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WASHINGTON (AP) – Shortly after September 11, the CIA considered using a drug that, in its view, could function as a truth serum and force terrorist suspects to give up information about potential attacks.
After months of research, the agency decided that a drug called Versed, a sedative often prescribed to reduce anxiety, "may have deserved to be tried." But in the end, the CIA decided not to ask government lawyers to approve its use.
The existence of the drug research program – dubbed "Project Medication" – is the subject of a once classified report that was provided to the American Civil Liberties Union by order of a judge and published Tuesday by the 'organization.
The CIA's 90-page report, which had been provided in advance to the Associated Press, is a window to the internal struggle that medical staff working for the detention and interrogation program rigorous of the agency had to face to reconcile professional ethics and opportunity to save lives. future attacks.
"This does not mean that the doctors were sadistic or something like that," said ACLU lawyer Dror Ladin. "But that means that they were complicit in the fact that this pseudo-scientific torture could have happened without the participation of the doctors."
Between 2002 and 2007, doctors, psychologists, medical assistants and CIA nurses were directly involved in the interrogation program, the report said. They evaluated, monitored and assisted 97 detainees in 10 CIA secret facilities abroad and accompanied them in more than 100 flights.
The CIA finally decided not to ask the Ministry of Justice to approve drug-assisted interrogation, sparing the CIA doctors "some important ethical concerns," according to the report. It took months for the Ministry of Justice to approve brutal interrogation tactics, including sleep deprivation, confinement in small spaces, and the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding. The CIA anti-terrorist team "did not want to raise another issue with the Justice Department," the report said.
Before choosing Versed, the report indicated that researchers had studied old Soviet drug experiments as well as the CIA's MK-Ultra discredited program in the 1950s and 1960s, which involved human experimentation with LSD and d & # 39; Other psychotropic drugs on involuntary individuals as part of a project. long search for a form of truth serum. These experiences have been widely criticized and even today, some experts doubt the existence of an effective substance.
"But decades later, the agency was again planning to experiment on human beings to test pseudo-scientific theories about the learned helplessness of its prisoners," said Ladin.
Versed is a brand name of sedative midazolam, used since the late 1970s and currently sold as a generic drug. It causes drowsiness and relieves anxiety and agitation. It can also temporarily alter memory and is often used for minor surgical procedures or medical procedures such as colonoscopies requiring sedation but not complete anesthesia. It is part of a class of anti-anxiety medications known as benzodiazepines, which act by acting on a brain chemical that calms the activity of nerve cells.
"Versed was considered to be worthy of trial if the first legal sanction was unequivocal," the report says. "There were at least two legal obstacles: the prohibition of medical experimentation on prisoners and that of the interrogation of" psychotropic drugs "for interrogation purposes or" those which profoundly alter the senses "."
These questions became irrelevant after the CIA decided not to ask the Justice Department to give it the green light. "In early 2003, the review of the Medical Services Bureau, unofficially called" Medication Project ", was set aside and never reactivated," the report said.
The CIA has not commented on the release of the report, but government lawyers pointed out in a file filed early last year that the report, expressly mentioning "draft," was not included in the report. 39; was that the impression of an agent of the agency on the detention program and interrogation. The document is not "the official history or the final evaluation of the program" of the CIA or the Medical Service Bureau, "the lawyers wrote.
The ACLU has spent more than two years in court trying to get the report published. In September 2017, a federal judge in New York ordered the CIA to release him. Government lawyers have tried three more times to keep the information contained in the report, but the ACLU received the bulk of the report in August. The government is still fighting to keep secret portions. They must file briefs in a federal court of appeal in New York on Wednesday, saying the judge had ordered too many releases.
While the CIA's rigorous interrogation program ended in 2007, the ACLU believes that it is important to continue to seek disclosure of material on this subject, particularly since the President Donald Trump said during his campaign that he would allow the interrogation of terrorist suspects with the waterboard, now banned by the United States. law, and a "hell of a lot worse."
CIA Director Gina Haspel, who oversees a secret CIA detention facility in Thailand where detainees were trapped, told the Senate at its hearing that she "would not support the CIA". Use of enhanced interrogation techniques for any purpose whatsoever ".
The report cites numerous instances where medical staff expressed concern or protected the health of the inmates. Those who were thrown against walls – a practice called "wall" – had their necks protected from neck whipping by rolled towels around their necks, the report said. When an inmate, who had been injured during the capture, was confined in a box, care was taken not to force his legs into a position that "would compromise healing". Medical assistants refused the use of duct tape on inmates' mouths during flights, as air sickness could result in vomiting and possible aspiration.
At the same time, the medical office's report indicated that waterboarding was not "inherently painful". He stated that there was "a physical discomfort caused by occasional nausea associated", but that two inmates who underwent the longest waterboarding sessions complained only "of the pain caused by the restraint straps" .
This contrasts with the Senate's 2014 report on the CIA's interrogation program, which indicated that a prisoner known as Abu Zubaydah, an alleged al Qaeda operative who had been arrested more than 80 times, "cried, prayed, pleaded, vomited and required medical resuscitation after waterboarding."
Some members of the CIA medical staff described the windsurfing as "little more than an amateur experience" and others feared that this practice would cause spasm of the vocal cords, which could, at least temporarily, make speech or breathing difficult.
At the same time, other medical staff members claimed that waterboarding "provided periodic relief" to a prisoner because it was a break after being forced to stand for long periods of time. The agency's medical staff also said that the rigorous interrogation program was "reassuring, free of persistent physical or psychological effects".
Dr. Sondra Crosby, who treated torture victims, two of whom were detained at secret CIA sites, disagreed.
"The suffering and suffering of CIA program survivors is immense and includes severe and complex post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, physical conditions and psychosocial dysfunction," said Crosby, of the Faculty of Medicine. Medicine and Public Health at Boston University. . "At least one detainee has been tortured to death, and their physical and psychological scars will last a lifetime."
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AP Medical Editor Lauran Neergaard in Washington contributed to this report.
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