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The Sunshine Makers (2015)
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Remain seated and come to order, court will begin in session. In today's hearing, the government is not dealing with the standard playground pusher. These men represent a new form of organized crime, totally different from our previous notions. Tim Scully was not part of the psychedelic scene. He was the psychedelic scene. I wasn't interested in personally making money. I thought that what we were doing was really important, trying to change the consciousness of the world in a positive way. But we all know who is number one in this case. It is Nicholas Sand. I was considered some kind of mad man, psychedelic commando. Because I'd go anywhere, do anything for psychedelics. We are talking now about people responsible for producing millions of doses of hallucinogenic drugs. And they are proud of it. If we could turn on everyone in the world, then maybe we'd have a new world of peace and love. Call it whatever you want to call it. They all ended up in one thing, the degradation of mankind. The degradation of society. We had the same desire to risk our freedom, and be what we thought were American patriots. Hey, partner. Good to see you, man. - Too long, eh? - Yeah. I think we're supposed to go in. I think so. Nice Panama hat. It's getting a little worn around the edges, just like the rest of us. - Great seeing you, man. - Yeah. Hey, you look good. You look great, man. I didn't know Nick Sand when I first took acid. Totally losing that hair. It was early 1965, and it wasn't that easy to find yet. I found a fellow in San Francisco who had some. We built a fire in the fire place, and took it in the evening. I was kind of a wild kid. I grew up on the streets of New York. My first experience with taking acid changed everything. I had very good friends who were a couple. We went up to their lake house retreat in Mahopac, New York. As the sun went down, we took our capsules of LSD. I was nervous when I first swallowed the acid. I knew that the experience could be very terrifying. Ordinary things could become very ominous and scary. But I knew also that it could be transcendent. And of course I was hoping for transcendence. I sat in front of the fire, with nude in the lotus position. I just wanted to be naked. I didn't want to be encumbered by clothing. Everything that I looked at, seemed to have a life of its own. The mantle piece under the fireplace. The fabric on my pants that I was wearing. Yeah. This is it. And then it went much further than that. I disappeared. I was floating in this immense black space. I said, what am I doing here? As you get very high on acid, that's when you get to experience oneness. You see the whole universe reflected in all the other people that you look at. If everybody took LSD, the entire place would change overnight. People would want to be more loving. The flash that I had was that if everybody could share this experience, they'd be much less likely to be mean to each other. To just trash the world by using up resources and dumping pollutants everywhere. We'd avoid destroying ourselves with the tools we've been developing. And suddenly a voice came through my body. "And it said," your job on this planet, is to make psychedelics and turn on the world." Um. It was very interesting. As we were coming down from the acid trip, the world was completely new and fresh. Smells of the flowers and lawns were really intense. I thought, we could make this stuff. We could make a lot of it and give it away. We could turn on everyone, everyone who wanted to. And maybe it would save the world. With small groups of people, you felt connected. And in fact you were connected. Sometimes it was just by the intensity of what you were experiencing. And sometimes it felt spiritual. It was just extraordinary, and made you think about the world differently. We were always friends and off and on we were lovers. He was sure really wonderful to be with in many ways. Hey! Hey, Trooper. Hola. How are you? - It's so good to see you. - Good to see you. Today I feel great. How are you doing? I'm OK, especially after seeing you. That's just because I remind you of your childhood. He was full of excitement about whatever his latest project was. He was certainly like that about psychedelics. He became a sort of... He probably would say a psychedelic warrior. I was on a crusade. I wanted to turn on the world. And that was how I first met Billy Hitchcock. He was a chubby, not really smart guy. He liked to take LSD. And he said, you've got to come up to Millbrook. Come on, I want you to meet Timothy Leary. By teaching people how to use their head. And in order to use your head, you have to go out of your mind. For the first time I found a whole community of people interested in psychedelic research. Billy Hitchcock owned the whole property. Dr. Leary leased one of the houses on the property. We would have a population fluctuating between ten and 20 people, working with hallucinogenic drugs, doing research and experimentation. All kinds of scientists, physicists, ecologists from all over the world came. And so it just became like psychedelic rat wiring. And so I stayed there for a couple of years. But I still wanted to know the secrets of how to produce very fine, pure LSD. I started making LSD back in late 1966. Tim came over to my house sometime in the fall of 1967. He told me that he'd been manufacturing LSD. Billy's a very charming guy. He was a patron of the psychedelic movement, and also a wealthy man. That seemed like a pretty good recipe. Sand expressed an interest in meeting. I was introduced to Nick Sand. He struck me as being ambitious, energetic. I said, I would really love it if you could teach me to make LSD. Tim and I decided that the best way to discuss this was to take an acid trip together. He took a whacking dose of about 75 mics, and I probably took more. I told him that I wanted to turn on the world, and that I thought making 200 kilos of acid would be about right. And that ideally we should give it away. You know, I thought, well that's fine. You can give yours away for free. I'm not giving mine away for free. He's a very, very thrifty distended Scotsman. His comfort level was a lot higher than mine. He's way cheaper than I am. And then finally I said, "OK, come to California." We'll work together. I was going to leave for California. And I had a feeling I needed a woman to balance my energy out. I used to up to Millbrook for a number of reasons. I was kind of a horny guy, and psychedelic chicks, that could function on my level were rare. And there were a whole bunch of them up there. And Jill was there. I stayed up there working as Billie Hitchcock's governess for his stepchildren. I was, at that time had moved into one of the tower rooms. Nick just appeared in the morning, popped out of the closet. And just came and got in bed. And we turned onto LSD. And she was very, very beautiful. I like thin chicks. I was in awe of his energy and I really wanted to... Staying in bed Yeah. I mean, Nicky likes to make love a lot, you know. So that is important to him. But it's almost utilitarian. We're going to get in trouble here. And I said, you got to come to California with me because I'm going to need someone to help me. It wasn't so much that Nicky was charming. It was that Nicky knew where he was going. He had a strong sense of his mission. Those were the things that made him attractive. Nick thought that he could change... consciousness of large numbers of people, by making psychedelic drugs. He thought that that needed to happen. We all did. And finally, she just decided to go with me. And we came to the ranch here as partners. And she still maintains an interest in the ranch. Unfortunately I don't. It was stolen from me by the federal government. Well, I promised you it would be good coming out to California. You got stuck here, didn't you, Jill? I'd love for them to film me crawling through the attic at Millbrook and discovering you - in your room. - Yeah. Yeah, I remember I was with one very hot lady before I discovered you. She was so beautiful. Yeah. Not as beautiful as you. Not as beautiful as you. Don't even think twice about it. Tim also is very fond of women. Getting high with him was really quite wonderful. He laid out a deck of tarot cards before the LSD came on. And then I think we made love for most of the night. I'd known Nick by then for 15 years. And he asked me afterwards, "well, what did you think about Tim?" And I said, "oh, I liked him." He's very, very odd. But I really liked him. He's really bright. "But you're not going to work together, are you?" And he said, "well." And I said, "good luck with that." I mean, they just are so different. Why have all of the books got your name on them? That's to indicate that it's been cataloged. Its mysteries and science fiction. It's alphabetical by author. He's unusual. Yeah. He does function differently than most of us in the way he relates to people. And he does have a touch of Asperger's. Tim was a very persnickety guy. Much more uptight than I. He's a Virgo. He's very skinny. So we had to set up ground rules. As long as I didn't transgress on his diet of white spaghetti, white cheese... you know, he liked everything white. I used to eat spaghetti with butter and cheese on it for dinner, for every night for 30 years. Until it became medically not possible for me to eat it anymore. Tim was extremely paranoid. He thought I was just a crazy psychedelic madman. Nick made a commitment to being a lifelong psychedelic outlaw, changing identity, being a fugitive from time to time. In fact, he enjoyed pulling the wool over people's eyes. And I got the feeling that he was often doing it to me. Did he want to become the king of LSD? Yes. I think so. I remember specifically going to have a meeting with Sand and Scully. They were discussing the possibility of acquiring lysergic acid, the starting material to make LSD. I suggested London, England as a possible source of supply for this material. And so we pooled our resources, went to England. Bought the kilo of lysergic acid, divvied it up in little plastic bags. So this looks very much like lysergic acid. One of the things we used to do is take advantage of natural hollows in the body. So we'd always put it in a place, like, this was our favorite place to put it. And then this would go like that. And once the shirt was pulled down over it, it would be basically invisible. And I smuggled my half through the Bahamas with Alice. Alice used to smuggle for me all the time. "A great smuggler. And she's like, "la di da. How are you? Oh, aren't the birds chirping beautifully?" And she'd like totally distract you. She's got that kind of sais quoi. She was perfect. And then took a speedboat to Miami. And from there was taken by another crew to California. I was involved in setting up an LSD lab with Sand and Scully. Eventually a place was found in November of '68, in Windsor, California. Tim said, "here's the deal." I'll do the first run with my material. You do the second run with your material. And we'll be here together for two weeks. And in two weeks you need to know everything I'm doing, "so that you can take over." Eventually I got notified that it was my turn to come and to meet at a certain parking lot. I told Nick to change vehicles on the way to the lab. Get one car to drop us off, like at a medical building and go out the back door and get a rented car. A lot of the art of making LSD involves not getting busted. I got to the house in Windsor. And Jill and I moved in. The first thing I did was draw up a flow chart that showed all of the steps and sequence. It's been a lot of years since I did this. LSD is lysergic acid diethylamide. And lysergic acid is the ideal starting material. You're pretty much guaranteed to get busted if you try to acquire the chemicals and do this. So don't try this at home. The first step is to make something called lithium lysergic. He was a good friend and he was a good teacher. And we trusted each other. And we all go forward on the shoulders of the people who went before us. Meanwhile, we've previously made something called the re-agent. I was pregnant at the time and pretty far along actually. We just kind of did the same thing over and over every day for, I don't know, at least a month. Generally, working in an acid lab, you do tend to get high. So we were in an altered state. You know, sometimes something's boiling over on the hot plate and you'd grab it and take it off and you'd go, "oh." Wow. That's hot. Oh, no. "I just took 2,000 mics of acid." Billy was sort of a lab groupie. He so much wanted to come to the lab, that I let him come and work here for a couple of days. I worked around the lab. I ran some reactions myself. They were manufacturing somewhere between three and four million tabs. We were hoping that there would be a really fundamental change, in the world's consciousness. That people would become more responsible, able to use technology more wisely, able to be gentler with the planet. We'd work until we'd drop and then we'd sleep for a few hours and get up and get at it again. I went to Billy Hitchcock and asked him whether he had ideas for a distribution channel. Because Billy had all kinds of social contacts, all over the psychedelic scene. And he introduced me to the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, also known as the Hippie Mafia. The mafia rules by fear. The Brotherhood ruled by love. LSD made freethinkers out of people. The grip that all governments have on people was going to probably end. I know it sounds ridiculously naive. But if you've ever sat and really seen the golden light, and really went deep inside yourself, it ain't all that far out. They were actually stickup men. And they all dropped acid. And they threw their pistols away. And they said, we're going to form the Brotherhood of Love. And we'll be working with psychedelics and we won't be sticking up people anymore. Our aim was to turn the world on. The business arrangement between the Brotherhood and Nick and Tim was pretty straightforward. Here's 100 grams about acid, and there's more where that came from. We sold it all. We had... I think it was $72,000. That's a lot of money now, but it was a huge amount of money then. And came back up and delivered it to Nick. That was it. Now we were the official distributors. We're the ones that came up with the name sunshine, to this day the most famous acid ever. I took some acid. Peter, what did the acid look like? They were these little orange pills. - Were they barrel-shaped? - Uh, yeah. OK, right. You did some Orange Sunshine, Peter. So we were smuggling all through America, all through Europe. You know, you have to break some eggs to make an omelet. You're going to have to break some laws to make a revolution. They dealt most of the Orange Sunshine. They did a really good job. It went all over the world. India had lots of it. In Goa and other places. People that were smuggling hash out of Afghanistan were bringing acid into Afghanistan. I sent a bunch through different soldiers, to turn the soldiers on to a higher way of looking at things and not just take orders. You get really stoned. Then, you know, like, who cares about the war? We thought the world was going to change within five years or so. The grass would be growing in Manhattan. We were in a fit of idealism. I envisioned centers all over the world. There would be trained guides like myself, taking people through their first trip. It was a spiritual thing. Some people say, I believe in God. I don't have to believe in God. I have been one with God. It was amazing. We had a growing sense of community, among equally eccentric people. It was a lovely time. There was a psychedelic nation that was forming. It seemed as though it was going to work out. You know, evangelists have an epiphany a church. We're the same, except we were LSD evangelists. Jesus, that's what he was trying to do. I think we did a better job than Jesus. Christians would hate me for saying that but it's true. We touched more souls than... you know, we just because it's a modern world, and Jesus didn't have no acid. Did it feel that you were turning on the world? I really thought we were on our way. We guesstimated that maybe three quarters of a billion people, might be willing to take acid, willing to give it a try. What was that based on? A guess? Intuition. Optimism. Somebody in Africa who's starving to death might have relatively little interest in... or on the other hand, they might think it's really cool. Who knows. But still, we thought that it would be a fair shot know that if three quarters of a billion doses would be not too shabby. Seven hundred and fifty million doses, which is roughly 200 kilos of pure acid. The next step might be 20 kilos. And then that's sort of what we were hoping. How soon were you hoping to be able to complete your mission? I suppose I was thinking in terms of a couple years maybe. When I finished my work in Windsor, I wanted to learn how to fly. After I got through the basic training, I flew up to Napa. When I got off the airplane, a fellow said to me, "are you Tim Scully?" And I said, "yes." And somebody else grabbed me from behind and put the handcuffs on. Stay there. They said, "we're federal agents and we're arresting you on a fugitive warrant "from Denver, Colorado." I figured that I was in deep trouble. Scully was advised of his constitutional rights and transported to the BNDD offices, San Francisco, California for processing. I arrived at the federal building, got taken into a booking room where they took my picture and my fingerprints. I was told I could get a maximum sentence of 56 years. I said, "oh shit." Robert T Scully. Male Caucasian, 23 years of age, born on August 27, 1944. Six foot one inches tall, 130 pounds. Slender build, brown hair, hazel eyes. I was the group supervisor, for the investigation of the LSD sales in the San Francisco area. In 1966, LSD was kiddie dope. In other words, kids are using this. The real men are using cocaine and heroin, and those kind of drugs. I felt it was more dangerous because nobody knew the outcome of where this thing is going to end up. And it's causing problems to society. I wound up as a junior agent with Gordon White, to fight the hallucinogen traffic. Most of these young people were the first of the baby-boomers. They saw a lot of things in the world they thought were hypocritical and they were reacting against them. And they weren't totally wrong. I just didn't agree with the way they were doing it. Peculiarities... wears glasses and walks, with an extremely large gait. Associates, Donald R. Douglas. Tim and I met in kindergarten. There is no question that Tim is a science genius. The part of him that you mostly don't see is the guy who figured the right place for an accelerator pedal is flat on the floor. And he's the one who, the very first time we took LSD together, said, you know, Don, we could make this, with a real gleam in his eye. What is LSD? How does it work? When did it all begin? In the late '50s and very early 1960s, LSD samples went to psychologists, and psychiatrists who were doing medical research. It also caught the attention of the CIA, looking at the possibility of using LSD in the Cold War. CIA were looking at it for one thing. But the side effects were such that a person that would be looking for a high, this would be the kind of side effect that they would enjoy. I just felt so one, so human and alive again for the first time in years. And the word started to get around that there was this really interesting substance. Magazine articles were published and a buzz developed. I mean, I feel as though I have no enemies in the world. And this is very lovely. By 1965 the FDA had classified. LSD as an experimental drug. The sources of supply started being driven underground. And that's about when we started looking, at Owsley and his operation. Owsley was the man. He had the brand name. LSD was being sold on the street as Owsley Acid. He's the pied piper. And people would be following him around, 'cause he's handing out the goodies. It was pretty easy for us to just get in the line and see what was going on. Tim and I were interested in making drugs. And Owsley learned about us, and he visited one day. So I was looking around for someone who could help. And I ran into this kid, Tim Scully. I thought, hey, I need somebody. You want to do it? He was a bright kid. Real bright. We have three by five index cards. We'd get a big piece of paper and it's all telephone calls, money transfers. You're putting together a jigsaw puzzle. And that's where we would put Timothy Scully, and Donald Douglas. We drove to Owsley's LSD lab. Becoming his apprentice passed on all the essential knowledge, that I otherwise would have had to learn the hard way. Owsley and Tim would discuss chemistry texts at the kitchen table. And I would try to keep up for a little while but then I'd just go smoke a joint and play my guitar. We'd tableted up 100,000 doses or more, of White Lightening, and put that out on the street. Haight-Ashbury was an intersection of two streets in San Francisco. And if you wanted to deal drugs, this was the place to be. LSD traffickers were not the same as other drug dealers. Our basic tool in undercover work was to appeal to greed. And some of them didn't have the greed. I mean, some of them really were motivated by things other than money. You didn't even know if he'd show up. And if he did, he might want to talk about karma. I had heard it makes you not only closer with yourself but with everybody. This sort of love, peace type thing. I was doing it because I thought that making acid could save the world. That term, save the world. I mean, so many of them used it. I reacted to those LSD people who said, you know, how amazing their experience had been, the same way I reacted to many heroin dealers that I met who said that heroin was better than sex. I didn't believe it. I knew it was going to get bigger and bigger and I felt we had to do what we could to try to slow this thing down. You have to take into consideration the changes that have taken place in the social order. The abandon with which they conduct themselves today. There is nothing grown up or sophisticated in taking an LSD trip at all. They're just being complete fools. Fear. Almost everybody who got turned on, became deeply skeptical of all governments and politicians. And the authorities said, "oh, we've" got to stop this right away. "People are waking up. We don't want this to happen." One reason or another LSD was given to an elephant once. The propaganda machine, telling people about all the awful things that would happen cranked up. And lo and behold it killed the elephant. Freak-outs. Instant insanity. Did any of guys have to take LSD as part of being undercover? "Take LSD"? Are you crazy? A Never Neverland of no return. No, get away. Get away. You might be the one guy that trips out on this stuff. LSD started out a low penalty drug. But then as people began to learn more and more about what it did to you, then it worked its way up the scale. The other side would disagree with that and say that maybe it was tied to the anti-war movement or other movements. But my impression was that serious people involved in science and medicine were seeing it, LSD, as a bigger problem. The manufacturer for illicit LSD should be vigorously sought and prosecuted. I don't care what the governments say. They're all just a crock of shit, out for power and money. And that was not my trip. It was too fucking much. The law said it's no longer legal to make LSD. So we finished it all up. One of the things you need to remember about the United States is that it's 50 different states and they aren't all that united. It became illegal in California before other places. So that's why the Denver lab was not in California. I rented a house not far from the Denver Zoo. Setting up the lab went well. Owsley proceeded to come to the lab and make acid with us. When that work was done, Owsley went back to the Bay Area to organize a tableting facility for the LSD we'd made in Denver. So I went back to Berkeley. I ordered more chemicals through the chemical supply house Owsley had recommended. The chemical supply houses recognized that some of the chemicals they were selling were probably going into illegal drugs. They'd get an order. They would call us. Sometimes we would put an undercover agent behind the desk as a clerk. There was a new stock clerk who helped me load the truck. Aiden Hendrix assumed the role of stock clerk. At approximately 1:15 p.m., Donald R. Douglas arrived in a van-type truck. Hendrix would pretend to be an employee, meet the people, take their order, fill it, give it to them and tell us, hey, OK, he's got it. And now he's leaving in a certain kind of car or whatever. He got into a car and followed us, which an employee of a chemical company would not do. A list of these chemicals is as follows, Ten cases of chloroform. Hundred pounds of sodium chloride. Fifty gallons of acetone. Twenty five pounds of drierite. The truck was followed to the vicinity of Harrison Street in Stanley Place. When we went back to my house we discovered that they'd put my house under surveillance. Highball one to Dugout. This is Dugout. He lived not too far from a motel. We could go to it and rent a motel room, look right out the window. We did see that we were being, followed on a regular basis. And we became a bit thick-skinned about it. The way I was looking at it is that we were all playing a game and we just had chosen different sides. I did what I did, which I thought was the right thing for the country and for the rule of law. I thought I was doing something good and we disagreed. Spy versus spy, cops versus robbers. Surveillance is the key. And that's the only way we were able to follow. Owsley to Arenden. Gordon White, Special Agent with the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. We had probable cause to believe, that there might be some type of drug manufacturing going on, in the premises. We had no response and forcible entry was obtained. Hey! Don't move. - Don't move. Get over there. - Hey, now. And in the house we found Mr. Owsley Stanley. I said, "gee, I'd love to help you but I just dropped about 200 mics of acid. "I don't think I really want to go anywhere right now." Then they carted me off to the joint. I called the lab in Denver. A strange voice answered, and my first thought was, oh shit, the lab has been busted. I called my lawyer and asked if he could find out what had happened. It turned out that the landlord came to the house. He smelled a really funny smell. He thought is there perhaps a dead body in the house? Sheriff's office. He called the police. OK. Hold on just a second. A cop came. The cop decided that he would break down the door. As soon as he went inside, he immediately called the narcotics police. None of us had paid attention to how the laws changed in Colorado. So when the Denver lab was busted, each of the things we were doing there had become a more serious felony, than in California. The heat on us was really increasing a lot. I said that I wanted to take a hiatus of about six months, and go get regular jobs where federal agents could see us do our work, until they got tired it and we have an agreed meeting place. And at some point we'd drop whatever it is we're doing, meet in this place and proceed. Tim said that he wanted to continue. So then I said, well then I guess I'm out. That's how I was out. I was going to have to start from scratch. Owsley made it pretty clear he wouldn't be financing me. When I told him, well I didn't really have enough money to do it on my own, he said, "well, how about if you" ask Billy Hitchcock?" And what it came down to was seeing if Nick wanted to set up a lab in partnership. They said, come to California. We'll work together. So we pooled our resources. I got to the house in Windsor, and we all go forward on the shoulders of the people who went before us. In 1969 we did have intelligence that Sand and Scully were working together on producing, Orange Sunshine, LSD. I mean, everybody in Haight was talking about it. It was the LSD of choice. We would get reports from all over the country about Orange Sunshine seizures. So we knew it was spreading around the country. Sand and Scully were apparently running this lab in Windsor. And they did a good job of keeping it from us. We conducted surveillances. We talked to informants. We did a lot of things. But we didn't find the lab. Stay there. But sometime after Scully did get arrested at the Napa County Airport, for, at the lab in Denver. I was busted in the spring of '69. I spent a lot of time commuting to Denver to go to court. Would you please relate to this court and jury when and where you first observed him. I first observed him at 1:24... And after that, I tended to have paranoid trips where I was hallucinating police in the trees. It was very unnerving to think that the police might be out in the bushes, about to swoop down. And I was just terrified. So I got in touch with the Brotherhood folks, and basically said, you guys have to take over. I can't do it anymore. Tim's timid. He's not real brave sometimes. Why do you think he quit when you didn't quit and Nick didn't quit? Because he didn't take enough of it. I don't know how much acid Tim took, but it wasn't much. You need to keep taking it so that you really are current with your spiritual feelings. Pretend it was a momentary job, and he did what he did. And then he was finished. And to me it was just another rock on the road. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new all-out offensive. Just another asshole trying to direct money, and power where he wanted it. The depth of our commitment, our national commitment is clear. And the pressure is on the criminal drug trade. Richard Lee Rathjen, Special Agent for the Internal Revenue Service. I was working very closely with the Internal Revenue Service. Dick Rathjen. A special group was formed within the IRS. It consisted of about 100 special agents under the designation of the Narcotics Traffickers Program. Nicholas Sand was one of the original cases assigned me. Nick Sand had a harder edge. He was a typical high-level drug dealer, who was primarily motivated by profit. I was never out for money. The only money I ever wanted was enough money, to live comfortably and to make as many psychedelic laboratories as I could. Dick Rathjen pulled his tax returns. And from there the investigation just grew on the tax side. Agent Rathjen was a very smart man. And he figured there were a few holes in the stories. Mr. Sand did not report approximately $300,000 in taxable income. That's how they got Al Capone, right? Right. He also told me he owned no assets, held no property, had nothing in any nominee names or anything. Yeah. Well, yeah, that was a little bit of a balls up. In other words, he was dead broke and lived off his common law wife. We opened a criminal tax investigation on her at this point. This is getting too heavy. I don't want to do this anymore. Everything was obviously going to have to be done on a whole different level, assumed names, new identities. By that point I was already starting to think about training as a teacher. And I loved the ranch and I really, loved the idea of us living here and raising children here. So you think he should've quit? I thought so. I thought that there were a lot of things that he could do. He wasn't going to shake this life so that it would be centered here. It was going to be centered around making psychedelics. He began to take himself so seriously that you couldn't poke him in the side and say, "oh, come on, get off it." I think anybody that has to do this job, you had to have a big ego. I did something I feel was really good for millions of people, and I'm OK with that. I love him. I've loved him my whole life. But for a while he became, the best word I can think of, is insufferable. We reached a point where I told him, you need to find somebody else. And he did. I went off to St. Louis with a new partner. I made a beautiful laboratory, two-story brick building in downtown St. Louis. I'd formed this company, Signet Research and Development. Everybody was very happy that industry was moving into this impoverished area and I was getting kudos from the mayor. We made a lot of beautiful psychedelics. And we were right out in the open. One more job, one more paycheck. We didn't really accept checks though. We went through all the bank accounts for Nicholas Sand and a number of other accounts we located, William Hitchcock, Robert Timothy Scully. I was very scared. If Nick kept on cooking, he would eventually bring down all of us in a huge conspiracy case. Billy and I tried to talk him into taking some time out, just the way Don Douglas had tried to talk me into taking time out. Nick was totally irresponsible in the way he was going about his business. And he was jeopardizing everyone else who was involved in the Windsor lab. Nick responded by saying that it was that none of our business what he did. And after all, hadn't we agreed to try to turn on the world. That's pretty common with a high level traffickers. They must have their own addiction, because they often continued a business way beyond what, you know, prudence would dictate. On top of that, I'd slowly been getting less and less enthusiastic, about what I'd been doing. Things were looking somewhat darker in Haight-Ashbury. That group that was still left in the Haight-Ashbury started to seem more like lost souls. The age of the flower children was gone. It was a lot more methamphetamine. There was a lot more murders and violence. There was more presence of the Hell's Angels and other motorcycle groups. It was a trip. People that I knew had peak experiences and had the experience of oneness, still treating each other really badly and dishonestly. I still believe that LSD was a good thing. But I was no longer convinced that it was the solution to the world's problems. But I got turned on to biofeedback instruments. I'm going to measure the electrical activity of my brain, as it leaks out onto the scalp. There were some early studies done that related the brain waves of Zen monks yoga masters to particular brain wave patterns, when they were meditating. I saw brainwave biofeedback as a possible way of teaching people to reach that state of oneness with the universe, without having to use drugs. So you're still trying to turn the world on? In a kinder, gentler way. Yeah. And then in late 1971, I got a phone call telling me, I was off the hook for the Denver lab, because the police hadn't gotten a search warrant. The state Supreme Court had ruled that the search was illegal. And it was tremendously liberating. The road ahead was clear for doing research in lots of different directions. Unless Nick did something really foolish, I'd somehow managed to escape getting punished for what I'd been doing. So here I am in St. Louis. It's getting very cold in Missouri. And we decide to go traveling in Mexico and taking a vacation. Unbeknownst to me, a water pipe broke in the house. And the neighbors, they could see water running down the stairs. The sheriff for that town breaks in. They go up to my bedroom. They find the leak in the bathroom nearby. They also go into my closet, and they find some psychedelics. And then they discovered the lab. Powder LSD capable of producing over fourteen million tablets of Orange Sunshine was found in two locations. It was in all the papers. I just didn't happen to see the papers. When I pulled up... Driver, step outside slowly. Five heavy duty guys with shotguns jumped out and said... If you make any sudden moves, you'll be shot immediately. What a country. Keep your hands away from your body and drop full down. It was an "oh, shit" moment. Not that they have busted Nick, I think I'm in deeper hot water. I suspected there was a good chance that Nick would have things with him, that would be used as evidence against me. Marijuana, LSD, some mescaline. I made a personal bet that he'd probably still have that flow chart with him, that showed him the process for making LSD on one page. It turned out he did. Is the gamble of drug exploration worth this? Is it worth the physical and mental risk as well? Well a grand jury was convened specifically to investigate Nick, Billy, and I. I eventually hid out in a friend's house. While I was there, I got a phone call from Billy Hitchcock. And he told me, "I have bad news for you." Would you say that you were a close personal friend of Mr. Scully? Yes, I would. I advised him of my tax problems. I told him I was cooperating with the government where I would have to reveal the whole situation. He'd been indicted for income tax evasion, and he didn't see any other way out. Billy wasn't the final piece in the puzzle. He was that one in the middle that you'd spend a half an hour looking for. And then once you find that one, everything, seems to fall into place. Owsley and Nick Sand gave Billy large amounts of money to send offshore into Swiss bank accounts. He would launder money for us. Noble he was not. It's just like fishing. You reel it in, and you look at it, and you figure, I can get a bigger one than this. So I'll tell him, "hey, you know, I'll throw you back", if you can give me somebody else." My lawyer came and read off the names of the unindicted co-conspirators. I said, "Lenny, put it plain." What's an unindicted co-conspirator?" He said, "a snitch." Someone who has turned state's evidence against you." I said, "Billy?" It's just another example of idealism fading in the face of reality. He offered to loan me $10,000, which he encouraged me to use to hire a lawyer, so that I could also turn and become a government witness. Anybody can be turned. The question is, how much do you have to give them in order for them to turn? He said, Tim is considering whether or not to turn state's evidence. Do the same thing I did and make a deal with the government. I was shocked, right down to the soles of my feet. I said, I'll take the money and I'll make my best choice. I couldn't believe it. Remain seated and come to order, court will begin in session. I realized that if I did become a witness against Nick, that I would end up feeling really bad about myself for the rest of my life. All right. Ladies and gentlemen, this next case... The way I'd end up feeling best about myself would be if I faced the music and tried to fight the charges. Billy ended up testifying for a couple of days. His testimony was pretty damning. They were manufacturing LSD, somewhere between three and four million tabs. Pretty painful to hear. Scully made just about a million tablets. They knew what we did and where we did it. Nick came to the Bahamas. There's a word that kind of describes Billy. It's in Yiddish, but it... it is such a perfect word. He's a schlub. Yes. I met with Mike Randall. Billy Hitchcock's a punk and he always was. He's a rich guy. Don't try to take a rich guy's money away. I never held that against Billy. I think most people would save themselves. The stupid thing was bringing him to the laboratory. That he had something... You know, there were a lot of those blunders all along the line that were just... yeah, just showoff maneuvers that were dumb. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury... The trial judge, Samuel Conti, is known as Hanging Sam. Oh, Judge Conti was a fine American. He was one of our favorite judges. Judge Conti was tough. But I think fair. The events which are the subject of this proceeding... In one of the pretrial proceedings, he said he wished he had access to the death penalty in our case, which gave us a pretty good clue of what he was going to do in terms of sentencing. And the man was just... Objection, your honor. Motion to strike. Why don't you both approach the bench. Every motion that we made, Conti just denied, interrupted our lawyers, yelled at them. I mean, he's a sick man. It was blow after blow after blow. And they had 63 witnesses for the prosecution. They spent one or two million dollars. I feel pretty proud that it cost them that much to get me. And I'm just one little guy, you know, with a good idea. When I got on the stand, I really wanted to try to explain why we made psychedelics. I actually did convince the judge that there was a chance that I was an idealist rather than in it for the money. But when he sentenced me, he said, "idealists are the most dangerous kind." And socked it to me with 20 years. Mr. Scully is a brilliant man, but not very smart. An idealist without a conscience. He was impeding justice and impeding the moral lives and well-being of many, many citizens. Heroically, he stood up for us, and really got slammed for it. He got a 20-year sentence. I got only a 15-year sentence. That was a really bad moment. And I didn't have long in the courtroom to think about it. I was whisked away pretty quickly into the holding cell. Deep in my heart I have some sympathy for all the people who went to prison. I don't really have sympathy on the basis of the chronology. Maybe he is not doing it anymore and doesn't intend to do it anymore. But the fact is, he did it, and he was an important trafficker. And an example has to be set for other people who want to enter the business. I climbed up on the bunk and pulled the blanket over my head and cried for a while cause I thought, it was going to be pretty scary being in prison for a long time. I was going to get sent where all those tough guys were that I didn't get along with very well in high school. It's McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary, the oldest federal penal facility in the United States. I was sent up to NcNeil Island, in link and belly chains and handcuffs. They put you through a delousing procedure, take away your clothes and put you through a special shower, a medicinal scrub. When I first drove up I made a naive venture, first up. There were guys who had been in motorcycle gangs. Guys were there for murder. There was one Eskimo who was there for eating his whole family. They were generally a fairly intimidating lot. I couldn't begin to tell you how many people in here have had encounters that they didn't want. A lot of the guys were frightened, they would be turned into a punk, and be raped by the other prisoners. It's part of the dehumanization process. There's only one way to do time, and that's to do it one day at a time. That's the only way you can, and keep your sanity. I did have a little difficulty at first because a number of people tried to make me offers I couldn't refuse to become the distributor for all the drugs they expected I was going to be bringing into the prison. The answer I gave all of them was, "just wait for my crime partner" to get here. I don't have any drugs." Usually crime partners, as they're referred to, are kept separate. For some reason they put us together. We were bunkies. He had the top bunk. I had the bottom bunk. My girlfriend at the time would come to the prison. And she would have a balloon with a variety of psychedelics in it. When we got up to be allowed our one hug and kiss, she put the balloon from her mouth into mine and I swallowed it. I had to shit it out, and I had to clean it up, and then I had to unwrap it. And then I had to figure some way of dosing it out. He starting running sessions in the cell. He would typically do it after lights out. He'd open the door to his locker where he had a picture of Ganesh pasted in the door. He'd light a candle and he and the other folks who were getting high would sit around, shielded from the guard's vision as they walked by. I mean, he's a great session guide. We formed an eight man psychedelic cell. Had a mafia guy in it. He took acid with us, because he wasn't a pussy. "As he came out of that session he said, "hey guys, you know, that's the first time I've been in church in 30 years." I began to monitor the delivery of food. Somehow I got some LSD in there and the word got out. Everybody would rather take LSD than being just sitting in jail, right. We got the whole of the prison stoned. This is what freedom is really about. It's not about not being in chains. It's about not having your mind enslaved. I just didn't take part in it. I went to bed and read a book if the lights were still on. And when the lights went out I always went to sleep. The prison library was in terrible shape. I offered to update the card catalogs so it would be accurate. And the librarian said, "OK, you're hired." Tim got up in the morning as soon as the gates were open. Boom, stayed there all day. He was studying the case, trying to find constitutional issues, that would help get us off. Judge Conti had set our bail at a very, very high figure, half a million dollars each. We filed bail appeals. So we both got out on appeal bond. And it was a big relief. Get in your cells! I said goodbye to Nick in prison. I remember wishing him luck. I couldn't really focus on anything for a while. It's hard to come back in after you've been in that system. The system changes you and not for the better. It took a few months for the Supreme Court to decline to hear my case. And when I heard we'd lost that appeal, I wasn't tremendously surprised, but I was really disappointed. I was doing everything I could to get ready to go back to prison. I had a little houseboat in Sausalito. I was living there with my Buddha and all my Persian carpets that I liked to collect. And we were just sitting down preparing, for a psychedelic session that I was going to be guiding, for 12 people from the Bay Area. As I was finishing up all the preparations, Nancy came in and said, "we've got to get you out of here." I just got a call from Tim. They have denied your appeal. And you're going to be picked up in a few days and taken to prison. Good to see you, darling. Yes. I met Nick in 1969. He turned me on to Orange Sunshine. I think this one might be better. And I didn't leave that room for three days. And I must say, I fell madly in love with that person and what he was. Was Nick very handsome? Yes. He was different than he is now. What do you mean, was? What is this negative shit? He still is. I was a part of this psychedelic revolution. He knew that he could count on me, to help him in any way that was needed. We knew that we had to get out of there. Ah, here we go. When they lowered Nick Sand's bond, I knew he would run and he did. And I said, watch your rear view mirror. If you see any cars pulling out behind of us suddenly, we've got a tail. Lo and behold, there was one of them in my view mirror and I thought, oh, shoot. I said, "OK, we've been made." They knew what they were doing. They weren't easy to follow. I said, "drive over to Mill Valley." And we parked behind a row of cedars. We would see the same car driving up, driving back. They did their tricks. We did our tricks. It came down to a matter of who did their tricks better. I had a sense of their timing. And soon as they passed going to the right, I said, "get out of here." Go left. Make your first right. Make your second left. "Make your second right." We just had to go all those little residential areas and go shh, shh, shh, shh. Get us over the mountain. And we got up there. "And I said," wow, we're clean. We got away. Now we just have to figure out where to go from here." I had heard that Nick had vanished. "I told all my friends," if you hear from Nick, please don't tell me where he is or what he's doing," because I really don't want to know. I didn't want to be part of whatever... the next conspiracy might be. My mother and my girlfriend at the time drove me up, and I took the ferry across to the prison. What I told myself was that if all else failed, I'd figure out how to escape if I couldn't stand it. But I thought I'd figure out a way of doing the time. Well the plan was to drive to Oregon and Washington until Nick was able to walk over into Canada. He certainly didn't go to sleep. I think we just drove the whole time. We went up on the most obscure route you could say, all the way through the forest for hundreds of miles, up the Olympic peninsula. After a few days journey, I got some halfway decent ID. Nick Sand was gone. I went and bought a fishing rod lures, weights, tackle box. Now I could make my escape. Good morning, sir. Good morning, sir. When I reached Canada, a little white-haired bouncy immigration officer said, "and what is the purpose of your visit, sir?" I had my pole and my tackle box and my fishing jacket on. And I said, "come on." You got to be kidding." He said, "go on. Have a great time." I ran the fugitive investigation on it for awhile. But we had no leads. You know, the man had had numerous names and traveled all over the world. We'd hear reports of possible sightings. But I don't recall that we even came close. So I disappeared and continued my mission. I lived as a fugitive in Canada. And I carried on making psychedelics for the next 20 years. If anybody beat the system it was Nick Sand. I was granted admission as a PhD candidate, so that I could be a student while I was in prison. I ended up by getting a PhD in psychology. I had a lot of help from people on the outside who got my sentence reduced to ten years, which made me eligible for parole in three and third years. I pretty rapidly got absorbed by the whole computer world. It turned out that having made LSD was a positive thing in the computer business. Tim and I were lovers for a while in late '60s. And then we didn't see one another for years. But the more the years went by, the more mellow he became. He's like a cat. You slowly get to know him. A cat reveals their personality to you rather slowly. As we've gotten older, we've figured out, both of us, what we really want, which is to be partners and lovers and not to live under the same roof. And that's worked wonderfully well. I scaled back my ambitions, to trying to just make my own life, and the lives of the people that I care about be as good as possible. This is not perfect but I'm doing the best I can. That's all we can do, you know. Perhaps at the bottom there are some of the chemical manuals from the different chemical houses. This, packed into the corner, is the great big steel reactionary flasks. It's like a big pressure cooker. They can cook it under pressure. I'd forgotten about him. It was a huge shock to me the magnitudes of the laboratory. Practical LSD manufacture. Drug smuggling, the Forbidden Book. That he'd gone that long without getting caught, and then when he got caught that he was involved in such an apparently big way. Psychedelic log. MDA, DMT. Acetic acid. I don't know if there's much he hasn't tried his hand at. I knew he was sharp but I was still surprised. - Chromatography. - "Chromatography"? He knows his stuff, doesn't he? Yeah. I was eventually arrested with enough acid, to dose the whole of Canada two times over. And they sent me back to stand trial in the US. By some great coincidence, they got me back in front of Sam Conti. They brought him out of retirement, so he could get me again. I'm a warrior for peace. I can take it. Sure beats working in the yard at McNeil Island. That's for sure. |
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