LSD, Afghanistan, Stingers, Heroin and Missile Silos

The Trial of William Leonard Pickard
[link to cjonline.com]

A man facing federal charges of LSD trafficking told jurors Friday that the U.S. Customs Service instructed him in the 1990s to arrange a heroin shipment to the United States.

William Leonard Pickard also wove into his testimony in U.S. District Court talk of 9-11, Afghanistan's Taliban government and Stinger missiles.

Pickard, 57, and Clyde Apperson, 47, are charged with conspiracy and possession of LSD with intent to distribute more than 10 grams. The two were arrested after officers stopped a rental truck containing an LSD lab soon after the vehicle left a converted Wamego missile site on Nov. 6, 2000.

Pickard told jurors he tried to persuade American officials to adopt "Infrared," his code name for a plan to convince Afghan warlords to return some Stinger missiles to the United States, along with perhaps a shipment of heroin. He said the plan was that the prison sentence of Mohammed Akbar, an Afghan heroin smuggler serving time in an American prison, would be reduced in exchange for the missiles and heroin.

The contact for the heroin was to be Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, now the deputy defense minister of Afghanistan. Pickard said he discussed with the general a shipment of 800 kilograms (1,760 pounds) of heroin, about which Akbar would alert U.S. officials, who would seize the drug but not arrest anyone.

A Customs official instructed him to arrange for the heroin to be shipped to the United States, said Pickard, who was a Harvard University graduate student and research associate when "Infrared," was in the works. However, the Customs Service rejected heroin confiscation without arrests because the U.S. Department of Justice wanted the drugs and someone arrested, he said.

And the Stinger missile part of "Infrared" fell through when some unnamed American agency didn't want to participate in the deal, Pickard testified.

Pickard and Akbar met while the two were incarcerated at the U.S. Federal Correctional Institution at Terminal Island, Calif., where Pickard was serving a prison sentence for federal convictions of manufacturing LSD and mescaline and forgery.

A Stinger is a 35-pound, shoulder-launched missile designed to allow ground troops to shoot down low-flying planes and helicopters. The missile locks onto the heat of an aircraft's engine. In 1986, the United States gave Afghan rebels about 900 Stinger missiles when they were fighting the Soviet Union for control of Afghanistan. The Afghans shot down hundreds of Russian helicopters with the missiles.

Eventually, the Stinger missiles "fell into the hands" of the Taliban, a militia group following the strict interpretation of Islam, in 1998, according to Pickard. The Taliban had imposed a strict regime in Afghanistan and supported Osama bin Laden, the terrorist leader credited with the 9-11 attacks that killed approximately 3,000 people in New York, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pa.

The heroin idea later surfaced again when Dostum visited the United States, Pickard testified, but he pulled back from the heroin-Stinger missiles projects in April 1997 because "I thought it was getting over my head."

Pickard, who had just graduated with a master's degree from Harvard University, said he was concerned for the safety of himself, his wife and their infant daughter. After settling his wife and daughter in San Francisco, Pickard went to Taos, N.M., to study Buddhist meditation and to write on two projects -- money laundering and the future of drugs in the next 10 to 20 years, Pickard said.

In other testimony Friday, Pickard told jurors he met the prosecution's main witness, Gordon Todd Skinner, in February 1998 at a conference of the American Academy of Forensic Scientists in San Francisco.

Skinner testified earlier in the trial, under a grant of immunity, that Pickard was the chemist who cooked millions of doses of LSD and that Apperson also was involved in the drug ring.

Skinner told Pickard he knew people linked to a laboratory at Goddard in which a clandestine chemist produced fentanyl, a drug that had killed hundreds of drug users, Pickard said. That piqued his interest because he knew the fentanyl lab and some of its equipment had never been found, Pickard said.

Skinner said he was the heir to a family fortune linked to the production of springs and "I believed him," Pickard said, noting Skinner was staying in a $1,700 a night hotel suite.

Months later, Pickard said, Skinner invited him to view one of five converted silo bases he owned.

On Friday, jurors viewed a video of the Wamego site shot on Oct. 31, 2000, when Skinner took federal investigators through the facility.

The video showed a mix of utilitarian, industrial-type concrete rooms and lighting versus living quarters with tiled walls and floors, redwood ceilings, a domed ceiling in a shower room, several statues, large vases and a framed photograph of a pope and an American Indian in front of a statue of a nude woman.

For jurors, Friday was jersey day, and 13 of 14 jurors and alternate jurors wore a jersey of a favorite school -- seven from Kansas State University, three from The University of Kansas, one from Washburn University and one from from the University of Michigan. One flew the red and white colors of Emmett Grade School.

Testimony resumes Monday.