LSD TRIAL `ONE OF A KIND'

The drug case unfolding in a federal courtroom here since January has a
little of everything.

Secretly taped conversations, false IDs, Las Vegas money laundering, a
smuggler known only as Petaluma Al, testimony about Stinger missiles in
Afghanistan and one of the biggest LSD laboratories ever captured in the
United States.

"I've been doing this work for 42 years," said Mark Bennett Jr., a Topeka
lawyer who represents one of the defendants. "This case is one of a kind."

Week after week, witness after witness, a judge and jury in U.S. District
Court in Topeka have listened to testimony about the shadowy world of
international drug trafficking. After 11 weeks, the case went to the jury
on Friday, and jurors are scheduled to return this morning to begin
deliberations.

The government contends that William Leonard Pickard and Clyde Apperson,
both from California, were part of an LSD ring that briefly set up shop in
an old missile silo near Wamego, Kan., east of Manhattan.

Both are charged with conspiracy to manufacture, distribute and dispense
LSD, and both could face up to life in prison. They say they are innocent.

But if the federal indictment proves true, Pickard could be one of the
"high priests" of acid manufacturing, according to Rolling Stone magazine.

The saga dates back to the autumn of 2000 after Drug Enforcement
Administration agents met with Gordon Todd Skinner, owner of the missile
silo and an acquaintance of Pickard and Apperson.

Agents have not provided details on how they became involved with Skinner,
but they say he agreed to become a federal informant.

The agents learned that Pickard and Apperson were planning to visit the
missile silo, and on Nov. 6, 2000, law officers staked out the Wamego area.

The agents say they saw Apperson in a rented truck and Pickard in a rented
sedan, and saw them load equipment at the silo and drive away.

They soon were stopped. Apperson was arrested. Pickard escaped, outrunning
troopers from the Kansas Highway Patrol, according to one press account. He
was found the next day sleeping on some farm equipment.

Within days the scope of the case became clear.

"Pickard is prone to using multiple forms of dubious identification," U.S.
Magistrate Judge James P. O'Hara said after the arrests.

The truck and car contained a complete LSD laboratory, which the DEA later
called one of the biggest ever seized. Included was about $600,000 worth of
a chemical essential for the manufacture of LSD.

U.S. Attorney Gregory Hough wrote in court documents that the laboratory
contained enough ingredients to turn out 15 million doses of LSD with a
street value of from $15 million to more than $100 million.

Seldom are LSD laboratories seized. They operate infrequently and
irregularly, and investigators simply can't locate them. So this was
considered a major bust.

Nobody in Wamego had an inkling of what loomed close by, Mayor Larry
Fechter said. People thought the missile silo housed a spring manufacturing
company.

"I was floored," the mayor said. "We're just a small community. You don't
expect those sorts of things."

Eventually the case attracted Rolling Stone, which interviewed Pickard and
wrote about his alleged drug manufacturing expertise and his several past
arrests on drug charges.

"If the government's charges prove true, this would make him one of the
high priests of acid manufacture," the article said, "part of a clandestine
fraternity that probably numbers no more than a dozen worldwide."

Pickard, a sophisticated and articulate man in his 50s, calls himself a
drug researcher.

"I am not a psychedelic chemist," he told the magazine.

In the two years after their arrest the defendants built a defense,
contending, among other things, that they were duped into helping move the
laboratory.

They also challenged the credibility of Skinner, whose past includes the
use of illegal drugs and a conviction for posing as a law officer by using
a fake Interpol ID badge.

Skinner wore a recording device for the government to tape a conversation
with the two defendants, a conversation played for jurors at the trial.

On the witness stand, Skinner testified that the LSD lab moved from city to
city.

According to The Topeka Capital-Journal, Skinner said that the lab produced
2.2 pounds of LSD every five weeks while located in New Mexico. Apparently
none was ever produced in the Wamego silo.

The conspirators, he said, shipped drugs to someone he knew as Petaluma Al,
who paid them a total of $30 million or more. Some of the acid went to
Holland, he said, and Dutch money was laundered into American money in Las
Vegas casinos.

"It's unbelievable," said Mark Portell, editor of The Wamego Times, a
weekly newspaper that has covered the case heavily. "It's a worldwide
operation."

Pickard has traveled the world, because, he said, of his work as a drug
researcher at the University of California-Los Angeles.

Last week he testified that he maintains a keen interest in drugs because
of his research. As part of his work, he said, he has obtained false
identification cards and credit cards with fake names.

He told the court he once attempted to get back some Stinger missiles from
warlords in Afghanistan. In return, U.S. authorities were to give an Afghan
heroin smuggler a shorter prison sentence.

Federal officials acknowledged in court that they knew of the idea. But the
trade never happened.

Supporters of Pickard have their own Free William Leonard Pickard Web site.

"We ask for your loving kindness and support for this dear gentle soul, who
is a casualty in the war on drugs," a statement on the site says.

The length of the trial wore on those taking part. Judge Richard Rogers
showed his impatience recently with the sometimes-painstaking testimony,
overruling an objection during questioning and adding the admonition,
"Let's move it along."

After one long day in court recently, Bennett observed, "We've been
together so long I told somebody we should have a float in the St.
Patrick's Day parade."