2.Mark Vicente — Direct/Voir Dire (Part 3)

MARK VICENTE: When I attended my second 16-day intensive in 2006, I was awarded the coach stash.

A year later I became a proctor, which is the orange sash. So that would have been 2007.

And then somewhere in around 2009, I was awarded the senior proctor sash, which was a green. And I had that sash until I left in the 2017.

MARK VICENTE: So I was a green, obviously, which meant I oversaw a lot of the proctors in general in the company. And I also oversaw the proctors in the centers I was involved in, which was Vancouver and Los Angeles.

I was the co-owner of the Los Angeles and Vancouver centers. I was field trainer as well. Executive board, as I mentioned before.

And also I oversaw -- there was a company called Moving Pixels which was, in essence, the video department. I oversaw that department as well. So I was training people in terms of shooting and editing, lighting, and sound and things like that.

And I was also a -- one of the founding members of the Society of Protectors as well as. And then I was working a number of film projects with Raniere. And also some of my own that I was trying to get to as much as I could.

MARK VICENTE: Generally speaking, people in the entertainment industry. I also went after people that were very influential.

One of the things that I did as much as I could was I tried to enroll, you know, people in power positions in the media as well.

I would try to get VIPs on board. At times we would run VIP intensives. Some of them I would run.

Just, you know, general every day people as well, but most of my network was, you know, the entertainment industry, so those were most of the people that I enrolled.

MARK VICENTE: As I recall, somewhere around 50 or more personally.

And then because of -- you know, because not every person, but generally people that enrolled would enroll other people. So my entire organization was in excess of 2,000 when I left. But I think personally I enrolled 50 plus.

MARK VICENTE: Many have left. I -- I think there might be some that still remained. I think many of them have left.

Many of the people that I -- that I enrolled in that organization of the 2,000 plus, many people just would come and take the training and then they would leave. And a small percentage would want to become coaches and join the stripe path, and get become more deeply involved.

No, I think there are a number of people that are still, I believe, enrolled.

MARK VICENTE: Well, it depended on the person.

You know, in the case of very, you know, very wealthy or very powerful people, it's not like they wanted to have, you know, oh, more success because they already had so much. So what I tended to do with them was talk about those areas of their life that they were struggling. You know, perhaps it was relationships, or perhaps it was addiction, or perhaps it was, you know, that they had everything and they were still completely miserable.

MARK VICENTE: And so I would always try to figure out what was the thing they were looking for, because I couldn't offer them the thing that they already had, but, in essence, what was the thing that was missing and try and find out what had they tried to do up to that point to have that thing.

And usually, you know, if I said: Well, how successful have you been? The answer was usually: Not very successful. And that was usually my in to try to explain what this particular methodology was and how it could perhaps help them with that particular thing that they struggled with.

MARK VICENTE: Oh.

Um, you know, in essence, if I was, you know, talking to somebody, I'd want to figure out what is the thing that the person wants.

And I think I mentioned before like, let's say the person wants love. And the thing they can't seem to get and figure out, what's the thing you keep doing that you lose love, or you run away from love.

And I try and establish, well, what's this true, wonderful, amazing love that you want to have. How do you get in your way. And then, you know, what's that like? What's it like for you not to have this dream that you ache for.

And usually what I was trying do is figure out what's the thing they really ache for. It could be love. It could be money. It could be more connection with this, that and the other. What's the thing they really ache for.

And then try to figure out, well, what's the cost in your life of not having that thing. You know, what's the cost in terms of hard ache and all the things you try to do to feel better instead. You know, all the vacations you take, and all the things you drink, and people you sleep with or whatever to try to feel better, what's the cost to your life in terms of pain. You know, it could be quantified, you know.

And it was playing with the idea of like what's this thing worth to you? What's this the eternal everlasting love worth? Like it is worth like ten bucks? Is it worth a thousand bucks? Like a million? Yeah. It is worth like 10 million? Oh, yes.

And then you kind of compare that, okay, this thing is worth $10 million to you so like, if you compare that to the, you know, $6,000 that you would spend taking the 16-day intensive, that really could help you overcome this block you have to having the thing you want, wouldn't that be worth it? And naturally they would say, "Yes".

Or if they were resistant, you know, you talk about the cost of, you know, this problem in your life. How much is it costing you?

And I would use an example, you know, like, for instance, I used to have a lot of anger, I used to blow meetings because I get upset with people and I told them once it cost my millions of dollars of lost deals because I get upset at somebody in the conference room. Do you have anything like that? People say: Yes, I have this and I've done that. We try to quantify what they've lost.

And I compare that very, very sizeable figure to this very small figure; you know, be it $6,000; be it $10,000, but that was much smaller and really cheaper than the thing that, you know -- the loss you've had.

MARK VICENTE: Not always. There was a certain percentage of success.

Personally I found when I was working with people one-on-one I was better at it than doing the introductory-type evenings with people.

But I mean it was successful enough that, you know, I was growing my organization and many people that were using it were growing it as well.

MARK VICENTE: There was a -- at some point it became more uniform.

When I first -- when I first came in, my field trainer, Barbara Bouchey, would teach me the pitch. That was the job of a field trainer.

And at a certain point, Raniere made the decision that he would try and formalize the pitch. And so what he did is he got a few field trainers together, and he did this training, which ended up being, you know, many, many weeks long where he explained the basic structure of, you know, what you were to do, and then explaining like different -- like he would do the different tricks to try to show the audience, you know, this is how you do it.

And he -- we'd talk about his sales experience, and we all felt he was clearly a pretty good salesperson, so we could learn from him and apply those things as well.

And the general thing was to try to figure out what's the thing the person wants and then try to really get down to like how are they not having it, or how they are sabotaging it, or what's the pain that they feel.

And then also showing them that because of the nature of the way that they're programmed, you know, we have these responses and reactions that we're not even aware of, that really you're never going to get it until we take care of that programming. So as much as you think about it or you want this thing, it's kind pointless. We're like these -- you know, we would talk about, you know, Pavlov's dogs and these response-type things and talk about how dogs are responding.

You know, there's an experiment that was done by Pavlov; you know, ring a bell, salivate; ring a bell, salivate. And we'd talk about, well, what's the difference between dogs and human beings? Well, it's the similarity.

Most people wouldn't know, and then we'd say: Well, the difference would be the human being and a dog is dog you have to repeat the thing again and again and again, if you train your dog. A human being is a one-time learner.

So very often, especially when they're young, the one time they experience something they learn, and that -- that gets trapped, in essence, in your body.

So as much as you want this perfect relationship, in essence, you keep on sabotaging yourself, you keep on screwing it up and like it's in your body in a fashion you can't get to. But our technology can get you there.

So it's sort of having them feel the pain of what they're losing, they thing they really want and how nothing else will work but this. That was the general -- the general pitch.

MARK VICENTE: Well, even before this formalized training, I would ask him questions. You know, one of the issues that I came up with at the very beginning is because of the bad press that already existed, people were afraid of the word "cult," and they were afraid of the allegations, you know, in the media.

And then he would teach me certain tricks. One of the early ones that I remember is he would say somebody approaches you and they're very afraid, you know, and they say there's been a lot of bad press. You could say to them: Well, that's good, a lot of bad press. Of course, the person would say: Why?

Well, because we want people that are critical thinkers. If somebody's going to get afraid because of some cult that they read in the newspaper, we probably don't want them because they can't think critically. We want people that can actually reason things through, not people that just reactive.

So in some ways that was the bind for the person, because given the setup you just gave them, they didn't way to say, oh, I'm a non-critical, fearful, hysterical person. No, no, of course, I'm a reasonable person. And so there were little tricks like that.

In terms of, you know, money objections. Similarly to what I said; you know, there's -- everything has a cost. There's a cost of buying the program, and there's a cost to not buying the program.

And generally speaking, the cost of not buying this program is so much greater to buying the program. And you've already told me -- I'm giving you the pitch again -- you already told me all these things you're struggling with and clearly that cost more than this. Life costs, depends on how successful you want to be.

And they were time objections. You know, I don't have time for this, I have to take care of my kids.

My response was saying, you know, what kind of parent do you want to be? Of course, the person says: I want to be an amazing parent. I want to be loving, there for them. And so, you know, you're not really there for them? Not in the way I want to be. I'm not as loving as I want to be.

Well, doesn't it make sense then for five, maybe even 16 days, to become that kind of parent so that when you go back to your children, you will be a better parent. You will give them more of what they want. Isn't it worth it to the make this small investment for a lifelong of joy. A life -- lifetime of joy, I should say.

So there were all these kinds of different sales tricks that we were taught to, in essence, almost bend the person towards why this would be better than all the other things that they were worried about. Like this will relieve all those things. Just give us 16 days of your life and, you know, $6,000, which is meaningless in the face of, you know, all these things you told me already that are so hard in your life. It's meaningless.

MARK VICENTE: I was. The fear thing I talked about is one.

He would -- in practice, he would practice examples with us to help teach us; you know, he would say things like, you know, if somebody came to you that was afraid of what they were reading, he'd say something like, you know, look, these things you're reading, do you know that they are actually coming from like really two sources in the world? You know, you may be reading 20, 30 articles, are you aware that there's two sources?

Are you aware that these journalists that write these things have been paid to do this? And don't you find it strange that you would, in essence, believe the word of somebody you've never met over me who you know.

Do I look like the kind of person that would get involved in something dangerous? In something nefarious? Doesn't it seem strange that you would believe a journalist you've never met who never even took the program. You have to understand, these people that are saying these things, they've never taken the program.

So those are the kinds of pitches that he would teach us to use.

MARK VICENTE: Well, some of it was actually built into the intensive. And, again, some of the ways -- the things I just discussed is the things that were talked about, if -- but on day five, and I believe it was called the mission module, the world cult was brought up.

And basically the mission module talked about how what we're trying to do is build a more ethical and noble civilization; you know, lots of beautiful quotes by beautiful people and then talking about how people that are going against this use the word cult to inspire fear. There's no clear definition to this word, they would say, and it's people being suppressive.

So there were things already baked into the intensive, but we would sometimes make light of it or, you know, not make a big deal of it. But if somebody in the intensive, again getting very, very upset, again using the cult word a lot, we might invite them to leave.

MARK VICENTE: I would say there was at least one intensive -- one person every intensive that there was some kind of issue with.

It may have been cult thing, it may have been a press thing. It may have been something else, but in Los Angeles, I found it was usually one person per intensive that we would agree that they should maybe leave.

MARK VICENTE: Period of time, yes.

And I lived there, and also the basement of that house was basically our postproduction facilities for Moving Pixels.

MARK VICENTE: There were numerous. I mean basically I was, you know, determining -- like the executive producer, I would oversee everything.

I have the technical knowledge of, you know, what we needed to do. I would choose the team members to figure out, you know, who is going to be shooting, who is going to be editing. I would liaise with different people in the community that were requesting video materials to be shot. I was training, overseeing. I would be involved in budgeting things. And then I also be involved in directing or shooting things as well.

MARK VICENTE: A great deal. There was a lot of things we were capturing. We, as much as possible, would capture Raniere doing all the things he did.

V week, we would shoot pretty much everything. All the forums were shot.

And then intensives were generally always shot -- there was always a camera at the back of an intensive. There was always shooting what was going on. A lot was shot and lot of what recorded as well.

MARK VICENTE: Forums were an opportunity where the community and students got to come and listen to Raniere's speak.

And he would speak, you know, usually in some form of either Vanguard, or if we might appear at different intensives and speak.

I mean it was basically as many people as could come would, you know, be in the audience, and then he would come in, people, of course, very excited, and then once they sat down, he would open up with some kind of topic or philosophical ideas that he would talk about that were on his mind.

And then he would open the floor to questions. And those questions -- you know, it was said, you know, you can ask whatever questions you want. But they were carefully tailored. They would run them through some of the other ranks to make sure this was an appropriate question.

And these could go on for, you know, anywhere from an hour to five, five hours sometimes. And then we recorded this with multiple cameras.

MARK VICENTE: So obviously video. There may have been audio. There was also a -- it was called a forum review team.

And this was a group of people that made very, very careful notes, and they were looking for -- to categorize everything he said; you know, quotes he said or, you know, things about certain topics.

There was a whole system of categorization being used. As I recall, they would have these fairly complex Excel documents, and they would sit there and make notes about every single thing he said.

And then when it was over, they would sit and meet and go through every single point of the things he said. It was a method of memorializing, you know, his -- his philosophical ideas.

MARK VICENTE: It was a forum, I think it was around 2014. It was a forum at Apropos, the building. And there were two to three cameras rolling, as there generally were, and I wanted to come in to shoot some material. In film terms we call it the "B-roll". It's sort of the little snippets of things.

You know, there's the main thing going on and little snippets of things you're catching. That's B-roll.

And so I was going in to shot on a higher-end camera some of those things, and I shot for maybe an hour. And then I decided to pull back and sat in the back for a while and then I moved to the next room.

And I got a call from him later that night asking me, you know, why I stopped shooting? And I said: Well, I got what I needed for this piece that I was making about you. So there was no need to keep shooting. He was very concerned that I stopped. And I said I'm not clear, I don't understand there were two to three other cameras that were rolling the entire time that captured everything that you said.

And he said something to the effect, I'm just very concerned you would do that because it sends a message. And I said: What kind of message? He said: The message what I'm saying is unimportant. And I said: Well, clearly it was important because the other cameras were rolling.

And he couldn't let it go. I apologized and I said: I'm sorry, but what would you prefer I do? He said: I would prefer if you're not going to shoot, just pretend you're shooting, just lock shoot, which I thought was silly.

But I -- you know, him being, in essence, my boss, I said: Okay, I'm sorry, I apologize. It won't happen again.

MARK VICENTE: Coffee talk was, to some degree, similar. The difference was that Nancy Salzman, when she spoke to groups, that was termed a "coffee talk" to make a distinction between the forum and her speaking.

Coffee talks were generally similar. What she would generally do is in a coffee talk she would talk about who she was, her background. You know, how she wasn't getting anywhere with her particular methodology. How she finally got to meet Keith Raniere. And how, you know, if you're going to work with me, it's a lifelong commitment. And she made a joke about it.

She talked about how they began the company together, and what an incredible human being he was. And once she went through that whole story, it was pretty much the same every time.

She would open the floor to questions as well. And it was similar in some ways, except not as big a deal as a forum. Forums were very, very dig deals.

MARK VICENTE: So it was a period of time to celebrate Raniere's birthday, which I believe was August -- is August 26th.

And my understanding is before my time it was like a day-long event, and then three days. By the time I arrived, it was seven days. And by the time I left, it was 11 days.

It was basically -- what would happen -- it was like a corporate retreat. Everybody would go up to the Silver Bay YMCA on Lake George in the Adirondacks, north of Albany, pretty much take over the whole YMCA and --

MARK VICENTE: And during this, you know, eventually 10, 11 days, there were all these activities that would happen. You know there was volleyball. There was -- you know, different companies would present what they were doing. There was things called objectives, you know, which was basically areas of interests.

There were like singing objectives, and dancing objectives, drumming objectives. And so you could basically -- sort of like summer camp for adults, where you could go and you had all these things you could choose from that you wanted to do. Drumming, dancing, singing. There was poetry. It was a great number of things.

And there were also performances that were being rehearsed throughout the week. And at the very end, these performances were put on. Sometimes it was a play. There was informal evenings, you know, formal evenings. There was a triathlon; in essence, summer camp.

And then the entire thing was in celebration of him and this civilization that he had built.

And he also would do forums. Anywhere from two to maybe five forums during that time. It was a large auditorium, and he would stand on the stage or sit on the stage and, you know, it was fairly packed. And similarly he would do a forum there.

MARK VICENTE: Everywhere. I mean anywhere that there were people that had taken the education that felt close to the community that wanted to support the community. Or, you know, were higher ranking.

It was frowned upon if you were a member of a rank, a coach or above, not to go.

MARK VICENTE: Yes.

And also, you know, if you were a high rank also to help run certain things. You know, the high ranks were seen as the people that are hosting this event.

So people from all over the world. I mean a lot of people would come from Mexico from Canada; of course, from the U.S., from Europe.

MARK VICENTE: Coach summit began I think around 2009.

In the executive board, we had a discussion that the coaches were not getting some of the skills that they needed to get. So we thought we should maybe hold some kind of a gathering for coaches, because they're coming into town, maybe for something else, so maybe we can create a three-day weekend that coincides with that.

And it was to help build their skills and help build the community. And that eventually turned into -- we did four of them per year. And the executive board would generally host these. And we would meet with the executive board. And sometimes the greens would meet with Raniere before everybody came into town to talk about the health of the company, what we would need and he would give us suggestions. Sometimes he might give us curriculum. And basically things to help the coaches, you know, understand their role and, of course, there was a huge focus on enrollment constantly.

It was team building, in essence, team building for the higher ranks.

MARK VICENTE: Yeah. Yes.

There was one particular coach summit, I don't remember the year, when we were advised it might be a good idea to really have those people that didn't attend understand what it meant that they didn't attend.

So there was a letter writing campaign that was begun where people would craft these letters and send it to people that were not there, in essence, talking about, you know, how much they were missed. You know, what a huge hole it was that they weren't there. How much they cared about them.

And it -- it -- I think it backfired pretty badly. But it was a lot of pressure on the people that were not there.

MARK VICENTE: They would run a lot of the objectives, the different objectives that I mentioned; you know, singing, dancing, that kind of thing.

They were also there to -- they -- we were told. You're also responsible for these people, so, you know, people having issues or having concerns or troubles, you know, it would be good if you could be there as elders, so to speak, to help people.

We were -- the idea was that we would run different things at V week.

MARK VICENTE: Yes, generally speaking, unless they were -- they were doing some activity for which they had arranged an exchange.

In other words, so, you know, like if the cost was, let's say, $2,000, they would work all of V week to, in essence, offset that.

MARK VICENTE: So just in context of this film, when I was looking for heroic stories in Mexico, people that stood up against violence, and I learned about this community called LeBaron.

LeBaron's the name of a very, very large family there. It's a Mormon community. So there's many, many, many LeBarons, and there's also a place called LeBaron.

And I learnt that back in at least 2009, the -- there were kidnappers, I think as part of the cartel living in the mountains, had kidnapped this young boy. He was 16 years old. His name was Eric LeBaron.

And the spiritual leader of the community, his name was Benjamin LeBaron decided -- they all got together and they talked about, you know, we're -- they were farmers, we're going to raise money, we're going to find a million dollars to get Eric back.

And then he thought at a certain point, you know, the problem is if we give these kidnappers a million dollars, we just financed a bunch more kidnappings.

So what if we just, in essence, say screw you, you know. So the kidnappers called at the appointed time and they said: No deal, we're not paying. They said: We're going to kill him. And they said: Okay, go for it.

And what they did instead, they didn't just wait, they went to the Chihuahua city, to the government building and began protesting around the building.

And I think it was around about the eighth day of protesting, their theory was that the government -- that particular government and the kidnappers were the same people. They were all working together.

So they protested outside the building, and miraculously around day eight, somewhere in the mountains, Eric was released by the kidnappers.

And this is the story that I read. And I was very, very moved, so we sent a camera crew down there to interview Benjamin, interview Eric, and all these people in the community.

And, you know, I told Raniere about this thing that we were going to follow --

MARK VICENTE: Yes.

My understanding is that there was a girls program, and many of the young women from that community were in the program. I don't know the exact nature of the program. It was some kind of educational something.

I know that it was run by -- I'm sorry, checking -- by Rosa Laura Junco, in her house, as far as I recall.

MARK VICENTE: I don't recall.

I just -- it was the term, I think the girls program or something like that.

MARK VICENTE: Yes.

I think a number of them -- not I think, I mean, a number of them were also what are termed "MDSs". MDS is a fancy word for nanny. The idea -- I think they were called multi-disciplinary specialists. I think that's what MDS stands for.

The idea was -- that program was to have people of multiple nationalities that speak multiple languages spend time with the kids. So some of these were also associated with Rainbow Cultural Gardens as well.

MARK VICENTE: The way -- the way it began is we would start discussing a concept of some kind. He would share a lot of information about the concept to try to make sure that I understood the philosophical points, and then we might start discussing a way to actually bring it to life.

You know, the very first thing I began working with him on was a project we -- which the name was "Finding the Carbon Crimes". It was a -- he felt very strongly that global warming was a complete myth and that, you know, Al Gore was not being honest. So he took me through the whole science of debunking global warming; how it was not true, it was a huge strategy just to make a lot of money.

And we discussed that for a long time, and then he began suggesting, you know, maybe there are certain characters that could be treated. So a lot of it was him talking. I may ask questions if I wasn't clear on something. I would record everything. I would then transcribe everything. I would then study the transcription, and I would then usually go back and have another meeting.

Most of our meetings were walking meetings. Where if I didn't understand or I wasn't clear, or if I had an idea of ways to expand it, I would talk about it and we would do that process again and again.

MARK VICENTE: Exactly.

And then in that case, in the case of "Carbon Crimes", I began to turn it into a narrative story; you know were I presented treatments and then eventually write a script.

MARK VICENTE: Some were in the press, some were just stories of enemies that had said certain things.

And the idea was to, in essence, debunk all these enemies and explain how what they were saying was not true, it was a lie.

So he would give me information about, you know, what was actually going on. You know, there was the recorded story, and then he would say, but this is what's actually going on.

And the idea was to then figure out how to dramatize it so in the end he could be revealed to be not the criminal that they were suggesting he was, but in actuality a very good man that's just misunderstood by society.

MARK VICENTE: Let me think for a second.

I think Nancy Salzman initiated that. She would say to me -- she once said -- a few times she said, you know, I really would love it if Keith Raniere does not die a criminal in the eyes of the world. I think she was the first person, and then from there I spoke to him about these ideas and a number of others people.

MARK VICENTE: The idea was basically to tell the story of what happened to her that -- the -- his version of what actually happened.

This was somebody who took an intensive in Alaska, who was very upset, who was a survival -- a survivalist kind of person you know, very fit, took a canoe out into the bay and, you know, disappeared, supposedly drowned, and left a suicide note in her car. And there was a police report, et cetera, et cetera, about all this.

MARK VICENTE: And then he said to me: Look, there's a couple of things that are wrong about the story. One is, this woman is a survival expert, and like she takes out -- she takes a canoe that's actually a planter box out there, doesn't that same strange to you? That seems strange.

Then he said: And also, the note that was left in the car that said NXIVM something, something, something. NXIVM didn't exist back then. Wow. Wow. That's amazing. That's clearly debunks that.

And then he said: And also, we've had private investigators try to find her, and we found her in a hotel with her lover. She's alive and well, and really the whole -- she made this whole thing up to try to get away from some kind drug thing that she was involved in.

And, you know, at that point I -- I really saw him as the source of everything coming out of his mouth was the truth. That's an amazing story, let's start writing this story to debunk what they are saying that Raniere is somehow responsible for this. There's so many holes in the story, let's rip it apart.

MARK VICENTE: Yes. There were a number of ideas that were floated over the years. One of the ideas -- we had discussions about, you know, cult busting, trying to bust that concept of cult.

And at one point he said to me: What would be very interesting is, you know, what if we found a family and we paid them a million dollars and basically we then figured out how to creatively, using the media, turn them into a cult, convince everybody that they were some kind of dangerous cult. That would be a very interesting fila. And at the very end, we would show the world that we've been shooting the making of this thing and that we fooled you all. That it wasn't a cult. That's how easy it is to fool people.

And I remember saying that that's interesting, but like that's really dangerous, because what if somebody kills someone or what if somebody hurts them? No, no, it's just an idea.

MARK VICENTE: I did.

Obviously, I told you the -- on the tenth day of my first intensive. And then the only way in the beginning that I could actually talk to him, because I became somewhat obsessed with talking to him about like, okay, this EM thing you're doing that's so extraordinary, I want to learn how to do that in film making.

Like, is there a way that I could have an audience come into a movie and like 90 minutes later change their mind completely about this thing that they believed. I thought this would be amazing.

And so I'd try and have conversations with him about this, and the only way I had access to him at first was volleyball games.

Volleyball games when I first went, were typically held three times a week. They would run from around midnight to 7 a.m. And the only opportunity I had at that point, and most people in the community had, was you had to go to volleyball to actually see him, you wait for a period of time, and maybe if you got lucky, you got to talk to him.

That's the access I had for quite a while.

MARK VICENTE: When I first arrived, it was somewhere in Latham. I don't recall the exact gym.

Then it moved to Saratoga Springs that we held it in a -- it was a Catholic girls school gym that we used at night.

And then finally we moved to Hayner's, H-A-Y-N-E-R-S, Hayner's Sports Barn, in Halfmoon, New York, and it was held there for a number of years.

MARK VICENTE: Yes. It was after one particular intensive -- I believe it was human pain where -- I had discussed with Nancy Salzman at one point, you know, because she was having me look at what's one of the hardest things for me, and I said, Well, actually, one of the hardest things for me is to talk to him. I always find myself very nervous, and, you know, it was very difficult and I felt like he could see right through me and it was a terribly vulnerable experience. And she said to me, you know, You might want to figure out how to make that part of something that you do.

And so when it came to human pain and we were looking at, you know, what's the hardest thing in your life that at this point that you would like to do, I made the decision, all right, I'm going to call him every single day: It could either be a call; if I can't reach him, then I'll text him; if that doesn't work, I'll e-mail him, and I'll do this every single day, and I pretty much kept that up until towards the beginning of 2017, many, many years.

MARK VICENTE: Yes, it was. It was -- it was part of the, you know, when you -- when you ended a module or you ended an intensive day, you were -- you did a clap, you said, you know, Thank you Vanguard, thank you Prefect, so there was a lot of thanks going on.

And tribute -- because he was seen as somebody who produced more value than anybody else, it was suggested he should get, you know, more tributes. Nancy Salzman would say to me things like, you know, Do you understand what it means to spend an hour with him? Do you understand that that -- you know, his time is worth $100,000 per hour and that when you are spending time with him the way you are, you are getting millions of dollars, so there was this constant focus on, like, what an extraordinary rare experience it was to be with a mind like that.

MARK VICENTE: I don't know what the mechanism was, but, you know, Barbara Jeske would tell me about, you know, how he would affect weather. Other people would talk to me about how he would affect technology. He, himself, would tell me that there was something about his energy field that seemed to create problems with computers; that he went through many, many computers because of his -- something about his energy.

So there was this kind of mystique that was floating around, not so much with the general student populous, but more, you know, in sort of more of the inner circle, you know, talking in some hush tones about these things that he could do.

And at one point -- I don't remember the exact year -- Nancy Salzman said something to me about, you know, there's a path to enlightenment through sexuality and that, you know, Raniere understands this path; and I thought that was really odd, but I, you know, kind of filed it away in -- there's a box in my mind I think I use, which is -- I don't know, maybe it's above my pay grade or it's just too weird, so I just file it away.

MARK VICENTE: He did. He -- I don't remember if it was a phone call or in person, but he said to me, you know -- he asked me, Is there a way to remove stuff from a videotape in such a way that it doesn't look like it's removed? And I wasn't clear at first. He's like, Is there a way to, like, do it where you can almost -- it looks like a glitch or it looks like some kind of a natural process to remove something? And I thought about it, and I said, Actually, there is. You know, you can move to the analog world, you can do a bunch of things there, yeah, it can probably be done. And he says, Oh, that's good. There's some things we need removed. The legal department has some things that need to be removed from some tapes and it has to do with a case where our methodology is being evaluated and our patent is being looked at. And my understanding from him and then from some other people that were part of this project is, you know, the patent was at risk if these things were in that tape that were going to be handed over.

So I said, Okay, well, you know, I think I -- I think I know how to do it and I have to think about it a bit more.

And then my -- you know, myself and my department began liaising with the legal department to figure out what needed to be removed and what was the way that we would do it.

MARK VICENTE: I don't know that I mentioned specific stages and steps because there was -- there was still some discovery that had -- there was experimentation that had to happen, but I did talk about that VHS was glitchy, which was an advantage that also -- the advantage of VHS was that on -- in digital, you can actually embed time code into digital formats, there's time code information.

When you're in VHS, it isn't the same; you don't have time code information in the same way. So moving from digital into analog, in some ways you can say it's almost like you erase the digital information, and the reason -- the reason that's important is because, you know, if you have -- time code is generally eight numbers, you know, and if you have, you know, zero, zero, ten, ten, thirteen and, like, you know, if you have that, you will see the seconds in the frames or the minutes that are missing. It will be very clear that it's missing.

If you move into the VHS analog world, there's no numbers in the same way, so you can't tell if anything's missing.

MARK VICENTE: The "yes" answer is yes. By the -- by the laws of the land, yes.

At the time -- I, myself, and I think other people, had the impression that this methodology and Raniere's way of thinking, you know, was superior to the ethics of the governments and the ethics of courts and the ethics of pretty much everybody, that this was the most advanced ethics, and that he really had an understanding of what was truly ethical moral.

So in this kind of environment, I believe I was -- this must be for a higher good. Okay, so yes, it's this, but it's for a higher good that in the end is better. That's why I say "yes" and "no."

MARK VICENTE: Okay.

Basically, there were a few stages. The first stage was that the people in legal -- legal department were to determine what needed to be removed. We were then -- the video department was then given a list of, you know, remove these things here from this number to this number. We would then use various processes to remove it and then processes to create glitches to make it look like it was natural, that nothing was actually removed. Then a final master copy was made, that was then duplicated a number of times to give it the appearance of being older, multiple generations, then labels were put on that would age the -- there was some scuffing that occurred to make things look older, then that was handed off to -- back to the legal department and then went wherever it went.

MARK VICENTE: Then it was a question of determining, you know, what methods we would use to actually remove things. It's a bit complicated, but basically sometimes we would take the tapes and move them into -- into a computer -- into a computer-editing system and remove sections there and sometimes put static in.

Sometimes we would go machine to machine -- doing machine to machine dubbing, or sometimes we would also do machine to machine -- you know, in the days before HDMI when you had multiple cables, we'd go machine to machine with multiple cables and we would jiggle the cables and push them in and out which created all kinds of interference.

So that was the next step, and then it was just a question of figuring out which one of those things we would do and we would try to, to some degree, randomize it so it seemed natural, you know, what we termed "organic."

We would also create glitches in areas where there was no removal so that it didn't look like, oh, that thing was removed. It was like, oh, there seems to be a problem in this tape in general to, in some ways, create a smokescreen to hide the specific areas.

MARK VICENTE: Step one was actually removing the material and creating -- creating a master. So, you know, you would start in this digital realm, you would import it into, you know, a computer or you would move to VHS, and you would do it -- one of a number of different kinds of processes to remove things and create glitches.

Then a master was created and then my recollection was that the dubbing wasn't done on 13 Twilight. There were multiple machines that were set up, as far as I recall, in Apropos.