Pubdate: Thu, 07 Dec 2000
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Copyright: 2000 San Francisco Chronicle
Contact:  901 Mission St., San Francisco CA 94103
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Author: Seth Rosenfeld

2 BAY AREA MEN BUSTED IN BIG LSD LAB RAID

Pair Produced Third Of Nation's Supply In Kansas Missile Silo, DEA Says

Two Bay Area men have been arrested for allegedly running a massive LSD
laboratory hidden inside a decommissioned nuclear missile silo in Kansas.

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents said their investigation showed
that the lab, deep inside an old Atlas missile silo in rural Kansas,
produced tens of millions of doses of LSD each month.

"They are predicting that this laboratory could have been supplying a third
of the LSD in the United States and maybe the world," Shirley Armstead, a
spokeswoman for the DEA office in St. Louis, told reporters after the
arrests. "This particular laboratory is one of the biggest labs that has
been seized in this country."

William Leonard Pickard, 55, of San Francisco, allegedly a longtime
underground drug chemist, and Clyde Apperson, 45, of Mountain View, his
alleged assistant, were each indicted on Nov. 9 by a federal grand jury in
Kansas City, Kan., on one count of conspiracy to make and distribute LSD.

Pickard is in federal custody and Apperson was released on a $200,000 bond.
They are scheduled for a Dec. 20 hearing on pretrial motions in U.S.
District Court in Topeka, Kan. Their lawyers could not be reached for
comment yesterday.

Reached at his home, Apperson declined to comment.

The purported conspiracy sounds like a take-off on Peter Seller's Cold War
movie "Dr. Strangelove."

Atlas missiles were introduced in 1959, the nation's first intercontinental
ballistic missile. Aimed at the Soviet Union, they carried powerful nuclear
warheads and were stored horizontally on railways in underground concrete
silos whose retractable roofs dotted the Midwest countryside.

The missiles were decommissioned in the mid-1960s, just as the hippie scene,
the peace movement and psychedelic drugs like LSD became popular with
American youth. LSD trips were touted as a chemical path to cosmic
enlightenment and "inner space."

According to a DEA agent's affidavit, Pickard and Apperson converted the
former nuclear silos to underground acid laboratories and each month made
about a kilogram of LSD, enough for 10 million doses.

The LSD factory was discovered when a third person involved in the ring
became an informant and told DEA agents about it, according to the
affidavit, which was filed in court as the basis for one of the searches.
The third person, who is not named in the affidavit, allegedly helped
Pickard and Apperson find places to set up their labs.

The lab had been based in another former missile silo near Salina, Kan. But
in July the informant moved it to the Atlas missile silo his family had
bought as government surplus in Wamego, Kan., a sparsely populated area
about 30 miles northwest of Topeka, the affidavit says.

The informant allowed DEA agents to electronically monitor his phone calls
with Pickard, as well as an Oct. 23 meeting about the LSD operation with
Pickard at the Four Points Barcelo Sheraton Hotel in San Rafael, it says.

On Oct. 27, the informant took a DEA agent on a tour of the silo, and in
November agents videotaped Pickard, Apperson and the informant at the lab.
Pickard and Apperson decided to move the operation, the affidavit says.

The defendants were under surveillance and were arrested after they fled
from Kansas Highway Patrol officers who pulled them over on Nov. 6 as they
allegedly attempted to transport their LSD lab from Kansas to Aspen, Colo.,
in two rental cars. Apperson was arrested that day, but Pickard evaded
arrest until Nov. 7, the DEA said in court records.

DEA agents have searched two San Francisco addresses associated with
Pickard, and on Nov. 7 searched Apperson's Mountain View home, where they
seized computers and CD-ROMS that they suspect contain evidence of the LSD
operation.

Pickard and Apperson are longtime clandestine chemists, according to the
affidavit. In 1988, Pickard was arrested by Mountain View police for making
LSD, but the charge was dropped because he had been an informant for both
the California Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement and the DEA, it says.

Apperson has no criminal history, the affidavit says.

On Nov. 18, the DEA issued a press release warning neighbors that agents in
blue full-body protective suits would return to the silo to dismantle the
lab, "so they wouldn't be alarmed by the appearance of the guys in the
suits."

People who lived near the silo told the Topeka Capital-Journal they had been
suspicious of late-night activity at the former military site.

"They were acting strange, but I figured they came from different parts,"
said Rod Etienne.
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