TIME: Confessions of a Terrorist - (Interrogators used sodium pentathol)

[kskiska]

By March 2002, the terrorist called Abu Zubaydah was one of the most wanted men on earth. A leading member of Osama bin Laden's brain trust, he is thought to have been in operational control of al-Qaeda's millennium bomb plots as well as the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in October 2000. After the spectacular success of the airliner assaults on the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, he continued to devise terrorist plans.

(snip)

Zubaydah's capture and interrogation, told in a gripping narrative that reads like a techno-thriller, did not just take down one of al-Qaeda's most wanted operatives but also unexpectedly provided what one U.S. investigator told Posner was "the Rosetta stone of 9/11 ... the details of what (Zubaydah) claimed was his 'work' for senior Saudi and Pakistani officials." The tale begins at 2 a.m. on March 28, 2002, when U.S. surveillance pinpointed Zubaydah in a two-story safe house in Pakistan. Commandos rousted out 62 suspects, one of whom was seriously wounded while trying to flee. A Pakistani intelligence officer and hastily made voiceprints quickly identified the injured man as Zubaydah.

Posner elaborates in startling detail how U.S. interrogators used drugs—an unnamed "quick-on, quick-off" painkiller and Sodium Pentothal, the old movie truth serum—in a chemical version of reward and punishment to make Zubaydah talk. When questioning stalled, according to Posner, cia men flew Zubaydah to an Afghan complex fitted out as a fake Saudi jail chamber, where "two Arab-Americans, now with Special Forces," pretending to be Saudi inquisitors, used drugs and threats to scare him into more confessions.

more…
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030908-480226,00.html

[Maple]

1. I've been on

sodium pentathol.

And what you say bears no relation to the 'truth'

[pruner]

2. what were the cirumstances…

under which you were given SP?

[Maple]

5. Medical

apparently most anesthetics don't work on me.

[w13rd0]

3. The poster didn't say anything...

...just posted from an article in TIME magazine...

[schrodinger_I]

4. I had it once

When I had 4 Wisdom teeth removed. It was an IV mixture of Sodium Pentothal and Valium. What a ride!!!!! I had a coworker drive me home and she told me later that I grabbed her ass when we got home. I didn't remember that....