A truth drug (or truth serum) is a psychoactive drug used to attempt to obtain information from an unwilling subject, most often by a police, intelligence, or military organization. The use of truth drugs is classified as a form of torture according to international law.
So-called truth drugs have included ethanol, scopolamine, temazepam, and various barbiturates including the anesthetic induction agent sodium thiopental (commonly known as sodium pentathol): all are sedatives that interfere particularly with judgment and higher cognitive function. A book by the former Soviet KGB officer Yuri Shvets based in Washington details the use of near-pure ethanol to verify that a Soviet agent was not compromised by U.S. counterintelligence services.
A defector from the biological weapons department 12 of the KGB "illegals" (S) directorate (part of Russian SVR service) claimed that a truth drug codenamed SP-17 is highly effective and has been widely used. "The 'remedy which loosens the tongue' has no taste, no smell, no color, and no immediate side effects. And, most important, a person has no recollection of having the 'heart-to-heart talk'" (the subject feels afterwards as if they had suddenly fallen asleep). Officers of the S directorate used the drug primarily to determine the trustworthiness of their own illegal agents who operated overseas. The assassinated ex-FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko suggested that Russian presidential candidate Ivan Rybkin was drugged with the same substance (identified as SP-117) by FSB agents during the 2004 Russian presidential election (he dropped out of the presidential race due to the alleged kidnapping and drugging by FSB agents).
There are several documented CIA operations such as Edgewood Arsenal experiments and Projects MK NAOMI, MK ULTRA, MK DELTA, BLUEBIRD, ARTICHOKE and CHATTER.
