Operation White Rabbit, Dennis McDougal
Operation White Rabbit, Dennis McDougal
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Operation White Rabbit
LSD, the DEA, and the Fate of the Acid King

Author: Dennis McDougal

Narrator: David Stifel

Unabridged: 10 hr 48 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 12/21/2021

Synopsis

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.

About Dennis McDougal

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.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Don on July 31, 2021

(2). I am not going to run for public office so I can freely admit that I am familiar with the subject matter in this book. I was always curious about the business side of psychedelics during the 60’s and we get an education regarding that here. McDougal does a nice job giving us an in depth look at......more

Goodreads review by Ady on March 21, 2022

I do not give ratings to non-fiction books, but I will say that I am disappointed with this one. The content was so fascinating that I was looking forward to diving into this book. For my “bunny book” TBR this month (ie. books with rabbits on the covers), this was one of my most anticipated reads. B......more

Goodreads review by Nick on December 14, 2020

terribly disjointed, with atrocious editing ("had him in their sites [sic]", footnotes on nearly every page that could easily have been folded into the text; at one point, a footnote duplicates, word-for-word, text from the same page). i had hoped for more details on how pickard got his erogtamine t......more

Goodreads review by Glenn on May 02, 2022

If you ate acid in the late 90s, you can probably thank Leonard Pickard. (Thank you Leonard.) The fact that he made millions of hits of LSD a month while also doing research on drugs of abuse for the State Department and accurately predicting the current fentanyl epidemic is possibly the least inter......more

Goodreads review by Ian on April 18, 2025

Rambling and honestly poorly written at times. Author seems like a fanboy for the hallucinogenic 70's, writing this book to live tangentially and vicariously through the characters. The story isn't very coherent, he can't seem to settle on one name for any single character, there are over 100 names......more

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