The purely experimental angle is something I hope to touch on real soon, but it is to test how certain drugs help or hinder stress reactions, measuring biological markers of stress reactions (cortisol levels, hormone levels, other protein markers, etc.).

Sodium amytal is the so-called “truth serum”, and it certainly could have been give at times. We really don’t know what they gave, or why (besides sedation for transport, as the Bradbury memo admits they did, at least up to mid-2003).

Fatster’s point about MK-Ultra is well taken.

I wrote an article over a year ago: Support Call for Investigating Drugging Detainees.

Here’s what the CIA has written on use of drugs, from their 1963 KUBARK manual [long quote here, for reference purposes]:

Just as the threat of pain may more effectively induce compliance than its infliction, so an interrogatee’s mistaken belief that he has been drugged may make him a more useful interrogation subject than he would be under narcosis….

In the interrogation situation, moreover, the effectiveness of a placebo may be enhanced because of its ability to placate the conscience. The subject’s primary source of resistance to confession or divulgence may be pride, patriotism, personal loyalty to superiors, or fear of retribution if he is returned to their hands. Under such circumstances his natural desire to escape from stress by complying with the interrogator’s wishes may become decisive if he is provided an acceptable rationalization for compliance. “I was drugged” is one of the best excuses.

Drugs are no more the answer to the interrogator’s prayer than the polygraph, hypnosis, or other aids. Studies and reports “dealing with the validity of material extracted from reluctant informants… indicate that there is no drug which can force every informant to report all the information he has. Not only may the inveterate criminal psychopath lie under the influence of drugs which have been tested, but the relatively normal and well-adjusted individual may also successfully disguise factual data”….

Nevertheless, drugs can be effective in overcoming resistance not dissolved by other techniques. As has already been noted, the so-called silent drug (a pharmacologically potent substance given to a person unaware of its administration) can make possible the induction of hypnotic trance in a previously unwilling subject….

Particularly important is the reference to matching the drug to the personality of the interrogatee. The effect of most drugs depends more upon the personality of the subject than upon the physical characteristics of the drugs themselves. If the approval of Headquarters has been obtained and if a doctor is at hand for administration, one of the most important of the interrogator’s functions is providing the doctor with a full and accurate description of the psychological make-up of the interrogatee, to facilitate the best possible choice of a drug.

Persons burdened with feelings of shame or guilt are likely to unburden themselves when drugged, especially if these feelings have been reinforced by the interrogator. And like the placebo, the drug provides an excellent rationalization of helplessness for the interrogatee who wants to yield but has hitherto been unable to violate his own values or loyalties.

Like other coercive media, drugs may affect the content of what an interrogatee divulges. Gottschalk notes that certain drugs “may give rise to psychotic manifestations such as hallucinations, illusions, delusions, or disorientation”, so that “the verbal material obtained cannot always be considered valid.” (7) For this reason drugs (and the other aids discussed in this section) should not be used persistently to facilitate the interrogative debriefing that follows capitulation. Their function is to cause capitulation, to aid in the shift from resistance to cooperation. Once this shift has been accomplished, coercive techniques should be abandoned both for moral reasons and because they are unnecessary and even counter-productive.

This discussion does not include a list of drugs that have been employed for interrogation purposes or a discussion of their properties because these are medical considerations within the province of a doctor rather than an interogator [sic].