White had set up a CIA safe house at 81 Bedford Street, in Greenwich Village, comprised of two apartments conjoined with a hidden two-way mirror and doorway. Posing as a seaman or artist, he would regularly recruit strangers for social gatherings there, where they would be plied with psychedelic drugs, often without their knowledge. The aim was to see if White could successfully extract information from them and to assess those results, according to one CIA document.

In between home experimenting, White was well known as a carouser. The safe house was down the block from Chumley’s, a former speakeasy and now defunct bar, where White once took James Jesus Angleton, the former CIA head.

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In 1997, New York magazine published a 9-page cover story entitled The Wild West, which asked the question, “Can lawyers and club kids and drag queens and butchers find happiness together in Manhattan’s meatpacking district?” (Note the lowercase M and D.)

Thirteen years later, we know the answer: No.

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