6.Mark Vicente — Direct (Part 1)

MARK VICENTE: I do.

MARK VICENTE: Mark Anthony Vicente.

MARK VICENTE: V-I-C-E-N-T-E.

MARK VICENTE: Good afternoon.

MARK VICENTE: Mark Vicente.

MARK VICENTE: Yes.

MARK VICENTE: Fifty-three years old.

MARK VICENTE: Johannesburg, South Africa.

MARK VICENTE: I was born in 1965. I spent my early schooling years there. I traveled a great deal, Canada, Brazil, Portugal. I ended up going to university in Johannesburg, I went to a film and drama school. This was during apartheid era, so I became pretty active in politics, you know, making films about what was going on at the time and then worked way up the film industry for a number of years, then finally in the early '90s moved to the U.S.

MARK VICENTE: I am a citizen of the U.S. and of Portugal.

MARK VICENTE: Film maker.

MARK VICENTE: I saw a number of things in my country when I was young that disturbed me greatly. It was a very difficult time, apartheid era. I felt as a young child that something needed to happen, I had no idea what I would do. And then when I was pretty young I saw a film that moved me very deeply. Funny enough, Star Wars and I decided that this was the method I would try and use to express what I wanted to express, which is basically I didn't think it was necessary for people to be killing each other. I grew up in a family that was very much on the side of very oppressive government at the time, and I decided that I would make films to somehow get my ideas out, which were basically at that time anti-apartheid humanitarian ideas.

MARK VICENTE: Since 1986.

MARK VICENTE: So my early career was -- when I first began was feature films, then music videos, some documentaries and for many years I was a cinematographer shooting, you know, feature films, then when I came to the U.S. I continued that. It's been a mixture of commercials, feature films, then more recently documentaries.

MARK VICENTE: Yes. In 2004, myself and my producers released a film called, What the Bleep Do We Know.

MARK VICENTE: What the Bleep Do We Know.

MARK VICENTE: Bleep as opposed to the --

MARK VICENTE: It was about pseudo-quantum mechanics, neurobiology, the biology of emotions. It had to do with a certain amount of science and also we did a lot of cartoon animation about what happens in the brain and body. And there was a narrative portion as well. Marlee Maitlan played the main role. And there was a what narrative role to explain the journey of the character to some kind of awareness.

MARK VICENTE: Los Angeles, California.

MARK VICENTE: I am.

MARK VICENTE: Bonnie Piesse.

MARK VICENTE: We got married, I believe it was June 2011.

MARK VICENTE: In Half Moon, New York.

MARK VICENTE: I met Bonnie via a mutual friend, her name was Nicky. She introduced us a few years before and we kept in touch and then finally we were in touch a lot more, then we finally got married -- we actually -- she actually joined the organization that we're going to talk about.

MARK VICENTE: Nxivm or Executive Success Programs.

MARK VICENTE: I did actually for a number of years.

MARK VICENTE: My wife is a singer and an actress.

MARK VICENTE: N-X-I-V-M.

MARK VICENTE: There is a drug. I think it's N-E-X-I-U-M, I think.

MARK VICENTE: I don't believe so.

MARK VICENTE: I received a letter -- once the film What the Bleep came out, you know, I was receiving a lot of letters and invitations to all kinds of things and I think it was towards the end of 2004, perhaps 2005, I received a letter from Nancy Salzman and Barbara Bouchey inviting myself and the other producers to some kind of a symposium with a number of scientists who I admired greatly, so I decided to respond. And I called and I think I spoke to Barbara Bouchey and we had a chat and they both wanted to meet me. And so they were -- I think they were flying to LA, I met them in Los Angeles and we began our conversations about the organization.

MARK VICENTE: I met Nancy Salzman and Barbara Bouchey.

MARK VICENTE: It was a Beverly Hills hotel and I can't remember the exact hotel right now.

MARK VICENTE: That's Barbara Bouchey.

MARK VICENTE: That is Barbara Bouchey, yes.

MARK VICENTE: That is, yes.

MARK VICENTE: That is Nancy Salzman.

MARK VICENTE: They wanted to talk to me about my film and they said basically we love your film, we think that many of the things you hypothesize in your film we actually know how to do. We know how to sort of hack the human behavior equation, we have this incredible mentor that you should definitely meet, he's a scientist, mathematician, an incredible human being and, you know, we'd love you to come at some point, maybe as soon as tomorrow kind of thing, and I said, well, I'm a little busy right now, but let's definitely keep the doors open and keep talking. But the idea was to try to get me to come to Albany so I could see what their methodology was.

MARK VICENTE: To some degree they did. I don't think I understood at that point. They described to me that they had this unique patented method of getting into the -- I'm not sure how to describe it. My recollection is getting into your subconscious and being able to help people make the changes they ordinarily were not able to make usually in a very quick amount of time and it was a completely scientific method as well, completely measurable.

MARK VICENTE: I met Nancy Salzman and -- a few weeks later. I didn't meet Barbara Bouchey until much later. I met Nancy Salzman and Sara Bronfman a few weeks later after that first meeting.

MARK VICENTE: In the airport in Medford, Oregon.

MARK VICENTE: Medford, Oregon.

MARK VICENTE: I was just living there. It was a community of, I thought, like-minded people. I was spending time there.

MARK VICENTE: That's funny, I actually went to the normal terminal and thinking that that's where we were going to go and they said, no, no, we have a private jet so you'll be going, you know, to where the private jets land. So the jet landed, and it was Sara Bronfman and Nancy Salzman that met me there. And shortly after that we took off and I believe we went to University of Oregon first, I think.

MARK VICENTE: My understanding is the jet belonged to Clare and Sara Bronfman, I think they co-owned the jet. It was one of those -- I mean it was a Lear -- you know, I think it had 12 seats, twin engine type Learjet.

MARK VICENTE: I think it was around 2005.

MARK VICENTE: That is Clare Bronfman.

MARK VICENTE: I did, I don't remember the number of days but we flew to a number of different places to meet a whole host of the scientists that were in my film.

MARK VICENTE: It was a series of flights to multiple destinations.

MARK VICENTE: I did a number of other times over the years, I believe they eventually sold the jet sometime between -- before 2010 but I did take a number of flights I believe to Seattle, to Mexico, to Los Angeles a few times.

MARK VICENTE: Yes, they talked about the term and I wasn't quite clear exactly what it was yet but they did discuss it a number of times and Nancy Salzman was demonstrating it with me. You know, she at one point, for instance, she decided -- we were having lunch somewhere and my girlfriend at the time had some kind of a dairy allergy and Nancy Salzman said, oh, I can fix that very easily. She began having a conversation with my girlfriend at the time and I had no idea what was going on but the conversation became very deep, my girlfriend became very tearful and Nancy said, well, I think you're done now, I think it's going to be fine, don't drink any dairy or don't eat any dairy for like a day but I think it's gone. And I was pretty impressed with that because, you know, a day later my girlfriend did actually try some cheese and she didn't have the reaction she had always had. I was like, okay, they're definitely on to something.

MARK VICENTE: Yes, it was.

MARK VICENTE: Both Nancy Salzman and Sara Bronfman used that term.

MARK VICENTE: That was sort of the company they kept on talking about, I don't recall if they used the word NXIVM so much but they did talk about executive success programs and I remember because they said ESP, I said ESP like ESP, extra sensory perception, and I thought that was just a funny joke. They said, no, no, executive success programs.

MARK VICENTE: They did, they did, they used his name and also they talked about him as their mentor.

MARK VICENTE: They described him as, you know, a unique individual. You know, they said to me that he was one of the top three problem solvers in the world, he had one of the highest IQs ever scored in history, concert level pianist, judo champion, incredible human being, he sort of unlocked the keys to the human condition. They spoke about him quite a lot.

MARK VICENTE: They did. In fact, I think they said that he had majors in mathematics, physics -- mathematics and physics and there were minors in, I think they said psychology, biology. I think there was also majors in computer science I believe.

MARK VICENTE: At that point I think they just described him as the founder and as, you know, the philosopher behind the entire company.

MARK VICENTE: I did.

MARK VICENTE: Over there (indicating.)

MARK VICENTE: He's wearing a white shirt, blue sweater and glasses.

MARK VICENTE: Yes, that is Keith Raniere.

MARK VICENTE: I do.

MARK VICENTE: That's a photograph of Nancy Salzman that was taken by a photographer I believe named Kathy Pinsky and it was hanging in the headquarters at 455 New Karner Road.

MARK VICENTE: The headquarters of NXIVM ESP.

MARK VICENTE: That is in -- I think it's in Latham.

MARK VICENTE: Latham, New York, correct.

MARK VICENTE: Her -- she was considered the CEO of the company, she had a title, her name was Prefect, that was the title she was given. She was at that point when I came, you know, seen as the head of education. She would take all of Keith Raniere's philosophical ideas and working with him she would create an educational model out of it with him that she would then teach.

MARK VICENTE: That is a photograph of Keith Raniere taken by the same photographer and that used to hang next to the picture of Nancy Salzman at 455 New Karner.

MARK VICENTE: Correct.

MARK VICENTE: My understanding at the beginning and, you know, the entire time I was there was NXIVM was the sort of umbrella organization that all the other companies fell under. ESP was one of the many companies that were under the umbrella of NXIVM.

MARK VICENTE: Sure.

MARK VICENTE: Yes, there was.

MARK VICENTE: Jness was supposedly a women's movement. It was created by Keith Raniere, he was the philosophical founder of the women's movement. The idea, to the best of my understanding, is for women to get a sense of their own -- their own essence and who they were separate from men. So, everything they did, towards the beginning anyway, was completely separate from all men other than Keith Raniere, the founder, and they met typically, my understanding is, once a week to go over curriculum. They had little groups that they did, they had a whole bunch of activities but most of the activities were invisible to the rest of us, we had no idea what they were doing because it was a women's only movement.

MARK VICENTE: Yes.

MARK VICENTE: There was. Ethicist -- my first exposure to Ethicist I think was around 2006. My understanding of Ethicist was it was sort of this newly hypothesized job that people could learn and eventually take out into the world and it was to help people in essence figure out how to become ethical, moral, how to be the most ethical person they could and then go into corporations and, you know, organizations and a bunch of different things and basically give people tools for conflict resolution, for figuring out what is the right thing to do in a situation, what's the most ethical thing to do in a situation. A lot of the training was basically first trying to figure out what were your ethics and how to improve them.

MARK VICENTE: There was. Reverence was termed the emotional gym. It was suggested that it would give you emotional flexibility, it would teach you how to feel certain emotions, how to move towards the emotions that you were afraid of, become more rounded emotionally and, again, understand there are two versions of my answer, the one version is what it was reported to do and then there's my understanding of what they actually did so I'm not certain which one we want to delve into.

MARK VICENTE: Understood.

MARK VICENTE: Understood.

MARK VICENTE: Yes, my understanding of XOSO was it began as a physical program much like yoga, for instance, and there were different levels. I'm not sure if I understood all the levels. In fact, Reverence was one of the XOSO levels, I'm not sure which level it was. XOSO was a physical program to develop strength and flexibility and basically use your physical body as a tool.

MARK VICENTE: Yes. Now, Ultima -- actually the same way that NXIVM is the umbrella company for ESP and others, Ultima was the umbrella company for Reverence, for XOSO, for The Source. What Ultima did, it did have a beginning where it talked a number of basics about emotional flexibility and that kind of thing and then you ended up specializing in one of the areas, for instance, like XOSO or Reverence or The Source.

MARK VICENTE: Yes. Ethos was part of what I'll call the Level 1 curriculum of ESP. My understanding is that when ESP began, and this was before my time, classes were taught in this format and what it was was like basically a gym membership is what I was told, you would go to class, you know, maybe six times a week, it would be two-hour classes, there would be certain topics that you would deal with in each two-hour session, you had a coach; for the tuition you paid you would have a coach and you would go, you would attend classes, and then Ethos eventually turned into another program as well but it was how I believe, to my understanding, how ESP started.

MARK VICENTE: My understanding, because I wasn't there when it happened, was that people felt that it was -- Ethos was wonderful if you lived in an area that was close to a center that taught this but some people didn't and so the idea was brought forward about what if we ran like an intensive. Basically the idea was to take the Ethos curriculum along with another curriculum called Origins and turn it into a longer intensive and I believe, I'm told, Laura says that it began as a 20-day intensive or something like that and eventually ended up being a 16-day intensive.

MARK VICENTE: Yes, there was a company called First Principles. My understanding of First Principles is somewhat limited, is that First Principles was the company that owned what was called The Tech, all of the -- the whole educational model was known as The Technology and the short term was The Tech. So, I think it was any, you know, written or video material that was made of the actual education I believe was owned by First Principles.

MARK VICENTE: Correct, the curriculum, yes, but also the curriculum you would learn in class but also the methodologies that coaches would use in coaching, you know, their coachees, so a whole range of things.

MARK VICENTE: There was a company named Delegates. Delegates was something akin to TaskRabbit where you could hire assistants to do certain tasks for you anywhere from picking up your groceries to driving you somewhere, driving somebody else somewhere and that program was run by one individual I believe.

MARK VICENTE: Generally the people that worked at Delegates were some of the younger members of the community that were living in Albany, they all did tasks for Delegates. So, if somebody called the head of Delegates, you know, to say I need such and such, you know, they would get a call back saying, well, so and so is going to, you know, pick up your mail or, you know, drive you somewhere or pick up your groceries.

MARK VICENTE: Yes, there was -- it was a philosophical concept like anybody who had taken the education, who had committed to the education and also obviously spending time there, that was a philosophical community. Then the community itself were the people actually living there, some that were, you know, born there, many people had moved there, that was termed the community and that word was used very, very often.

MARK VICENTE: Another term was Espians, you know, people that had taken ESP, Espians. There was a big focus on community, on Espians, you know, anybody who arrived back in Albany, you know, they'd say things like welcome home, don't leave home, that kind of thing.

MARK VICENTE: Yes. Rainbow Cultural Garden was something developed, as far as I remember, pre-2012. It was run by Loreta Garza. It was an idea once again that Mr. Raniere developed, the idea being creating children that are citizens of the world. He would talk about that in a child's natural development there are windows of opportunity they have when they're little to learn certain things and that once those windows close, they can't learn as much anymore and his proposition was, you know, we can teach them in such a manner that those windows stay open much longer, in essence creating smarter, more brilliant children. And then also the idea of creating citizens of the world which is teaching children multiple languages, so children were learning anywhere from three to up to seven to nine different languages at a pretty young age.

MARK VICENTE: My understanding is they did, they paid it to the company and then for that I believe they got to put their children, you know, in these different centers if they had them and they also got in essence nannies to take care of their children.

MARK VICENTE: My understanding was thousands of dollars. I don't have the exact number but it was a significant number. I remember because people said to me this is as expensive if not more expensive than private school. It was many thousands.

MARK VICENTE: As far as I remember, all the programs that I mentioned thus far involved tuition, involved fees, yes.

MARK VICENTE: If you look at, for instance, Ethos, depending on where you took Ethos, you know, it was anywhere from, you know, $2,000 for the year to, you know, 3,000 something; when you look at an intensive, an intensive could be -- I mean I'm talking full price $7,500 for 16 days. Ethicist I believe was $10,000 per intensive and I believe it was eight or ten days. Jness intensives were in the region of $6,000 per intensive. Significant amounts of money.

MARK VICENTE: There were. I recall the Ethical Humanitarian Foundation, I recall the Ethical Science Foundation. There may have been more, I don't recall right now.

MARK VICENTE: I don't entirely know, I just remember that there was an event that was created that the Dalai Lama was supposed to come to the first time that got cancelled. Then there was another event he did come to and I believe the -- I believe the Ethical Humanitarian Foundation put that on. I believe everything was run financially through that instrument, that's to the best of my recollection.

MARK VICENTE: My best understanding is that the Ethical Science Foundation was the foundation that was responsible for scientific research. Mr. Raniere wanted to do a lot of scientific research on all kinds of things. That was I believe supposed to fund his research and also there was a certain percentage that he received for his position that he said was for scientific research. I don't know if it went to that particular foundation or not but I think that was the theory.

MARK VICENTE: Yes, they did. It was all -- it was different but in many ways based on, you know, a single core idea or a number of single core ideas but there were differences.

MARK VICENTE: My understanding is Mr. Raniere developed all of it in essence, he worked with Nancy Salzman and in some of the other companies he worked with some of the people that developed those companies but my impression was that he was developing all of it.

MARK VICENTE: There were many similarities, yes. There were -- you know, I mean an example of a commonality is, you know, the philosophical idea of overcoming one's body, overcoming one's emotionality, you know, using one's logic, being less attached to other people or other things. Those kinds of things were commonalities pretty much throughout.

MARK VICENTE: So, my understanding of intensive -- well, I experienced it so it is more than my understanding; it was a 16-day training one could take, you know, at the first five days and then if you decided to continue, you could take the entire 16. So, some people committed to only five days, that was my case, some committed to the entire 16 days, and the training was -- it began -- would you like me to explain the entire?

MARK VICENTE: Okay. For instance, the training was typically held at a center, so in my case it was held at the headquarters, 455 New Karner Road. When you first came in, there was a registration process, you filled out a pretty in depth psychological survey and the theory was that that survey was sent to some independent group that was supposed to study the results. I don't know if that happened or not. I think the survey -- in the end I did some study -- turned out to be a narcissistic personality disorder survey. There was a pretty in depth confidentiality NDA agreement that we were to sign.

MARK VICENTE: They were taught in various modules and the first three days was full of this kind of redefining that occurred, that redefining new words. You know, there was talk about tribute.

MARK VICENTE: Pride was considered to be a bad thing, it was definitely something that would get in your way.

MARK VICENTE: They were like classes, the way they were structured was that an idea was introduced, you know, let's say Good and Bad, you know, what is good, you know, what is bad, you know, something like that and so you would break out into groups and let's say the intensive, let's say it was 30 people, you break out into groups of maybe six or seven with facilitators and you would discuss these questions and pretty soon you'd find out like you really didn't have a clear definition of a lot of these things and you'd end up pretty confused and then what would happen, a video would be played or in my case Nancy Salzman would come up and say, great, let's give you the answers. They weren't called the answers but in essence it was called a debrief and later the term would be disquisition.

MARK VICENTE: Yes.

MARK VICENTE: Correct.

MARK VICENTE: You'd hear this model's version of what the answers are.

MARK VICENTE: Later it was renamed to disquisition.

MARK VICENTE: I have no idea.

MARK VICENTE: D-I-S-Q-U-I-S-I-T-I-O-N. I hope that was right.

MARK VICENTE: Well, this is what was so interesting, so basically once you discussed a bunch of ideas, if you have six, seven, eight people in a group discussing what does something mean or what's the meaning of this thing or what's the definition, it's chaos. So, usually by the end of 15 minutes you have no idea what to think anymore, so then you're listening to this version, you know, for instance. So, you know, they would describe good as, you know, pro-survival and building of value; bad, you know, anti-survival and destruction of value, and you sort of say, well, that's a pretty good definition, I seem to like that. They would say these are our working definitions that we're going to use so we can keep on moving and things moved very, very quickly so, you know, if you raised an issue, you know, it was like, well, stick with us because it is leading somewhere.

MARK VICENTE: Then we'd go back into breakout groups again and the same process would occur and then it would be anywhere from three to maybe up to seven of these kinds of debriefs that would occur and then there would be the final debrief or the sort of punch line of the message that they wanted to get across.

MARK VICENTE: It may have and I can't remember if it did.

MARK VICENTE: In the case of the intensive, you would have a very short break and then you would go back into another two hours, there were typically five two-hour sessions every day, they tended to be longer because in reality things run longer but, you know, so you were basically in session for anywhere from ten to twelve hours, this is Level 1 I'm describing, what I call Level 1. Level 2 is a whole other thing.

MARK VICENTE: So, basically the first three days was pretty much like that, the end of the first day was quite unique because there was a particular module called The Fall and The Fall was Mr. Raniere's version of -- it was describing somebody's fall from conscience into no conscience. So, basically, you know, somebody has very low self-esteem, it gets lower and lower, they're miserable, depressed, a horrible human being, they get to like zero self-esteem and then what happens is they make a discovery and the discovery they make is that if they just abandon their conscience and abandon morality, life could be amazing, they could have anything they wanted and they start to have what's called a negative self-esteem which is they start to feel good having no conscience and they start to feel good hurting and torturing other people, it actually thrills them and this always produced in the class -- the class was terrified because everybody was like, oh my God, I hope this wasn't me; no, no, if you're asking the question, it's not you. And then on the fourth day they would introduce what's called an EM, which is an exploration of meaning, and then you would receive one of those pretty much every day until towards the end of the intensive and I can explain that more but at the end of intensive there was something called the magnificent series which is basically now you've figured out all these things about you and all these issues and all these problems, who is the real you, and that was discovering your essence at the very end and there was a lot of stuff in between.

MARK VICENTE: Thank you.