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Why so much detail about Pichugin's condition before and after the substance was administered? Two years have passed since that day on which he was questioned, so it's crucial to compare the defence lawyers' story straight after speaking to him on the 16th, as recorded by reporters, and symptoms caused by the substance. These symptoms are no longer classified. And the lawyers are unlikely to have made them up as they walked down the corridor.
Special substances - a history
At this point it's worth outlining the history of these special pharmaceutical substances, and how they were used by the various secret services, including the FSB. Throughout the centuries tyrants have plied their advisers with drink to loosen their tongues. Thus were loyalties confirmed and conspiracies exposed. This practice was especially widespread under Stalin. But one could never be sure of the truthfulness of drunken outpourings. Something more reliable was needed.
Immediately after the Second World War, intelligence services in all major countries started seriously researching substances that one way or another force a person into sincerity. The USA and UK were the acknowledged leaders in the field. In the Soviet Union, a special Security Ministry laboratory developed these substances alongside poisons to order for Beria and Abakumov. But for a long time success was elusive. Only in the mid-1960s did the intelligence services obtain the first truth drugs that provided more or less predictable results. The problem was that they affected different people in different ways. And clinical trials threw up a host of side effects, from uncontrollable lying to irreversible psychological damage.
Why did it fall to intelligence services to develop these substances? Because in their line of work, confidence that your agents are loyal and not playing a double game is paramount. You cannot hitch an agent in the field to a lie detector without him knowing. How much easier it would be to inject him with a truth drug (a British term) in a hotel room. Intelligence agents operate in foreign countries and are outside the law, so underhand ways of extracting information are par for the course.
The use of such substances was also the sole prerogative of the intelligence service in the USSR - the KGB's First Main Directorate, which called them simply TDs (truth drugs). And the intelligence men were also in charge of any operation to administer a TD. The method has changed little in the past 20 years. The substance is taken orally and not intravenously, unlike British ones in spy films. That is, it's taken with a fluid and, if at all possible, alcohol as well. After taking a TD, a person experiences exactly the same sensations as described by Pichugin's lawyers. He then falls into a state familiar to anyone who has ever, even just once, drunk himself senseless: he can speak and sometimes connect thoughts but any kind of real cogitation is impossible. And when he comes to - he remembers nothing.
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