting to be blamed for creating the circumstances that lead to a long and bloody war, covered it up by blaming the whole thing on a Mandalorian terrorist attack.
The only people who knew the truth was the Padawan, his criminal friend and the families of the deceased padawans and they went on to form the Rogue Moon Project (funded by the criminal's con money), an organisation dedicated to helping refugees, wrongly accused people, and beings marginalized during the raging Mandalorian Wars.
So yeah, maybe we save this till after Sidious is taken care of. It would make good blackmail material for the Jedi Order, should it come to it.
