"Truth serum" is a colloquial name for any of a range of psychoactive drugs used in an effort to obtain information from subjects who are unable or unwilling to provide it otherwise. These includeethanol,scopolamine,3-quinuclidinyl benzilate,midazolam,flunitrazepam,sodium thiopental, andamobarbital, among others.
Although a variety of such substances have been tested, serious issues have been raised about their use scientifically, ethically and legally. There is currently no drug proven to cause consistent or predictable enhancement of truth-telling.[1] Subjects questioned under the influence of such substances have been found to be suggestible and their memories subject to reconstruction and fabrication. While such drugs have been used in the course of investigating civil and criminal cases, they have not been accepted by Western legal systems and legal experts as genuine investigative tools.[2] In the United States, it has been suggested that their use is a potential violation of theFifth Amendment of theU.S. Constitution (theright to remain silent).[3][4] Concerns have also been raised through theEuropean Court of Human Rights arguing that use of a truth serum could be considered a violation of a human right to be free from degrading treatment,[5] or could be considered a form oftorture.[6] It has been noted to be a violation of theInter-American Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture.[7]
"Truth serum" was previously used in the management ofpsychotic patients in the practice ofpsychiatry.[8] In a therapeutic context, the controlled administration ofintravenoushypnotic medications is called "narcosynthesis" or "narcoanalysis". Such application was first documented by Dr.William Bleckwenn. Reliability and suggestibility of patients are concerns, and the practice of chemically inducing an involuntary mental state is now widely considered to be a form of torture.[9][10]
Sedatives orhypnotics that alter higher cognitive function includeethanol,scopolamine,3-quinuclidinyl benzilate, potent short or intermediate acting hypnoticbenzodiazepines such asmidazolam,flunitrazepam, and various short and ultra-short actingbarbiturates, includingsodium thiopental (commonly known by the brand name Pentothal) andamobarbital (formerly known as sodium amytal).[11][2][12]
While there have been many clinical studies of the efficacy of narcoanalysis in interrogation orlie detection, there is dispute whether any of them qualify as arandomized,controlled study, that would meet scientific standards for determining effectiveness.[13][14][15][16]
India'sCentral Bureau of Investigation has used intravenous barbiturates for interrogation, often in high-profile cases.[2] One such case was the interrogation ofAjmal Kasab, the only terrorist captured alive by police in the2008 attacks inMumbai, India.[17][18] Kasab was aPakistani[19][20] militant and a member of theLashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group.[21][22] On 3 May 2010, Kasab was found guilty of 80 offences, including murder, waging war against India, possessing explosives, and other charges.[23] On 6 May 2010, the same trial court sentenced him to death on four counts and to a life sentence on five counts.[24]
The Central Bureau of Investigation also conducted this test on Krishna, a key witness and suspect in the high-profile2008 Aarushi-Hemraj Murder Case to seek more information from Krishna and also determine his credibility as a witness with key information, yet not known to the investigating authorities. Per unverified various media sources, Krishna had purported to have deemed Hemraj (the prime suspect) as not guilty of Aarushi's murder, claiming he [Hemraj] "treated Aarushi like his own daughter".
On May 5, 2010 the Supreme Court Judge Balasubramaniam in the case "Smt. Selvi vs. State of Karnataka" held that narcoanalysis,polygraph andbrain mapping tests were to be allowed with the consent of the accused. The judge stated: "We are of the considered opinion that no individual can be forced and subjected to such techniques involuntarily, and by doing so it amounts to unwarranted intrusion of personal liberty."[25]
InGujarat, Madhya Pradesh High Court permitted narcoanalysis in the investigation of a killing of a tiger that occurred in May 2010. The Jhurjhura Tigress atBandhavgarh National Park, a mother of three cubs, was found dead as a result of being hit by a vehicle. A Special Task Force requested the narcoanalysis testing of four persons, one of whom refused to consent on grounds of potential post-test complications.[26]
In 2004,Novaya Gazeta, with reference toKGB GeneralOleg Kalugin, published an article that said that since the end of the 1980s theFirst and Second Directorates of the KGB had used, in exceptional cases and mostly on foreign citizens, a soluble odourless, colourless and tasteless substance code-named SP-117, an improved successor to similar drugs used by the KGB prior, that was effective in making a subject lose control of oneself 15 minutes after intake.[27] Most importantly, a person who would be given, consecutively, two parts of the drug, i.e. both the "dote" and "antidote", would have no recollection of what had occurred in between and feel afterward as though he had suddenly fallen asleep, the preferable way to administer the "dote" being in an alcoholic drink, as that would serve as a plausible explanation of the sudden onset of drowsiness.[27]
Other reports state that SP-117 was just a form of concentrated alcohol meant to be added to alcoholic drinks such as champagne.[28]
According to the RussianForeign Intelligence Service (SVR) officer, Alexander Kouzminov, who quit the service in the early 1990s, the officers of SVR′s Directorate S, which runs SVR's "illegals", primarily used the drug to verify fidelity and trustworthiness of their agents who operated overseas, such asVitaly Yurchenko.[29] According toAlexander Litvinenko,Russian presidential candidateIvan Rybkin was drugged with the same substance by FSB agents during his kidnapping in 2004.[30]
Scopolamine was promoted by obstetrician Robert Ernest House as an advance that would prevent false convictions, beginning in 1922. He had noted that women in childbirth who were given scopolamine could answer questions accurately even while in a state oftwilight sleep, and were oftentimes "exceedingly candid" in their remarks. House proposed that scopolamine could be used when interrogating suspected criminals. He even arranged to administer scopolamine to prisoners in theDallas County jail. Both men were believed to be guilty, both denied guilt under scopolamine, and both were eventually acquitted.[16] In 1926, the use of scopolamine was rejected in a court case, by Judge Robert Walker Franklin, who questioned both its scientific origin, and the uncertainty of its effect.[12][2]
The United StatesOffice of Strategic Services (OSS) experimented with the use ofmescaline,scopolamine, andmarijuana as possible truth drugs duringWorld War II. They concluded that the effects were not much different from those ofalcohol: subjects became more talkative but that did not mean they were more truthful. Likehypnosis, there were also issues of suggestibility and interviewer influence. Cases involving scopolamine resulted in a mixture of testimonies both for and against those suspected, at times directly contradicting each other.[2][31]
LSD was also considered as a possible truth serum, but found unreliable.[2] During the 1950s and 1960s, the United StatesCentral Intelligence Agency (CIA) carried out a number of investigations includingProject MKUltra[32] andProject MKDELTA[citation needed], which involved illegal use of truth drugs including LSD.[33][31][34] A CIA report from 1961, released in 1993, concludes:
The salient points that emerge from this discussion are the following. No such magic brew as the popular notion of truth serum exists. The barbiturates, by disrupting defensive patterns, may sometimes be helpful in interrogation, but even under the best conditions they will elicit an output contaminated by deception, fantasy, garbled speech, etc. A major vulnerability they produce in the subject is a tendency to believe he has revealed more than he has. It is possible, however, for both normal individuals and psychopaths to resist drug interrogation; it seems likely that any individual who can withstand ordinary intensive interrogation can hold out in narcosis. The best aid to a defense against narco-interrogation is foreknowledge of the process and its limitations. There is an acute need for controlled experimental studies of drug reaction, not only to depressants but also to stimulants and to combinations of depressants, stimulants, and ataraxics.[16]
In 1963, theU.S. Supreme Court ruled, inTownsend v. Sain, that confessions produced as a result of ingestion of truth serum were "unconstitutionally coerced" and therefore inadmissible.[35] The viability of forensic evidence produced from truth sera has been addressed in lower courts – judges and expert witnesses have generally agreed that they are not reliable for lie detection.[36]
In 1967, during his investigation into theassassination of President John F. Kennedy,New Orleans District AttorneyJim Garrison arranged for his key witness,Perry Russo, to be administered sodium pentothal before being questioned about his knowledge regarding an allegedconspiracy.[37] Russo would later describe "his conditioning by the DA's office as a complete brainwashing job."[38]
In 1995, during the search for evidence that could acquitAndres English-Howard, his defense attorney employedmethohexital.
More recently, a judge approved the use of narcoanalysis in the2012 Aurora, Colorado shooting trial to evaluate whetherJames Eagan Holmes's state of mind was valid for aninsanity plea.[39] Judge William Sylvester ruled that prosecutors would be allowed to interrogate Holmes "under the influence of a medical drug designed to loosen him up and get him to talk", such as sodium amytal, if he filed an insanity plea.[3] The hope was that a 'narcoanalytic interview' could confirm whether or not he had been legally insane on 20 July, the date of the shootings.[3] It is not known whether such an examination was carried out.[2]
William Shepherd, chair of the criminal justice section of theAmerican Bar Association, stated, with respect to the Holmes case, that use of a "truth drug" as proposed, "to ascertain the veracity of a defendant's plea of insanity... would provoke intense legal argument relating to Holmes's right to remain silent under the fifth amendment of the US constitution."[3] Discussing possible effectiveness of such an examination, psychiatrist August Piper stated that "amytal's inhibition-lowering effects in no way prompt the subject to offer up true statements or memories."[40]Psychology Today's Scott Linfield noted, as per Piper, that "there's good reason to believe that truth serums merely lower the threshold for reporting virtually all information, both true and false."[40]
A PubMed search found 26 references from 1997 to 2001 (or 5.2 publications per year), but in less than five years (2002 to July 2006) the number has more than tripled to 83 or 16.6 publications per year. Many of these are randomised controlled trials.andJesani, Amar (Jan–Mar 2007)."Misconceptions about narco analysis".Indian Journal of Medical Ethics (Editorial reply).4 (1). Mumbai:7–8, discussion 10–1.PMID 18630211. Archived fromthe original on 2013-07-30.
It is true that the number of research publications on lie detection has tripled during 2002-2006. But no material has been produced that can be described as randomised controlled trials.
A PubMed search using the MeSH term 'narcotherapy' gives just two articles in the last ten years. There are no randomised control studies - the scientific standard - to demonstrate the reproducibility of results obtained by narcoanalysis for information gathering, abreaction, or lie detection.
Given the nature of narcoanalysis, it is not possible to get volunteers to facilitate controlled studies.Indirecy quotation from B.M. Mohan
The almost total absence of controlled experimental studies of "truth" drugs and the spotty and anecdotal nature of psychiatric and police evidence require that extrapolations to intelligence operations be made with care.