The Microdot Gang: The Rise and Fall of the LSD Network That Turned On the World

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Zero: ( laughs) Actually, I'm the only man to speak to. Grade-A, tip-top genius, that's me. You should drop by the shop sometime, see some of my shit, bro. Jay, Mike. Mescaline: A Global History of the First Psychedelic. London: Yale University Press, 2019 Ebenezer, Lyn (2010). Operation Julie: The World's Greatest LSD Bust. Y Lolfa. ISBN 978-1-84771-146-5. Bentley, Stephen (2016). Undercover: Operation Julie - The Inside Story. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. ISBN 978-1530781553.

The History Press | The Microdot Gang

On 1 December 1977, officers searched Kemp's cottage for a second time and dug up a large plastic box that contained 1.3kg of LSD crystal - enough to create 6.5 million doses.A three-part television drama, called Operation Julie, was made by Tyne Tees Television and broadcast on ITV in 1985, following the events of the case from the police point of view. It was directed by Bob Mahoney. Nevertheless, this article was reprinted, translated, and widely and uncritically cited in the literature on espionage. Hoover's Zapp has been wrongly identified with Walter Zapp, inventor of the Minox camera, which was used by spies but did not make microdots. Hoover appears to have conflated Emanuel Goldberg, who was a professor in Dresden, with Kurt Zapp who, late in the Second World War, was in Dresden and taught spies how to make microdots. [3] A World War II spy kit for microdot production was sometimes called a Zapp outfit.

Microdot LSD in the Seventies Gratefully Remembering Microdot LSD in the Seventies

In Germany after the Berlin Wall was erected, special cameras were used to generate microdots which were then attached to letters and sent through the regular mail. These microdots often went unnoticed by inspectors, and information could be read by the intended recipient using a microscope. During the mission, if Carl leaves the car, The Truth talks to him using the same distorted voice as Mike Toreno. The intelligence was passed across the Atlantic, where Thames Valley Police had already noticed a huge increase of LSD on the festival scene. This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sourcesin this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( February 2008) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) British law enforcement has typically regarded “Operation Julie” as an enormously successful sting operation that effectively curtailed the production of Microdot LSD. There have been nine books written about Operation Julie and many of them were written by detectives who participated in the historic investigation. Although the story of Operation Julie has often been dominated by law enforcement’s narrative of moral self-congratulation (“we took acid off the streets”), alternative histories of the Microdot era are now beginning to emerge.In 2021, Catherine Hayes self-published Christine Bott's memoir The Untold story of Christine Bott. [16] As a result of this, Richard Kemp broke 45 years of silence, and Hayes self-published the follow-up book After Julie: The Kemp Tapes. [17] Comedian Paul Merton recalled Operation Julie as the inspiration behind his "Policeman on Acid" sketch in his autobiography Only When I Laugh. [11]

The Microdot Gang by James Wyllie | Waterstones

But animals could be useful too. After observing a frenzied period of comings and goings at the Carno mansion – as Kemp and Bott appeared to be getting rid of equipment – Dai received a tip-off that the house was now empty. New Sports Biographies and Autobiographies: Gift a Book for the Sports Fan In Your Life this ChristmasLeft, inside Kemp's cottage near Tregaron. Right, drug dealer Alston Hughes who was jailed for eight years as part of the conspiracy

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It was pure coincidence one afternoon when the control room got in touch to say there had been a fatal accident involving a red Range Rover and a Mini estate,” Don recalled. “It had been a terrific crash, head-on, and in the passenger seat of the Mini there was a deceased young lady, her husband was alongside her and it was a very serious accident.” The context of rural Wales wasimportant. This was, after all, a pivotal location in the history of psychedelic counter-culture. With cheap property and remote countryside Powys and Ceredigion were dream destinations for those seeking an alternative lifestyle in the 1960s and 1970s. We drew in celebrity hippies too. A popular article on espionage by J. Edgar Hoover in the Reader's Digest in 1946 attributed invention of microdots to "the famous Professor Zapp at the Technical University Dresden". [6] However, there never was a Professor Zapp at that university and microdot historian William White has denounced Hoover's article as a "concoction of semitruths and overt disinformation". Bott, Christine; Hayes, Catherine (25 June 2021). The Untold Story of Christine Bott. Barnham Broom, England, United Kingdom: ktazze. ISBN 9781838338862.

In 1973 the group split into two. Todd and Fielding established a London base, while Kemp moved to a remote farmhouse in Tregaron with GP girlfriend Christine Bott, a fellow former student from Liverpool University. In the 1970s, it’s estimated that 60% of the world’s LSD came from one place – Wales. Acid Dream is the story of the Microdot Gang, a rag tag group of chemists, dealers, businessmen and hippy dreamers who attempted to start a revolution of the mind from a Welsh farmhouse in Tregaron. The Stones and Jimi Hendrix liked a wild Welsh weekend, and there are apocryphal anecdotes of Bob Dylan staying for six weeks and enjoying the mellifluous poetry of Welsh-speaking farmers’ conversations.