2 BAY AREA MEN FACE 10 YEARS TO LIFE FOR LSD CONVICTION

Two Bay Area men were convicted Monday of operating the largest LSD lab in
the country out of a decommissioned nuclear missile silo in Kansas.

A federal jury in Topeka, Kan., handed down the guilty verdict after an 11-
week trial for William Leonard Pickard, 57, a Harvard-educated Mill Valley
resident and assistant director of the UCLA Drug Policy Analysis Program,
and his assistant Clyde Apperson, 47, of Sunnyvale.

The two men were convicted of two counts each of conspiracy to manufacture
and distribute LSD and possession with intent to distribute.

Under federal sentencing guidelines, the pair face a minimum of 10 years in
prison and a maximum of life in prison without parole. Sentencing is
scheduled for Aug. 8.

"We are pleased to have led the effort to protect our citizens against the
dangers of LSD by this significant disruption in the nationwide supply of
this drug," said United States Attorney Eric Melgren in a statement.

Pickard and Apperson were arrested in November 2000 after being stopped by
Kansas Highway Patrol near Wamego, where they had set up a huge lab in a
retired missile silo owned by a man who became a DEA informant. Apperson
was arrested immediately while Pickard evaded police for a day before being
taken into custody.

As part of the investigation, authorities seized 91 pounds of LSD and 52
pounds of iso-LSD, a byproduct from the manufacture of LSD. Prosecutors
said it was the largest LSD seizure ever made by the DEA.

Authorities said Pickard and Apperson began manufacturing LSD in Santa Fe,
N.M., where they produced about 2.2 pounds of the powerful hallucinogen
every five weeks, enough to make about 10 million doses.

The pair later set up a lab in an old Atlas missile silo in Salina, Kan.,
but moved the lab to another missile silo in Wamego, shortly before their
arrest. The LSD, which could fetch approximately $10 per dose, was being
shipped to California and Europe, according to court testimony.

Pickard remains in federal custody, while Apperson, who was on a $200,000
bond, was taken into custody Monday.

For Pickard, the conviction ends a colorful career as one of the country's
most prolific and eccentric drug manufacturers in history.

Pickard left Princeton to study chemistry at San Jose State and Stanford
and work as a research manager at UC Berkeley's Department of Bacteriology
and Immunology.

His first arrest for drugs came in 1976, when he was found in possession of
hallucinogenic peyote cactus. A year later, police raided his Portola
Valley home and found a small Ecstasy lab. He was later arrested in 1988
after drug agents raided his LSD lab hidden in a Mountain View industrial park.

In 1994, he enrolled at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, and
later he became assistant director the UCLA Drug Policy Analysis Program.