Dennis McDougal - Operation White Rabbit: LSD, the DEA, and the Fate of the Acid King

Also by Dennis McDougal

Nonfiction

Angel of Darkness

Fatal Subtraction: How Hollywood Really Does Business

In the Best of Families: The Anatomy of a True Tragedy

Mothers Day

The Last Mogul: Lew Wasserman, MCA, and the Hidden History of Hollywood

Yosemite Murders

Privileged Son: Otis Chandler and the Rise and Fall of the L.A. Times Dynasty

Blood Cold: Fame, Sex, and Murder in Hollywood

Five Easy Decades: How Jack Nicholson Became the Biggest Movie Star in Modern Times

Dylan: The Biography

Fiction

The Candlestickmaker

Hemingways Suitcase

Copyright 2020 by Dennis McDougal

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Brian Peterson

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-4537-7

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-4538-4

Printed in the United States of America

For each and every gentle soul misplaced inside a jail.

Contents

Prologue

Wamego, KansasNov. 6, 2000

WILLIAM LEONARD PICKARD TENSED LIKE a gazelle, all senses alert. He sniffed the air, scanning his surroundings for movement, but remained stock still. Breathe in. Breathe out. Give the adrenaline time to dissipate.

Satisfied that the moment was false alarm, he relaxed, then returned to the task at hand.

On the eve of Election Day at the turn of the twenty-first century, the courtly, silver-haired chemist and his bearded sidekick, Clyde Apperson, loaded boxes containing aluminum canisters and an array of laboratory glassware into the rear of a Ryder truck outside a retired Atlas Missile silo on the edge of Wamego, Kansas. The pair worked with haste and care. The labware was delicate. The canisters looked as harmless as Pringles potato chip cans, but the powder inside could provoke convulsions, delusionseven death. There was no room for false moves.

When they finished loading the truck, Pickard silently directed Apperson to climb behind the wheel and then did the same with his rented Buick LeSabre. Like a wizard trailed by his inelegant apprentice, Pickard angled his silver sedan past the chain link surrounding the former missile base while Apperson followed close behind. They each had a walkie-talkie so they could keep in touch as they prepared to head west on US 24.

Apperson was new to paranoia, but pulling up stakes on a moments notice was routine to Pickard. For the better part of a decade, staying on the move had been as big a part of his complicated lifestyle as schmoozing with Afghan warlords, hobnob-bing with Russian diplomats, or investigating money laundering on the Caribbean resort island of St. Maarten. When he wasnt globetrotting on behalf of the State Department or pushing paper as an academic at UCLA, Pickard synthesized psychedelic sacraments on the fly, lysergic acid diethylamide chief among them.

Leonard Pickard saw himself as heir to Dr. Timothy Leary, even while he slowly morphed into the Walter White of LSDbut with one crucial difference, Pickard would argue: whereas the protagonist of TVs Breaking Bad made crystal meth, which ruins lives and kills thousands, Pickard maintained that LSD never killed anyone.

Possessing it is illegal, however, and carting around ingredients and lab equipment tends to raise questions. A veteran of many a previous bust, Pickard had grown wary to the point of neurosis: an ounce of prevention was worth a ton of police confrontation. Pickard preferred the serenity of anonymity.

As night fell over the fresh layer of snow that blanketed the Flint Hills, Wamego lit up like a beacon. The farm town that advertises itself as home of L. Frank Baums fictional Land of Oz afforded the only light for a hundred square miles. Once theyd driven beyond its halo, Pickard and Apperson were shrouded in darkness. They stayed well within the speed limit.

Pickard saw the flashing lights before he heard the sirens. He slowed, took a deep breath and waited for squad cars to blow past on their way to some accident on the Interstate.

Panic not. Obey all traffic laws. Draw no attention. Hide in plain sight.

Only this time, the cops didnt fly by. Pickard began to perspire when a black-and-white crept up behind, its high-pitched yelp directing the LeSabre to pull over. Instead, Pickard switched instantly from calm to catastrophic. He whipped the walk-ie-talkie to his lips: This is it, he barked. This is what we talked about.

He gunned his engine. Apperson followed his lead. The chase was on.

It ended soon enough. Within a few hundred yards, the Kansas Highway Patrol overtook and forced both vehicles to the shoulder. Apperson made a half-hearted attempt to bolt before falling to his knees in surrender.

Pickard had different ideas. He left the Buick idling and lit out across an open field. Weapons drawn, the highway patrolmen hollered, Halt! They followed in hot pursuit that cooled to lukewarm then frostbitten in minutes.

A veteran marathon runner, Pickard could be seen in silhouette against the horizon. He ran a broken-field pattern well ahead of harriers half his age and did a fast fade into the night.

I actually waded down streams to elude the bloodhound scents, Pickard recalled months later. It took a while for those Nikes to dry out. And a full moon to top it all.

Inside the Buick, Pickard left behind a paperback describing how to vanish from public view and establish a new identity. Police also found two pamphlets titled Escape From Controlled Custody and How to Survive Federal Prison Camp. In the trunk were several more instructional brochures: how to obtain an international drivers license; how to file for a concealed-weapons permit in Florida; strategies for surviving a police interrogation; and how to hide contraband in public places. Were there any further doubt that they had the right suspect, the cops also located a Department of Justice handbook on controlled substances in the back seat and a catalogue of surveillance equipment in the glove compartment.

Fortified half an hour later by a small army of DEA agents, the Kansas Highway Patrol joined Wamego police and a squadron of Pottawatomie County Sheriff s deputies in a full-on flashlight dragnet, crisscrossing the cornfields. Helicopters with infrared scanners and packs of bloodhounds aided in the search. When that failed, a house-to-house canvas of the rural hinterlands surrounding Wamego lasted through the night.