Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

This write-up about scopolamine is from the CIA's website. Even though their objective in writing it was to dismiss the usefulness of the drug, I consider this supportive of my theory that Jack Ruby was given scopolamine to control his actions on 11/24/63.

Scopolamine as "Truth Serum"

Early in this century physicians began to employ scopolamine, along with morphine and chloroform, to induce a state of "twilight sleep" during childbirth. A constituent of henbane, scopolamine was known to produce sedation and drowsiness, confusion and disorientation, incoordination, and amnesia for events experienced during intoxication. Yet physicians noted that women in twilight sleep answered questions accurately and often volunteered exceedingly candid remarks.

In 1922 it occurred to Robert House, a Dallas, Texas, obstetrician, that a similar technique might be employed in the interrogation of suspected criminals, and he arranged to interview under scopolamine two prisoners in the Dallas county jail whose guilt seemed clearly confirmed. Under the drug, both men denied the charges on which they were held; and both, upon trial, were found not guilty. Enthusiastic at this success, House concluded that a patient under the influence of scopolamine "cannot create a lie ... and there is no power to think or reason."14 His experiment and this conclusion attracted wide attention, and the idea of a "truth" drug was thus launched upon the public consciousness.

The phrase "truth serum" is believed to have appeared first in a news report of House's experiment in the Los Angeles Record, sometime in 1922. House resisted the term for a while but eventually came to employ it regularly himself. He published some eleven articles on scopolamine in the years 1921-1929, with a noticeable increase in polemical zeal as time went on. What had begun as something of a scientific statement turned finally into a dedicated crusade by the "father of truth serum" on behalf of his offspring, wherein he was "grossly indulgent of its wayward behavior and stubbornly proud of its minor achievements."11

Only a handful of cases in which scopolamine was used for police interrogation came to public notice, though there is evidence suggesting that some police forces may have used it extensively. 2, 16 One police writer claims that the threat of scopolamine interrogation has been effective in extracting confessions from criminal suspects, who are told they will first be rendered unconscious by chloral hydrate placed covertly in their coffee or drinking water.16

Because of a number of undesirable side effects, scopolamine was shortly disqualified as a "truth" drug. Among the most disabling of the side effects are hallucinations, disturbed perception, somnolence, and physiological phenomena such as headache, rapid heart, and blurred vision, which distract the subject from the central purpose of the interview. Furthermore, the physical action is long, far outlasting the psychological effects. Scopolomine continues, in some cases, to make anesthesia and surgery safer by drying the mouth and throat and reducing secretions that might obstruct the air passages. But the fantastically, almost painfully, dry "desert" mouth brought on by the drug is hardly conducive to free talking, even in a tractable subject.

So, let's again consider the evidence that we have. Note that it says that talking becomes difficult to a person on scopolamine due to very dry mouth. Then note that we heard nothing from Ruby on 11/24. No speech. And contrast it to Oswald who was talking up a storm on 11/22 and 11/23. And I have to wonder about the behavior of the reporters. Recall how they were shouting questions at Oswald. So, why didn't they do the same to Ruby? "Jack, why'd you do it?" "Why'd you shoot Oswald?" "Why didn't you let justice take its course?" How come they weren't asking things like that? Were they told not to ask him questions? 

Recall that an anchorman on WFAA reported that Ruby was mumbling after shooting Oswald. And the implication was: mumbling incoherently.  

If Ruby was talking like some bad-ass to the detectives, as they claimed, why not to the reporters?

Then, there is his look, with the distant, glassy, vacant eyes and the blank face. Look at this carefully. Compare Ruby's empty stare to the focused look of Boyd on the right and the cop in uniform in the far-ground. Ruby has the look of a zombie. Scopolamine is known as the "zombie drug." 

And, scopolamine was the perfect drug to give him because it is odorless, tasteless, extremely fast-acting, and it can administered in food, in drink, or even blown in the face. 

It takes away your reasoning ability. It makes you extremely susceptible to suggestion, even to do something preposterous. But, in this case, it was used just to get Ruby to the basement. That's what they needed it for; nothing else. They had the Karen Carlin's money request to get him close to the PD, a couple blocks away or less. One guy timed the walk from the WU office and said it took 2 minutes to get to the ramp. Hmm. As close as it looks on the map, I have to think that included time waiting for a red light. But, they were never going to just hope that Ruby would decide on his own to venture to the ramp. They had to plant the idea in his head. I figure that either Doyle Lane from the WU office suggested that Ruby go down to the ramp entrance OR the customer ahead of Ruby, who has never been described or identified, did it. Those are the only possibilities we know of. 

Why would Jack Ruby, on his own volition, do that, go down to the ramp? A: he had his dog in his car, which wasn't locked. B: he had things he was going to do that day, including starting to move his belongings into his new apartment C: considering how far away the ramp was from the WU office, its "lure" could not have been that strong.  So there were some people standing around an incoming ramp. What is so alluring about that?  No, no, no: either Lane or the other person in there, who again, was never described or identified, must have made a casual remark, "You ought to go down to that police ramp and see what those people are doing there." That's all it would have taken under the influence of scopolamine. And then when Ruby got to the ramp, someone gently urged him to go down the ramp. And whalah, there he was, ready to be pounced on by police. This was well before the televised spectacle which starred Bookhout. 

Below, this is his lawyer asking him questions 2 weeks before he died. Why didn't the lawyer ask him why he walked to the bottom of the ramp? Nevertheless, I think it's pretty obvious that Ruby didn't know why he walked to the bottom of the ramp. His last statement was: "What happened I (didn't) know at the time." And note that all this below was edited out of the aural recording. They scraped all of this: 

Or, did they? What if it didn't happen? What if it's script that somebody wrote? OR, what if he said something else, such as, that somebody suggested that he go down there? Who knows. 

 Q. Jack, when you left the Western Union office what made you walk toward the jail house?

A. Because when I drove by I saw some people down at the ramp and the curiosity had aroused me because of the flash in my mind seeing the people there because before I went to Western Union as I drove by on Main Street.

Q. Is there anything else you can think of, Jack, anything else when you were walking by or going down there?

A. I don't know what to think -- happened.

Q. Well, you are doing very well -- just think a minute. Do you remember anything when you reached the bottom of the ramp?

A. Yeah, I did, like I said, a flash came to me from the point at the bottom of the ramp at the time that I was grappling with the police officers for the gun. Actually, what had happened I don't know at that time.