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.''