AmeriCymru spoke to Lyn Ebenezer about his fascinating new book 'Operation Julie' published by Y Lolfa. The book investigates what was at the time, the biggest UK police anti drugs operation in history. Allegedly 50% of the world's LSD supply was manufactured in the small Welsh village of Llanddewi Brefi. For more background information read the press release here .

AmeriCymru: When did you first become aware of Operation Julie? Care to tell our readers a bit about the background?

Lyn: I did not become fully aware of Operation Julie until the week-end of the arrests in 1977. Yet there were pointers that should have made me aware that something strange was happening. There were strangers more than usual in the bars of the local pubs in Tregaron. They passed themselves off as bird watchers. And a few weeks before the swoop I was told by a local man of a strange encounter with a stranger who carried a holdall. He began talking to my friend and they shared a few pints. As the stranger was preparing to leave he offered my friend a considerable sum of money for keeping his holdall for a few days. My friend, believing the man to be a bank robber or a member of the IRA made an excuse and refused.

Following the swoop, others mentioned similar experiences. In fact I know of one person who burnt over 10,000 he was safekeeping in his coalhouse for one of those arrested in case the police discovered it and traced it back to him.

AmeriCymru: Were any of the villagers in Llanddewi Brefi suspicious of the 'hippies' who had settled amongst them? Was there any friction?

Lyn: At Tregaron there was no friction between Richard Kemp, the brilliant chemist and his partner, Christine Bott. They, of course, were not hippies but seekers of the Good Life who kept goats and grew organic vegetables. They were rather reserved, but their next door neighbours found them to be friendly. At nearby Llanddewi Brefi, Alston Hughes, or Smiles one of the principal dealers - was a living legend. He was gregarious, funny and generous. He would throw money around like confetti. In fact, as I state at the end of my book, should he and his friends return there today, I have little doubt that they would be welcomed.

AmeriCymru: It has been suggested that the people arrested in Operation Julie were responsible for 90% of the UK supply of LSD and 40-60% of the world's supply. How accurate do you think these figures are?

Lyn: Many of the figures released to the press were massaged. I have no doubt of that. Operation Julie was political. Its brief was to stop LSD production in the UK. But as Christine Bott said in court, it was more to do with the money being made rather than with drugs. I also believe that the Government was wary of the young peoples popular movement that was rapidly spreading from Haight Ashbury around the globe. There was also a political element being Operation Julie. Dick Lee, the Operation Commander had dreams of establishing a UK-wide drugs squad like the FBI. So he began feeding the press with some exaggerated stories in order to further his case.

Differing figures were bandied about. It was said that the two LSD production rings were responsible for from 40 60% of LSD made world wide and 90% of LSD made in Britain. It was also said that Operation Julie led to such a scarcity of LSD that it rose in price from 1 a tab to 8. I would rather believe the Release organization that stated that the price of a tab of LSD soon after the trial was as low as 10 pence a tab for the buyers, who sold it on at the same prices as before, 1 a tab on the street. Operation Julie may have dented the trade, but LSD, following the sentencing, was as easy to obtain as cannabis.

AmeriCymru: In a recent press release it is stated that you were able to record recent interviews with people who were involved in these events. How difficult was it to track down the participants?

Lyn: My interviews over the past 30 years have involved mostly ex police officers who did not wish their names to be made known. But I am friendly with Alston Hughes friend and chauffer Buzz Healey, who is a charming man. He was present when exchanges were made with 50,000 tablets changing hands for 62,000 at one bar and worth 125,000 of LSD being exchanged in another bar. Healey has not disclosed any incriminating evidence and I have never pushed him for information. He was not involved in the LSD conspiracy but was jailed for 12 months on charges relating to cannabis. He still lives locally and is much liked.

AmeriCymru: David Litvinoff plays a central role in these events and indeed you devote a whole chapter to him in the book. Care to tell us a little about his background?

Lyn: Litvinoff, like Alston Hughes also became a legend but some six years before Operation Julie was set up. He had been involved with the Kray Brothers in the East End of London and had been forced to flee. Ronnie Kray had slashed him across his face with a sword. He was also deeply involved with the pop scene and the Chelsea Set, who included the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton. He worked as dialogue coach on the film Performance. Days after Hendrix died, Litvinoff showed me an invitation card he had received for Jimis funeral. Stuck on the card was a boiled sweet impregnated with LSD. Those who were not able to make the funeral were told to take the sweet at the exact time of the burial.

Litvinoff played me back a telephone conversation he had made with Bob Dylan. They seemed to be on friendly terms. It is believed that the character Davies in Harold Pinters play The Caretaker was based on him. Litvinoff left suddenly in the early seventies. He had been involved with drugs, undoubtedly, and I believe that he was the harbinger of the hippy invasion of the area. He later hanged himself.

AmeriCymru: What was the American connection in all this? We hear about visits to mid-Wales by Jimi Hendrix and others but were any Americans involved in the manufacturing operation itself?

Lyn: Plas Llysin, where Richard Kept manufactured his LSD at Carno had been bought by Paul Joseph Arnaboldi, an ex New Jersey schoolteacher. He was later employed by an American construction company in the Middle East where he sustained a serious injury. He was a friend of LSD prophet Timothy Leary and The Brotherhood of Eternal Love. He bought a home at Deia on Majorca and then bought Plas Llysin, on the pretence that he was there completing a biography of President Kennedy. He was at the top of the conspiracy to manufacture and marketing of LSD. At the time of the Opeartion Julie swoops he is believed to have been tipped off. He fled to Majorca where he was arrested but was released because no extradition treaty existed between the UK and Spain. He then flew to America and disappeared, but is believed to have died at Deia..

AmeriCymru: How did the UK press react to these events? Do you think on balance that they reported accurately and played a positive role?

Lyn: As I previously mentioned, the press was in Dick Lees pocket. As soon as the premier players in the affair had been jailed, Lee published his book on his part in Operation through the Daily Express, ghost written by an Express journalist, Colin Pratt. Another officer, Martyn Pritchard published his own memoirs through the Daily Mirror. Wild and exaggerated stories were circulated involving a plot to dump LSD in a Welsh reservoir in order to turn on the whole of Birmingham. Lees book is also riddled with mistakes. In fact, the first impression had to be called in after damages of 1,000 were awarded to a man libeled in the book. Much was made by Lee of a terrorist connection involving Bader Meinhoff, The Angry Brigade and the IRA. But not one of those charged was accused of anything remotely connected with terrorism.

AmeriCymru: In what way was the area permanently changed? How did the rural community react to the glare of international publicity?

Lyn: The influx of hippies to rural Wales coincided with the great influx of incomers in general in the sixties and seventies. Small communities virtually changed overnight. Yuppies and Good Lifers from the cities were able to sell their homes for around half a million pounds and buy a cottage in rural Wales for around 10,000. The LSD conspirators were a part of that influx. Having said that, many of these semi-hippies who settled down were largely welcomed. Otherwise they would not have been able to hide their secrets so successfully and for so long.

AmeriCymru: Do you think there is any truth in the rumour that there are 'undiscovered stashes of LSD and hidden fortunes' concealed in the hills and fields around Llanddewi Brefi?

Lyn: I believe the stories of hidden fortunes have been concocted by mischievous locals, as well as by friends of Smiles who wish to perpetuate his legend.

Any final message for the members and readers of AmeriCymru?

Lyn: Be careful what you believe. Fact and fiction have been so confused that it is almost impossible to separate the one from the other. Still, be they fact or fiction or a little of both they still make a great story!

"Llanddewi Brefi is renowned for the miracles of St David and has been portrayed infamously on the Little Britain television series. But it also has another claim to fame. Rather surprisingly, this small village in west Wales was the centre of the world LSD drug trade in the 1970s. In a new book by Lyn Ebenezer, he discloses who was making and taking the drug in the area and how the polices so-called Operation Julie managed to bust the largest drug ring in the world in 1977.

The author, who was a journalist on the Welsh newspaper Y Cymro at the time, tells how Llanddewi Brefi became a desired destination for pop-stars such as the Rolling Stones, Jimmy Hendrix and Eric Clapton. Theyd been invited to the village by local resident David Litvinoff in the 1960s. The author recalls, It is pretty certain that Bob Dylan stayed at Litvinoffs house for six weeks during the summer of 1969, just after hed been at the Isle of Wight pop festival. Keith Richards from the Rolling Stones admitted that hed been to Llanddewi Brefi too and that whilst staying there hed used every illegal drug in existence and some which werent in existence!

However, the Operation Julie book deals mainly with the famous police raid which brought to a juddering halt the enormous drug network, which had produced pure LSD worth millions of pounds in rural Wales. In March 1977, the police arrested dozens of people and found six million tabs of LSD the largest stash of illegal drugs ever found. More than 800 police officers took part in the operation and 120 people were arrested in total. LSD tabs with a street-value of 100 million were discovered. This was the largest police case of its kind and brought Llanddewi Brefi, Tregaron and Carno to world attention overnight.

Operation Julie includes a great deal of new information never published before and records recent interviews conducted with some of those who were involved. And as a local journalist in situ at the time, Lyn Ebenezer gives his own first-hand account and his insight into the affair. In his introduction to the book, he recollects:

Those arrested were said to have been responsible for 90 per cent of the LSD produced in Britain and 60 per cent worldwide. That is the official line. It will become evident, however, that truth and fiction are still inextricably mixed over 30 years later. But the facts, incredible as they are, seem to outweigh the fiction. Here I include both The story of Operation Julie is, if you believe the official spin, the story of an ideal that went wrong, greed and audacious enterprise on one side and of diligent, selfless and determined police work on the other. But it is also a story of political infighting and lasting bitterness. Stories abound of undiscovered stashes of LSD and hidden fortunes. There are tales of tip-offs by disgruntled police officers and even a royal connection

There remain many unanswered questions. There are, for instance, accusations that statistics were deliberately massaged in order to strengthen the case for a national drugs squad. And if chemist Richard Kemp had produced LSD worth 2.5 million during his seven years of production, as was alleged, why was it that only 11,000 of his money was ever discovered?

Were the dangers of LSD exaggerated? Much was made of Kemps ability to produce the purest LSD in history. Surely, if it was the purest, was it not also the safest? After all, the dangers of LSD lie in its impurities. In fact, despite lurid newspaper accounts of the dangers of acid, no evidence whatever was produced to prove that Kemps LSD caused any deaths.

There are accusations that some officers, the operations commander Dick Lee in particular, leaked doctored information to the press, especially to the red tops, as a means of strengthening the case for the formation of a national drugs squad. Papers like the Daily Mirror and the Daily Express in particular, following the sentencing, were laughably sensational. It is no coincidence that the only two books immediately published on Operation Julie appeared with the cooperation of those very newspapers. Dick Lees book Operation Julie (W H Allen, 1978) was co-written by Colin Pratt of the Express while Busted by Martyn Pritchard and Ed Laxton (1978), riddled with police and underworld parlance, was published by Mirror Books. Was it a coincidence that the journalist who first alerted me to the swoop was a Daily Express reporter?

I have included a chapter on a fascinating character who appeared in Llanddewi Brefi seemingly out of nowhere at the end of the sixties. David Litvinoff was not directly involved with the Julie story, but was very much a part of the drugs scene. He attracted many pop stars including the Stones, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix and possibly Bob Dylan to his house. Albeit unaware of the fact, he was the harbinger of the influx of free spirits to the area

My motive in writing this book is not to be judgemental. Largely it is, rather, a story of how a quiet area of mid Wales was changed completely by incomers that embraced a different culture and way of life. Yet many of those involved in the LSD conspiracy were accepted by the local community. Had they not been embraced or at least tolerated their illegal venture would never have lasted so long. It is still difficult to find anyone in the Tregaron and Llanddewi Brefi area that will condemn them. In fact, they are regarded as likeable rouges, much like the areas own Robin Hood, the sixteenth-century robber and folk-hero Twm Shn Cati.

So, even though this book follows the main events of Operation Julie, it is a revised overview. It is also the story of rural communities that were changed completely, and remain completely changed. LSD may not have changed the world, as its proponents had hoped it would, but it did, albeit inadvertently, change forever a rural way of life.


The book is published by Y Lolfa on 26 August 2010 and is available on their website www.ylolfa.com at 9.95.


Operation Julie photos by Raymond Daniel attached here ( PDF ) Operation Julie - Adran Lluniau indd.pdf