Ben Carson offered a way to enhance the country’s methods of interrogating suspected terrorists: using “medical ways” to put people in a “less-than-conscious state.”
“I believe there are a number of ways to extract information,” Carson told CNN’s Poppy Harlow on “CNN Newsroom” Tuesday afternoon. “An average person might understand it as ‘truth serum’ — there are ways where you decrease a person’s conscious defenses, and they might be much more willing to give up information.”
Carson, a world-renowned neurosurgeon, pointed to a specific treatment that could be used: sodium amytal. The drug was used during World War II to treat soldiers for anxiety or trauma, though its usefulness as a truth-inducing treatment is debatable.
“We’ve made some advances in that kind of science,” Carson said.
Carson’s comments came on the day that President Barack Obama again called for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. Republicans have roundly disagreed with the White House plan, but Carson declined to specifically endorse Donald Trump’s plan to move significantly past waterboarding in interrogating terror suspects.
“I think we use what we need to use in order to protect the American people,” Carson said, “and I don’t think we necessarily need to be broadcasting what we do.”