HAVE SPY AGENCIES USED THEIR OWN VERSION OF A VERITASERUM POTION?

Three things, they say, cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth. The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Yet in the Harry Potter Universe, they still tried bottling it. Veritaserum was a magical and potent truth serum. It fundamentally forced the drinker to answer truthfully to any questions asked of them. Use of Veritaserum was tightly regulated by the Ministry of Magic, who also recognized there were ways of countering the potion, such as quaffing an antidote, or occlumency.

As any proficient potions master would confirm, Veritaserum had a complex chemistry. When carefully synthesized, the serum was not only clear and colorless, but also odorless, which made the potion practically indistinguishable from water. Professor Severus Snape held that the serum needed to mature for a full phase of the moon before use, and stressed that there were other difficulties in its manufacture. The name Veritaserum stemmed from the Latin veritas, meaning truth, and the Latin serum, meaning liquid or fluid.

The genius of Veritaserum was partly in its chameleon chemistry. Its similarity to water in many of its characteristics meant that it was easily miscible with most drinks. Three drops were a sufficient dosage to make the drinker divulge their innermost secrets. And, in theory at least, the potion worked its magic on the body and mind of the drinker, compelling them to tell the utter truth to any question asked. According, of course, to whatever the drinker perceived to be true.

And yet, the use of Veritaserum had its limits. In courts of magical jurisdiction, the use of Veritaserum was considered, “unfair and unreliable to use at a trial,” in the same way muggle courts often prohibited the evidence resulting from polygraph tests. As some wizards and witches were skillful enough to repel the effects of the potion while others were not, its use at trial would not necessarily indicate definitive proof of innocence or guilt.

Now, memory is a complicated creature. It’s relative to truth, but not exactly the same thing. Wizard kind was aware of the fact that a truth-teller states only what they believe to be true. A teller’s sanity and grasp of reality also needed to be factored into discussions. Thus, while the teller’s answers may have been heartfelt, they were not necessarily true. Witness the testimony of Barty Crouch, Jr. Some of his replies were true to his mind and memory, and yet his interrogators knew them to be false. Crouch’s character was a mitigating factor on the Veritaserum’s full effectiveness. Has Veritaserum ever had a parallel in the muggle world, especially in the shadowy realm of espionage?

Truth Serums: Scopolamine

Some kind of super-serum has long been the goal of spies all over the world. Back in the day, brutality was the first weapon of choice. Rather save time and beat seven daylights out of a suspect than do the proper science work, painstakingly looking for evidence in the Sherlockian way. The British were no strangers to brutality, even long before the days of Empire. As Sir James Fitzjames Stephen chronicles in A History of the Criminal Law in England, Vol. 1, “They hanged them by the thumbs, or by the head, and hung fires on their feet; they put knotted strings about their heads, and writhed them so that it went to the brain … Some they put in a chest that was short, and narrow, and shallow, and put sharp stones therein, and pressed the man therein, so that they broke all his limbs … I neither can nor may tell all the wounds or all the tortures which they inflicted on wretched men in this land.”

By the time of the Empire, the British were well practiced. British judge, uncle of Virginia Woolf, and anti-libertarian writer, Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, wrote about torture and truth in A History of the Criminal Law in England, Vol. 1, “It is far pleasanter to sit comfortably in the shade rubbing red pepper in some poor devil’s eyes, than to go about in the sun hunting up evidence.” As chemistry progressed, even rubbing red pepper seemed too much of a chore.

Spooks turned to the “truth serum.” A number of drugs have been presumed to relax the recipient’s defense so much that they can’t help but reveal any hidden truths. Though better than torture, the use of drugs still raises questions about individual rights and liberties, of course. And, as in the magical world, their use has sparked medico-legal controversies over the decades.

The first likely serum was scopolamine, a medication used to treat motion sickness and postoperative nausea. Early in the 20th century, doctors began using scopolamine coupled with morphine and chloroform to create a condition of “twilight sleep” in mothers during childbirth. In 1922, a Dallas obstetrician named Robert House realized that scopolamine might also be used in the interrogation of suspected criminals. In expectant mothers, scopolamine had invoked sedation and drowsiness, a confused disorientation, and amnesia for things that happened during intoxication. Yet the women in twilight sleep also replied to questions not only very accurately, but often with alarming candor! Doctor House came to believe that with scopolamine in their systems, suspects “cannot create a lie … and there is no power to think or reason.” The idea of a ‘truth drug’ was launched upon the world.

House published around a dozen papers on scopolamine between 1921 and 1929, and the reputation of House as the “father of truth serum” became so infamous that the very threat of scopolamine interrogation was used to get confessions from worried suspects. But the numerous side effects of the drug, which included hallucinations, disturbed perception, headache, rapid heartbeat, and blurred vision, could too easily distract the suspect from the point of the interview.

Truth Serums: Sodium Thiopental

More recently, the sinister truth serum of the movies is sodium thiopental. Although first developed in the 1930s, sodium thiopental is still used today in interrogations by the police and military in some countries. An anesthetic, sodium thiopental is one of a group of drugs known as barbiturates, chemicals used widely in the 1950s and 60s to help better sleep. Barbiturates work by slowing down the speed of messages that travel through your brain and body. The more barbiturates there are, the more the chemical messages slow, finding it hard to jump the gaps between one neuron and another. The speed of thinking slows down very quickly with sodium thiopental. And scientists found that, when sitting in the twilight zone between awake and drugged, the suspect enters a twilight zone and becomes chatty and disinhibited. But, when the drug has worn off, they quite forgot what they had been saying. They could potentially confess and not know they had confessed.

But does sodium thiopental work in interrogation? Research has found that the drug will no doubt make you more inclined to talk. And when under its influence, you are also very suggestible. And that’s because the drug is interfering with your higher centers, such as your cortex, where lots of decision making occurs. But there’s also a worrying risk you will say whatever your interrogator wants to hear, rather than the truth. The barbiturates may sometimes work in interrogation. But even in ideal conditions they create an outpouring marred by deception, fantasy, and garbled speech. It’s still possible, though, for some people to resist drug interrogation, and those likely to withstand ordinary interrogation can hold out in narcosis. No such magic brew as the popular notion of truth serum exists as of yet.