The CIA explored using a truth-serum on terrorism detainees after 9/11, newly released report shows
The CIA explored finding a “truth serum” to use on terrorism detainees in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to a declassified report that was released as part of a lengthy Freedom of Information lawsuit.
The report, written by a chief CIA medical official whose identity has not been disclosed, detailed that Project Medication, as the effort was named, was shelved in 2003.
But not before the agency doctors had explored whether “drug-based interviews” would make for a less harsh alternative to the brutal interrogation practices like sleep deprivation, small-space confinement and waterboarding that the CIA employed in the years after 9/11, tactics that have come to be widely referred to as torture.
The report noted the agency’s previous forays into the field of truth serums, citing a 1961 report that concluded that individuals who could withstand interrogations would probably still be able to hold out in altered mental states. It also cited the CIA’s use of LSD and other drugs during its notorious MK-ULTRA project in the 1950s and ’60s, when the agency conducted 149 experiments in mind control, including the use of 25 unwitting subjects.
A drug called Versed, known by its generic name, midazolam, was identified by the report as the preferred drug for truth inducement. A benzodiazepine, a class of drugs normally used to treat anxiety, the drug did have a drawback for interrogation purposes, the report noted: It had to be administered by a physician intravenously, compared to LSD, which could be administered without a subject’s knowledge.
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