CQ: "Evidence Grows of Drug Use on Detainees"
"There can be little doubt now that the government has used drugs on terrorist suspects that are designed to weaken their resistance to interrogation," according to Congressional Quarterly's National Security Editor Jeff Stein, although he notes "we may never know the truth."
CQ characterizes the 2002 and (recently released) 2003 "torture" memoranda written by Department of Justice Attorney John Yoo as green-lighting the use of drugs in interrogations so long as "they did not produce 'an extreme effect' calculated to 'cause a profound disruption of the senses or personality.'" Jose Padilla's attorney Michael Karuso and clinical psychologist Jeffrey S. Kaye both assert that the government used mind-altering drugs on at least some detainees, although the article explains that "hard evidence is lacking."
CQ notes that the government has used -- and denied -- employing mind-altering drugs as part of an interrogation research program that it successfully hid from public view for 20 years.