by Andy Roberts
A senior drug squad officer commented in 1972, “Microdots are the pushers’ latest weapon in the drug war. In the past it was not too difficult to detect the evidence of LSD in sugar lumps or on blotting paper. But these new pills are so tiny they can be disposed of at a moment’s notice.”2
As seizures increased the media printed stories about the new variety of LSD; “Pinhead LSD ‘a killer’” “Drug ring peddling LSD microtabs” “Extra strong LSD peddled” and “Report shows more LSD is available” were just a few of the headlines between 1972 and 1977. Journalists speculated that a “microdot gang” was responsible for the influx of powerful LSD. Microdots could be easily obtained in any town or city at any of the many clubs and pubs that had sprung up to cater for the large numbers of hippies and freaks. It was common on a Friday or Saturday night in one of these clubs for almost everyone in attendance, bar staff included, to be under the influence of the latest batch of microdots to hit town, the party continuing later at private flats, or on psychedelic country rambles. The drug’s quality and strength were dependable and at a pound or less per trip, microdots represented extremely good value for money. But the qualities that made microdots so attractive; availability, price and strength, also caused problems for the unprepared.
Like thousands of other teenagers living a suburban existence in the early Seventies, fifteen-year-old Tim Lott was keen to experiment with LSD. When he first saw the drug, a blue microdot, he thought: “I had expected the LSD tablets to be about the size of paracetamol. I had intended, on this occasion, to take only a half or even a quarter. But the tablets are so tiny, they are virtually indivisible. It seems that I am bound to lose face if I try and divide it up. Anyway, something so tiny can hardly be very powerful.”3
Believing the physical size of the LSD carrier had a relationship to the strength of dose was an easy mistake to make, and often led to novice LSD users taking more than they could handle. For Lott, having only preconceptions of what LSD might be like and with no experienced guide for the trip, his first microdot was simply too strong. At first he was impressed, amazed at a drug that made him feel he was “... in a state of the purest, most concentrated ecstasy and it is the most real, the most truthful thing I have ever experienced”. Amazement soon turned to bewilderment as the drug’s effect continued to increase, wave upon wave of sensory impressions washing over him, threatening to subsume him. Fearing he was losing his mind, Lott smashed up his parents’ living room, ripped off his clothes and ran naked into the street, before being subdued by a neighbour and taken to the police station. His father rescued him and Lott spent the next twelve hours recovering in bed, the ghost of LSD flitting through his mind as he tried to piece together what had happened.4
Lott’s experience was harrowing; a trip that spiralled out of control because he had no real idea what to expect. Although media and counter culture descriptions of LSD trips might make the psychedelic experience sound desirable, they could not accurately convey what a trip would actually be like. In Lott’s case, he was ignorant of the crucial elements of set and setting and had no one to guide him on his journey. Of course, Lott’s disorientating experience was not typical. The vast majority of LSD users enjoyed the experience enormously and benefited from it in a number of ways as accounts such as Pete Mellor’s demonstrate (see Chapter 9).
Tim Lott’s blue microdot was almost certainly made by chemist Richard Kemp; just one of millions of doses of LSD manufactured in Britain, and distributed across the world, by a group of psychedelic idealists. This tightly knit organization was nameless but their activities and produce would become known collectively by the name given to the police initiative that smashed their illicit enterprise: Operation Julie.
It is impossible to pinpoint the moment when the Operation Julie conspiracy began, but it can be traced back to 1967 when writer David Solomon, an acknowledged authority on LSD, settled in Cambridge. A year later, in 1968, Solomon met future Operation Julie chemist Richard Kemp. At the time, Kemp was living with Christine Bott, the pair having met and fallen in love while Kemp was working as a researcher at Liverpool University. While he was not central to the later production of LSD, Solomon was crucial initially in bringing the principles of the conspiracy together. Solomon was an “acid intellectual”, a well educated man who had a sincere and reasoned belief that LSD should be used as a positive tool to alter consciousness. The writer was held in high regard by the worldwide psychedelic community and numbered many of its luminaries, including Timothy Leary, among his friends.
When he met Kemp, Solomon was involved in trying to synthesise THC, the active constituent of marijuana, and Kemp was happy to assist with this process. At some point in 1969, to finance further research into THC, the decision to manufacture LSD was made. One of Solomon’s American friends, Paul Arnaboldi, supplied Kemp with 40 grams of ergotamine maleate and, being a brilliant chemist, Kemp had no trouble making three batches of LSD, albeit of a weak dosage, in the basement of his Liverpool flat. Curious as to what the fuss was about – Solomon had told him that LSD was a stronger version of marijuana – Kemp took a small dose. Under the influence, he accidentally knocked over a flask containing large amounts of the drug, ingesting enough LSD to catapult himself on a trip of cosmic proportions. Kemp was awed by the experience and slowly his ties to the world of formal academic research began to weaken.5
Solomon had many connections throughout the LSD underworld, one of whom was the enigmatic Ronald Stark. Much has been written about Stark’s motivation for being involved in the international LSD trade and an entire book could easily be written on his exploits, most of which do not concern the British LSD scene. Stark’s links with a group of Californian LSD dealers known as the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, who in turn had close links with Timothy Leary, has spawned a worldwide acid conspiracy with Stark at the centre.
There is no doubt about the depth of Stark’s involvement with LSD, but his motives and who, if anyone, he was actually working for remains a matter for speculation. The major players in the international LSD market during the Sixties and Seventies all knew of each other and collaborated when necessary. However, the fact that Stark moved easily between these groups and individuals does not constitute a conspiracy as some have claimed. Nor has there been any proof of Stark’s alleged links with the CIA and other intelligence agencies. Yet something about Stark gave people cause for concern. For instance, when Steve Abrams met him, he was convinced Stark was working for the American intelligence services; so convinced that he phoned Bing Spear at the Home Office to express his concerns about the man.
Solomon introduced Kemp to Stark, who in turn persuaded Kemp to leave his university job, to work full time on synthesizing THC. Pure THC is much stronger than cannabis resin or marijuana and, being in oil form, was easier to conceal and transport, meaning profits were high and risks low. According to Kemp, the deal between Solomon and Stark was analogous to that of a minor league football club player being transferred to the premier division. In exchange for Solomon being able to buy LSD at $900 a gram, Kemp was free to work on THC for Stark. While engaged on this project in laboratories in France, Kemp also made LSD, accidentally stumbling on a short cut that speeded up the process and resulted in an almost pure product.6
After a disagreement over money, Kemp split from Stark and returned to Britain. By early 1972, he had gone into LSD production. Kemp and Bott rented various flats for just long enough to complete a production run, before moving to the next destination. Solomon bought the precursor chemicals in Germany, later handing them to Kemp who kept them in a Swiss safety deposit box until needed. For each gram of LSD Kemp passed to Brian Cuthbertson for tabletting, he received £200. One of Kemp’s early production runs, in Liverpool, produced 500 grams netting Kemp £100,000; a substantial sum of money in 1972.7
However, although it requires expert knowledge, producing pure LSD is only a small part of the process of getting the drug to the customer. First, it had to be turned into microdots by
the tabletting process by Cuthbertson. Then it was passed by another dealer, Henry Todd, to several people from the Reading area who began to distribute the LSD for him. A network, capable of distributing tens of thousands of microdots a week, was slowly forming. Solomon, though, was no longer required to obtain the raw materials, Todd now handling that aspect of the organization.
At first, everything went to plan. Kemp made the acid, Cuthbertson tabletted it and their colleagues Henry Todd, Russell Spenceley, Alston Hughes and others managed the distribution chain. Then, in 1973, things changed. Kemp had always insisted that each dose of LSD was a minimum of 200 μg, to ensure the customer had a guaranteed full-blown psychedelic experience. Something about Todd made Kemp suspicious and to test his integrity he bought some of his own microdots at a festival. The dealer assured Kemp that the acid contained a guaranteed 100 μg.8
To verify this Kemp asked a friend of Solomon’s, chemist Andy Munro, later to become another crucial player in the Operation Julie events, to analyze the acid. Munro tested the LSD in the laboratories of a university and Kemp was horrified, but not surprised, to find the microdots contained 100 μg. He immediately confronted Todd who freely admitted his deception, but promised never to do it again.
Todd and Kemp were quite dissimilar individuals. Todd was a man’s man, a bon viveur who enjoyed playing rugby and mountain climbing, paying lip service to the ideals of the LSD counter culture, more interested in profit than revolution. On the other hand, Kemp was seriously committed to social change through the agency of LSD. Kemp embraced the hippie ideal of self-sufficiency, at one point after his arrest telling the police, “I’d have everyone out in two-acre plots like ours, being self-sufficient”.9
Todd and Kemp parted company in the latter half of 1973, a number of factors precipitating the split. Personality and ideological differences had existed for some time but Kemp was now realizing how central he was to the entire LSD conspiracy, “I was the goose that laid the golden egg”, and wanted more of a financial cut. One source close to both men recalled that it was Kemp’s discovery that Todd had invested heavily in General Franco’s Spanish Highway Bonds that finally caused the rift between them.10
The consequence of the split was good news for the psychedelic community. Ideas for a new laboratory were mooted and Kemp once again took up with David Solomon and Paul Arnabaldi. Feeling the need to escape from London if they were to practise their hippie ideals and manufacture high quality LSD in seclusion, a suitable property was located in Wales. Arnabaldi paid £26,000 for the dilapidated manor house of Plas Llysyn near Newtown, Montgomeryshire in June 1974 and Kemp set about building a laboratory.
Kemp and Bott bought a property near Tregaron, some fifty miles from Plas Llysyn. It was a small and primitive cottage but it suited them and they fitted in well with the numerous hippie settlers in the area. Bott was a member of the Soil Association, an organic gardening group, and a keen member of the Goat Society. She owned two pet goats and the only known photograph of her shows her proudly exhibiting one of them at a local agricultural show.11
Todd, meanwhile, had been equally busy. He had recruited chemist Andy Munro and set him up with a laboratory, initially at unknown addresses and finally at 23 Seymour Road in the London suburb of Hampton Wick. Munro made LSD on the top floor and Cuthbertson handled the tabletting on the first floor. The Seymour Road lab was active for several months before Kemp’s new lab became operational. By 1975, two laboratories were in production, making millions of doses of LSD. This period was the height of the free festival years and the market for the drug was huge in Britain, America, Australia and mainland Europe.
While the Operation Julie conspirators were busy setting up their manufacturing and distribution networks the forces of law and order were, at first, blissfully ignorant of what was taking place. Drugs, not least LSD, were relatively new to the police and it had only been since 1966 that drug use had become widespread in Britain. It was clear to anyone who studied the figures that LSD use and, by implication, manufacture, was on the increase. Convictions for LSD related offences rose sharply from 159 in 1969 to 1457 in 1972. Some police officers were very aware of this growing trend, one writing in his annual report “... this [1972] has been without doubt the year of the acid tablet.”12
From September 1971, scientists at the Central Research Establishment at Aldermaston had been monitoring seizures of LSD and they too had commented on the rise of the LSD microdot. Microdots were one of a number of LSD types known to scientists as triturates – tablets formed from a mould. Other types included domes or, less frequently, squares. Microdots were made by mixing unadulterated LSD with calcium lactate or talc and with gelatine for bulk. A colouring agent was added and the mixture spread across a sheet of perforated metal or plastic. After the paste had dried, the microdots were pushed out by using a pin board corresponding to the mould. The Aldermaston scientists quickly realised that within a few weeks of a particular type of tablet becoming available in Britain it would appear in countries as far away as Australia. They concluded that 95 per cent of LSD in Britain and 50 per cent of the world’s supply of LSD originated in Britain.13
Despite extensive knowledge of the differing types of microdot produced by the clandestine British LSD laboratory, the police were unable to gather any useful intelligence to indicate who was behind it or where it was situated. Then, in 1973, came a major breakthrough. Solomon’s occasional partner in crime Gerald Thomas was arrested in Canada in possession of 7 kg of cannabis. Hearing of Thomas’ arrest, Solomon panicked and destroyed all his possessions and the cocaine making equipment. Thomas took offence at this and in order to get both revenge and lighter sentence provided the Canadian police with the names of the major figures involved in the microdot gang. Thomas’ information was accurate; he claimed the LSD was manufactured by a qualified chemist called Richard Hilary Kemp and his common law wife Dr. Christine Bott, while a man Thomas only knew as “Henry” carried out the tabletting. Thomas also named expatriate American author, David Solomon as the man initially responsible for acquiring the necessary precursor chemicals.
Thomas’ information was passed to the recently formed Central Drugs Intelligence Unit where Detective Inspector Derek Godfrey followed it up. Godfrey soon found plenty to substantiate Thomas’ claims. Kemp had been the subject of a Special Branch report in 1970 that established he had strong links with Ronald Stark. Godfrey knew that if Kemp had been consorting with the enigmatic Stark he was sure to be involved, at some level, in the manufacture of LSD. All the police had to do now was find him.14
As Kemp had now effectively dropped out of society, the police were unable to locate him immediately. It would be Kemp’s notoriously bad driving that would be the cause of his eventual downfall. In September 1974, he was involved in a car crash and his distinctive red Range Rover, mentioned by Thomas to the police, alerted them. Perhaps knowing he might be under surveillance Kemp gave his defunct London address but foolishly elected to produce his documents at Welshpool in mid-Wales, suggesting to police he was living in the area.
Drug Squads across Britain had been hearing rumours that LSD was being manufactured in Wales and Kemp’s apparent residence there strengthened that suspicion. Additionally, an LSD dealer arrested in possession of a large quantity of microdots in Australia during 1974, claimed that the manufacturing source was in Wales but that one of the main distribution centres was a well-known restaurant in London, The Last Resort.
Although there was now strong circumstantial evidence of a Welsh LSD laboratory, there was no proof and Kemp’s exact whereabouts were still unknown. It would take a death, a stroke of luck and good police work to begin to pull the strands of information together. In the spring of 1975, Kemp was involved in a fatal road accident near Aberystywth and, unaware of the CDIU’s interest in Kemp, the local police allowed him to remove all personal effects and correspondence from the vehicle.
The distinctive red Range Rover was kept in police custody for a while, whe
re it was noticed by a Thames Valley police officer who was in the area trying to trace Kemp. A painstaking examination of the vehicle revealed Kemp had overlooked several tiny scraps of paper which when pieced together showed a map of the area marking a number of locations. More significantly, another piece of paper bore the words “hydrazine tartrate”, a crucial substance in the manufacture of LSD. Kemp’s bad driving and the unfortunate death of a local vicar’s wife had resulted in the police knowing his current address, the remote farmhouse near Tregaron.
This was the information the police needed and a conference was held in Carmarthen in April 1975 to plan the way forward, which was to initially place Kemp under surveillance. This soon confirmed that Kemp and Bott were away from their property for up to twelve hours at a time, often for several days. No direct evidence of LSD manufacture was apparent but a major LSD dealer from south Wales had been seen near the house and in the nearby village. The police seemed to be on the edge of a major breakthrough.
“It was at this point, when the momentum of the inquiry should have been reaching a peak, that it in fact began to flag.” Those are the words of the 1978 post-trial Home Office Operation Julie report, noting the failings in the police system at the time. What should have galvanised the police into a major operation against the suspected laboratory almost caused it to fizzle away to nothing. Though the evidence was mounting, there was considerable resistance within the police force to any form of unilateral approach to the problem. When, in May 1975, Detective Inspector Godfrey, in conjunction with Detective Superintendent Gittus of the Metropolitan Police Drug Squad, sought permission and resources to mount a major operation against the laboratory they were turned down on grounds of cost. A meeting in June at Swindon saw permission granted for No. 8 Regional Crime Squad to mount a full-scale surveillance operation, but this too concluded without any breakthrough. The CDIU continued to gather intelligence about the major suspects and the Drugs Intelligence Laboratory analyzed and monitored seizures of LSD microdots but there were no further moves to locate or decommission the clandestine lab.15