Operation White Rabbit

Operation White Rabbit

By Dennis McDougal
$24.99
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“No matter how many literary acid trips you have been on, until you read Dennis McDougal’s Operation White Rabbit, you are missing the best trip of all. McDougal paints the life and times of Lennie Pickard with rich colors, subtle texture and brilliant insight…McDougal always discovers hidden gems of fact that others miss, then polishes them into a marvelously told story."

 David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times bestselling author

Operation White Rabbit traces the rise and fall—and rise and fall again—of the psychedelic community through the life of the man known as the "Acid King:" William Leonard Pickard. Pickard was a legitimate genius, a follower of Timothy Leary, a con artist, a womanizer, and a believer that LSD would save lives. He was a foreign diplomat, a Harvard fellow, and the biggest producer of LSD on the planet—if you believe the DEA.

Pickard's personal story is set against a fascinating chronicle of the social history of psychedelic drugs from the 1950s on. From LSD distribution at UC Berkeley to travelling the world for the State Department, Pickard's story is one of remarkable genius—that is, until a DEA sting named "Operation White Rabbit" captured him at an abandoned missile silo in Kansas. Pickard, the DEA said, was responsible for 90 percent of the world's production of lysergic acid.

The DEA announced to the public that they found ninety-one pounds of LSD. In reality, the haul was seven ounces. But nonetheless, he is now serving two consecutive life sentences without possibility of parole. Pickard has become acid's best-known martyr in the process, continuing his advocacy and artistic pursuits from jail.