WASHINGTON – Shortly after 9/11, the CIA looked at a drug it was thought to be a serious threat.

Aftermath of research, the agency decided that a drug called Versed, a sedative often prescribed to reduce anxiety, was "possibly worth a try." But in the end, the CIA

The existence of the drug research program – dubbed "Project Medication" – is reported in a once-classified report that was provided to the American Civil Liberties Union.

The 90-page CIA report, which was provided in advance to The Associated Press, is a window into the face of the medical profession. future attacks.

"This document tells an essential part of the story of how it was that the CIA came to torture prisoners against the law and helps prevent it from happening again," said ACLU attorney Dror Ladin.

Between 2002 and 2007, CIA doctors, psychologists, physician assistants and nurses were directly involved in the interrogation program, the report said. They evaluated, monitored and cared for 97 detainees in 10 secret CIA facilities abroad and assisted detainees on more than 100 flights.

The CIA is in the process of reviewing the issue of drug-assisted interrogations, sparing CIA doctors "some significant ethical concerns," the report said. It was taken for the brutal questioning tactics, including sleep deprivation, confinement in small spaces and the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding. The CIA's counterterrorism team "did not want to raise another issue with the Department of Justice," the report said.

CIA's discredited MK-Ultra program from the 1950s and 1960s that involved human experimentation with LSD and other mind-altering drugs long search for some form of truth serum. These experiments have been criticized and, even today, some experts doubt an effective substance exists.

"But decades later, the agency was considering experimenting with humans to test pseudo-scientific theories of learned helplessness on its prisoners," Ladin said.

Versant is a brand name for sedative midazolam, used since the late 1970s and today sold as a generic. It causes drowsiness and anxiety. It also can be used for colonoscopy, but it is often used for colonoscopy, but it does not require full-blown anesthesia. It's a class of anti-anxiety medications known as benzodiazepines that work by affecting the brain that causes the activity of nerve cells.

"It may be considered that a legal sanction has been obtained first," the report said. "There have been at least two legal obstacles: a prohibition against medical experimentation on the subject of interrogation and use of 'mind-altering drugs' or 'profoundly altered the senses'.

Those questions became the cause of the CIA decided against the Justice Department to give it a green light. "At the beginning of 2003, the Office of Medical Services' review, informally termed 'Project Medication' was shelved, never to be reactivated," the report said.

The CIA had not commented on the report's release, but government lawyers emphasized the fact that it had been written in the early days of the report, expressly marked "draft," was just one agency's impressions of the detention and interrogation program. The document is not the CIA's or the Office of Medical Service's "final official history, or assessment, of the program," the lawyers wrote.

The ACLU spent more than two years in the search for the report released. In September 2017, a federal judge in New York ordered the CIA to release it. Government lawyers tried to keep the report under wraps, but the ACLU received the bulk of the report in August. The government is still fighting to keep secret portions. They are to file briefs in the United States on New York on Wednesday, arguing that the judge ordered too much released.

While the CIA's interrogation program ended in 2007, the ACLU believes it's important to continue seeking the release of documents, especially since President Donald Trump said he would approve interrogating terror suspects with waterboarding, which is now banned by US law, and a "hell of a lot worse."

CIA Director Gina Haspel, who was involved in supervising a secret CIA detention site in Thailand where detainees were waterboarded, told the Senate during its confirmation hearing that it does not "use enhanced interrogation techniques for any purpose."

The report cites many instances where medical personal expressed concern or protected the health of the detainees. Those who were thrown up against walls – a practice called "walling" – had their necks protected by their necks, the report said. When one detainee, who had been wounded during capture, was confined to a box, Physician assistants overruled using duct tape over the mouths of detainees during flights because air sickness could lead to vomiting and possible aspiration.

"That does not mean that the doctors were sadistic or anything like that," Ladin said. "But it means they were complicit because this pseudo-scientific torture could not have happened without the participation of doctors."

At the same time, the medical office's report said waterboarding was not "intrinsically painful." It said that it was "physical discomfort from the occasional associated retching," but that two endainees who endured the most extensive waterboarding sessions only "of the bread of the restraining straps."

That contrasts with the Senate's 2014 report on the CIA's interrogation program, which stated that Abu Zubaydah, a suspected al-Qaida operative, was more than 80 times "cried, begged, pleaded, vomited, and required medical resuscitation. after being waterboarded. "

Some CIA medical personnel called waterboarding "little more than an amateurish experiment" and others worried that the practice would trigger spasms of the vocal cords, which could, at least, make it hard to speak or breathe.

At the same time, other medical personnel are in the process of being forced to take a break from being forced to stand for long periods of time. The personal medical agency also said the question was "reassuringly free of enduring physical or psychological effects."

Dr. Sondra Crosby, who have treated victims of torture, who were held at CIA secret sites, disagreed.

"The enduring pain and suffering of the survivors of the CIA program is huge, and includes severe, complex post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, physical ailments, and psychosocial dysfunction," said Crosby, of Boston University's School of Medicine and Public Health. . "At least one detainee was tortured to death.

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AP Medical Writer Lauran Neergaard in Washington contributed to this report.