Pubdate: Sat, 09 Dec 2000
Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Copyright: 2000 San Jose Mercury News
Contact:  750 Ridder Park Drive, San Jose, CA 95190
Fax: (408) 271-3792
Website: http://www.sjmercury.com/
Author: Putsata Reang

POLICE ARREST TWO FILMED IN GIANT LSD LAB

One Of Bay Area Men Is Already Well-Known To Officials

Lab Site: DEA Says Third Of Nation's Supply Made In An Abandoned 
Kansas Missile Silo

A former Stanford University student, nabbed in the '80s for 
operating what was then called the largest LSD laboratory in Northern 
California, is now facing charges of running one of the largest such 
labs in the country.

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration officials said William Leonard 
Pickard, 55, of San Francisco, and Clyde Apperson, 45, of Sunnyvale, 
produced a third of the country's LSD in a decommissioned nuclear 
missile silo in Kansas.

The massive underground operation allegedly produced 10 million doses 
of the drug each month inside the Atlas missile silo in Wamego, Kan. 
The men were indicted Nov. 9 by a federal grand jury on one count of 
conspiracy to make and distribute LSD, and they could face 10 years 
to life in prison, a federal court clerk said. They are scheduled for 
a pretrial hearing Dec. 20.

Pickard is in federal custody, appealing a judge's decision to deny 
him bond, and Apperson was released on a $200,000 bond.

Property records indicate Pickard has several Bay Area residences, 
including two in San Francisco, but he was most recently living in 
Wamego, about 30 miles northwest of Topeka, Kan.

Drug enforcement officials uncovered the lab after being tipped off 
by an informant whose family purchased the silo. It was one of many 
throughout the Midwest that had become government surplus in the 
1960s -- the same time psychedelic drugs such as LSD became popular 
- -- when the Atlas missile was decommissioned. The warhead was the 
nation's first intercontinental ballistic missile.

In October, the informant took a DEA official on a tour of the lab 
and, in November, police began videotaping Pickard and Apperson in 
the silo.

Kansas Highway Patrol officers arrested Pickard Nov. 6 during a 
traffic stop. Apperson was arrested the next day.

A truck driver who lives near the silo, and who asked not to be named 
to protect his family's safety, said he had been suspicious for 
several years of the vans and motor homes he saw cruising by between 
midnight and 3 a.m., when he returned home from work.

``There was plenty of traffic that was in and out of there at unusual 
hours,'' the man said. ``This was kind of hippie stuff running up and 
down the road. It was pretty obvious something unusual was going on.''

Pickard's attorney did not return phone calls this week. A man who 
answered the phone at Apperson's Sunnyvale home said the family had 
no comment.

Court documents indicate Apperson has no criminal history, but 
Pickard's long background of drug-related offenses is well-known to 
Bay Area police and court officials.

Law enforcement officials considered Pickard a brilliant, albeit 
eccentric, chemist. He had taken chemistry classes at Stanford 
University and the University of California-Berkeley.

``I thought he was a pretty interesting guy,'' said Alan Johnson, 
chief inspector at the Santa Cruz County District Attorney's Office. 
Johnson was part of a team that convicted Pickard in 1977 for making 
chemicals to produce ``ecstasy'' in a secluded Portola Valley cabin.

Johnson said he was struck by Pickard's intelligence and pleasant nature.

``He was an educated fellow,'' Johnson said.

Pickard was convicted in San Mateo County for transporting the 
hallucinogen MDMA, or ecstasy, possessing chemicals to make the drug 
and receiving stolen property.

Three years later, he was arrested for conspiracy to manufacture 
amphetamines in the Bay Area, and he was also picked up in Georgia 
for trying to smuggle a gun onto an airplane.

Then, in December 1988, Pickard was arrested for operating an LSD lab 
in a Mountain View industrial park. Police officials at the time 
considered it to be the largest and one of the most sophisticated LSD 
operations uncovered in Northern California since the 1970s.

Drug enforcement officials say they remember the case for the 
quantity of the drug that was being produced, and because an agent 
was seriously injured while helping to clean up the site.

``It's well-remembered because one of our agents was exposed to some 
chemicals,'' said Mike Van Winkle, spokesman at the California 
Department of Justice, Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement. ``He was 
severely injured, almost fatally.''
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