Tag: truth drugs

Adapted from original post at Firedoglake

Sometimes people can be too smart for their own good.

According to recent news stories (see Spencer Ackerman’s article in the Washington Independent), the Obama administration task force on interrogations is likely to recommend “small, mixed-agency teams for interviewing the most important terrorist targets.” Moreover, according to former Deputy Attorney General  and Intelligence Science Board member Philip Heymann:

… interrogators from across the military, CIA, and FBI, would be charged with creating a “syllabus” of best interrogation practices that fall within the boundaries of the U.S. Army Field Manual on Interrogations, which complies with the Geneva Conventions.

Following a pivotal article by Jeff Stein at Congressional Quarterly a few weeks back, today’s Washington Post published an important article today, “Detainees Allege Being Drugged, Questioned.” The story, by Post staff writer Joby Warrick, notes U.S. denials in using drug injections for coercive purposes during interrogations.

Adel al-Nusairi, a Saudi national imprisoned for years at Guanatanmo, and now released without charges, has a different memory:

“I’d fall asleep” after the shot, Nusairi, a former Saudi policeman captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2002, recalled in an interview with his attorney at the military prison in Cuba, according to notes. After being roused, Nusairi eventually did talk, giving U.S. officials what he later described as a made-up confession to buy some peace.

“I was completely gone,” he remembered. “I said, ‘Let me go. I want to go to sleep. If it takes saying I’m a member of al-Qaeda, I will.'”