Overview

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.

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Dennis McDougal is an award-winning journalist and author of eleven books, including bestselling biographies of Bob Dylan and Jack Nicholson, and the true crime classics Angel of Darkness and Mothers Day. A former Los Angeles Times staff writer and CNN producer, his byline has appeared in the New York Times, TV Guide, and dozens of other publications. He lives near Memphis, Tennessee. David Stifel was born and raised in Denver, Colorado. Bitten early by the acting bug, he studied his craft at the Yale School of Drama. After graduation, he found himself in the usual array of interesting day jobs such as casino porter at Lake Tahoe, ESL teacher in Iran, and Egypt, and video game programmer in the Atari/Intellivision era. Concurrently he worked in films and TV shows for such directors as Steven Spielberg (Minority Report), Danny Boyle (A Life Less Ordinary), and Joel Schumacher (The Number 23). David entered the audiobook field in 2011, when he launched a long-term podcast of serializations of the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Today he is a multi-award-winning narrator with more than 125 audiobooks to his credit. His growing catalog of audiobooks is strong on thrillers, horror, sci-fi, and mysteries. David's rich baritone voice also lends itself very well to nonfiction memoirs and history-popular and academic. His classical acting training makes him very strong with heightened literary language. Pegged as a character actor from youth, his facility with numerous characters is frequently praised by reviewers and listeners.

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