Cults Inside Out: Is NXIVM A Cult? With Rick Alan Ross & Chase Geiser
You’ve seen them in movies and on TV, but cults are more prevalent than you think—and they’re armed with strategies that can brainwash and persuade even the most unlikely of candidates.
But how do individuals get involved with cults in the first place, and what steps can be taken to “deprogram” and heal those who have been drawn into these damaging groups?
These questions and more are addressed in Cults Inside Out, written by a leading cult expert Rick Alan Ross. Over the course of three decades, Ross has participated in around five hundred cult interventions, provided expert court testimony, and performed cult-related work all around the world.
With the help of current and former cult members, Ross demonstrates many of the tactics the groups use for control and manipulation—and, more importantly, some of the most effective methods he and other experts have used to reverse that programming.
As a result, readers will find themselves armed with a greater understanding of the nature of destructive cults and an improved ability to assess and deal with similar situations—either in their own lives or the lives of friends and family members.
Rick Alan Ross is one of the leading experts on cults in the world today. He has consulted with the FBI, the BATF, and various other law enforcement agencies, as well as the governments of Israel and China, on the topic of cults.
He has been qualified and accepted as an expert court witness in eleven different states, including the US federal court. He has also worked as a professional analyst for CBS News, CBC of Canada, and Nippon and Asahi in Japan
It's One American Podcast Live with Rick Allen Ross.
Rick, it is an honor and a pleasure to have you with us.
How are you?
Fine.
Thank you.
Nice to be on with you.
Absolutely.
So I've been a fan of your work for some time.
And the reason that I wanted to talk to you is because when I started this podcast almost two years ago, not quite two years ago, one of my first guests was Nikki Klein from Nexium.
And is sort of a political podcast most of the time, although that's not what I intend for this conversation.
And coming from sort of a right wing perspective, there's a lot of skepticism around the FBI and the deep state, right?
And so she was a great guest for what I was interested in and what I wanted to talk about.
And uh really drew me into that sort of side of the Nexium story, that that internal narrative that they have.
And I wanted to talk to you just to kind of hear your thoughts and balance it out.
I've never been a part of Nexium or really associated with it at all, but I have become friends, I would say, with with a couple of sympathizers who are still sort of involved.
And so without my goal here is not to offend my friends, but to also have an honest conversation about Nexium with you.
So that was sort of what catalyzed me reaching out to you in my desire to speak with you about about Colts and Nexium, particularly.
Sure, no problem.
Um I've dealt with um Keith Rainere and Nexium for many, many years, actually long before Nikki Klein became involved, I think.
Yeah, so my understanding is that there was there was a dispute over some intellectual property.
Uh yeah, what happened was a family retained me to do an intervention to get their family members out of Nexium.
And at the end, uh there were three family members that left Nexium and one that stayed.
And the one that stayed, the family was very concerned about.
So there was the suggestion made by Nancy Salzmann to this uh family member that he uh get data, that he and in Nexium terms acquire research, uh background material about what is a cult and not simply rely on what I told him.
And so we agreed that there were a list of people that we could go to, and uh two of them were doctors, uh, Dr. John Hockman, a forensic psychiatrist, and Dr. Paul Martin, a clinical psychologist.
And they were asked to write an analysis of Nexium training.
And in that process, I gave them the study notes that had been given to me by another member of the family.
And those notes were the basis of a critical analysis of the training.
And the forensic psychiatrist and the clinical psychologist presented the papers to me.
I tried to share them with the family member, uh, but he refused to read them, despite the fact that Nancy Salzman had originally told him that he should do this kind of research.
Uh, but later, Nancy Salzman's coaching changed.
And she basically shut down communication in large part between him and his family.
Uh, very negative influence on his life and really caused the family a great deal of pain.
I then had these papers uh from the doctors.
I published them online, and uh Keith Raineri filed what I would regard as a very frivolous lawsuit against me and against the Cult Education Institute, which was the uh publishing place for the papers.
And that lawsuit actually went on for 14 years until it was dismissed by a federal judge in New Jersey, not long before Keith Rainier was arrested and incarcerated.
So that was the basis of the litigation.
And what what Raineri was saying was uh you cannot quote anything from our training notes or anything that we have written, because somehow this is intellectual property, and it's a trade secret violation as well.
Uh the courts ruled repeatedly against Rainery, And the Second Circuit in New York ruled that this was what they would call transformative or fair use, which means that if if you were to critique a book or a movie, you might you might quote the book, you might quote uh dialogue in the movie for the purpose of an analysis.
And so what Rineri was saying is no one can quote anything that we do for the purpose of an analysis.
And the court said, that's crazy, you can't do that.
Then Rineri went further, and uh apparently unbeknownst to her, uh the sister of the young man who uh was still involved in Nexium, she had signed uh a visa uh card receipt in order to pay for her training, which uh, as you might know is very expensive.
And very fine print on the visa receipt was an NDA, a non-disclosure agreement in a in a very fine print.
And she did not realize that she had signed that agreement until Rineri then sued her and myself and said that uh because of the NDA, she had no right to disclose the notes or discuss the notes or anything.
And so she was included in a lawsuit.
What the Second Circuit ruled, which is very interesting, and it now is cited as uh legal precedent and case law, Nexium v.
Ross, is that um for the purpose of the public interest, an NDA can be trumped, and that a non-disclosure agreement is of no effect, and therefore uh it was null and void.
And uh the Supreme Court refused to review the case, and that allowed it to stand as a precedent, which expanded uh First Amendment freedom of speech rights in regards to uh disclosing things to the public that might help people and uh provide safety.
So that was how I got involved.
Uh, and then over the years, uh I would be interviewed many times about Nexium.
Uh many families would contact me, many people that have been victimized by Keith Raineri, and uh they would tell me about uh their suffering, uh how they had been hurt by the training, how the training had adversely affected their family members, etc.
And so this went on for years and years.
And after Raineri was arrested, I worked with the prosecution and I testified against him in at his criminal trial.
Uh and during this long period of time that I was involved, uh, as I said, the lawsuit itself went on for 14 years.
Rineri hired and spent uh hundreds of thousands of dollars with a private investigation company called Interfour in Manhattan to stalk me, have me under surveillance.
Uh, they literally went through my garbage.
Uh, and then they illegally uh went into my private phone records and banking records.
Uh, this is all a matter of court record.
Uh and so I really went through quite an experience with Nexium.
Not to say that I hadn't gone through other experiences like that with other groups, for example, Scientology.
Uh, but uh it was a particularly pernicious uh uh aggressive kind of way that they shadowed me and stalked me and harassed me over a period of years.
Rineri spent five million, we estimate, on the litigation against myself alone.
And then he would spend millions more harassing and suing other people, some of whom he sued into bankruptcy, and then continue to litigate in their bankruptcy.
Uh, for example, his former girlfriend Tony Natale, uh, a former Nexium coach, Susan Dones, and the list goes on.
I mean, Rineri was uh very litigious, and he had these Seagram's heiresses, uh Claire and Sarah Bronfman, that were financing everything.
Uh, according to multiple news reports, the Bronfmans gave Rineri over a hundred million dollars over a period of years.
Wow.
And of course, Claire Bronfman is now in prison, serving uh almost seven years sentence for her involvement.
And Nancy Salzman is in prison.
Uh interestingly, because of information, documentation that she withheld in the federal lawsuit illegally in discovery, uh, in regards to me.
So Nancy Salzman is actually in prison because of how she violated federal laws and that litigation.
And by the way, when they raided Nancy Salzman's house, they found $500,000 in cash.
And uh where was that from and what was she doing with all that cash in her house?
And then there was a filing cabinet in her basement with multiple files on the perceived enemies of Nexium.
And one of them was labeled with my name.
And I reviewed it when I testified in the criminal trial of Keith Raineri.
So Nancy Salzman is doing three years.
She flipped first and got the a very good deal.
Uh I think that she should be serving as much time as Claire Bronfman.
I don't buy into what she said on the vow that she was a victim.
I dealt directly with Nancy Salzman.
Uh she coached the a young man that I was trying to deprogram and get out of Nexium.
She cut him off from his family.
She hurt that family deeply.
And in my mind, Nancy Salzman is not as guilty as Keith Raineri, but certainly guilty and not a victim in my mind.
Her daughter, Lauren Salzman, I regard as a victim.
And of course, uh Alison Mack, the the uh actress from Smallville, uh, that ended up getting what I think she got four years.
Uh, she really did damage to people.
In particular, she was the coach that and roommate of India India Oxenberg for a period of time.
And she came between India Oxenberg and her mother and uh coached her uh to cut her mother off, basically.
And so I went through all of these machinations.
I worked with uh Catherine Oxenberg for many months before uh she managed to reunite with India Oxenberg only after Keith Raineri was arrested.
And I want you to know that Catherine Oxenberg wanted desperately not to have to be public about her daughter's involvement, about her concerns.
She wanted to keep the matter private.
Uh, but there was just no way that she could persuade Nexium to let her daughter go.
So finally she realized the only way that Nexium would ever release her daughter is if Keith Raineri were brought uh under the scrutiny of the law, and that uh Nexium collapsed.
And so Catherine Oxenberg became the crucial element, uh, using her celebrity status, her access to the media, her name to basically leverage uh the situation.
And eventually that led to Sarah Edmondson coming forward, uh, Frank Parlado writing things on his blog, which Catherine would convey to him.
And uh basically, if not for Catherine Oxenberg, uh I don't know if Keith Rineri would ever have come to justice, because for many, many years, Keith Raineri violated the law.
He was involved in many, many uh criminal enterprises.
Uh, and the only reason uh that I think the authorities finally took note of all the complaints that they received for years and years was because Catherine Oxenberg broke it through the media.
And finally, there was so much pressure uh that people began to take action.
And uh the prosecutors uh in New York, uh, they did a good job, and they nailed him.
Well, first of all, I'm sorry that you had that experience over 14 years.
That sounds incredibly taxing and a testament to your character that you were able to make it through with such conviction and strength on the on the other end.
Was that that testimony against Keith in this most recent uh litigation?
Was that the first time that you ever were in the same room with him?
Oh, no, no, not at all.
Uh I actually uh had had dealt with Rainier repeatedly through the litigation, and Nancy Salzman and Kristen Keefe, and I also saw Claire Bronfman briefly.
So what happened uh was that uh Keith Raineri would be ordered by the court to appear, and I saw him the first time when a federal judge ordered him to show up in court.
Uh and then there was court ordered uh uh mediation, uh, and there was also court ordered settlement meetings.
Uh and that I would see Rainiery at that, talk to him at that.
I also sat through his deposition, which was many hours.
And I can tell you that uh he was under oath and he had to just tell the truth or risk being uh humiliated in federal court and and committing a you know a federal offense.
Right, so yeah, so he was in deposition, and I listened to his to him finally having to answer what his life was really like and what the takeaway was, and I put his entire deposition online.
Uh people can find it at Culteeducation.com in the Nexium Archive, which is the first archive with critical information about Nexium online, uh, as those reports were published, were the first critique of Naxium.
And uh so people can go online and read his entire deposition and also read Nancy Salzmann, Salzmann's uh deposition in its entirety, and it's very revealing.
What it reveals is that Keith Raineri is I don't know how to say it.
He's a pathological liar.
He lies about everything.
He lies.
Oh, no, he didn't.
He basically either tried to obfuscate, cover over things, not really answer, or he would answer directly.
And when he did, what it revealed is that this guy never had a real job.
He never had a real career.
He was an AMWA distributor.
He had this uh failed multi-level marketing scheme called consumer byline, that multiple attorney generals from various states uh sued him, and basically the business collapsed because uh what they were saying was that he was a crook.
And uh there were after that he he had some kind of scheme with vitamins that he involved Tony Natale in.
Uh and he would always kind of involve women, and women would essentially uh be his fall gals.
Uh, if something went wrong, uh they would basically, in my opinion, be thrown under the bus.
Uh, whether it was Claire Bronfman, Alison Mack, uh, and and there were many others, uh, you know, Lauren Salzman, uh to some extent Nancy Salzman.
I think he expected her to take a fall for him, which she most certainly did not.
She did what was in her own best interest.
But uh basically, what Keith Raineri said in deposition is all of his claims about having a uh extraordinary IQ, about being highly accomplished, a great scholar, a great researcher, it was all bullshit.
I mean, he was a con man.
Uh, he struggled through Rensolir.
Uh, he was an average student at best.
He was no genius.
If anything, he was a savant when it came to manipulating people.
He could triangulate people's weaknesses, and then he would just drill down into it and crack it open, whatever it was, and exploit them.
And let me just make this very clear.
Keith Raineri is a pedophile.
He has uh been a predator who has sexually abused children going back many years, which was reported by the Albany Times Union and other news outlets.
He raped little girls.
And uh, of course, this is a terrible thing.
And in my experience, people like that, pedophiles, they just continue to prey on victim after victim after victim, which is what Keith Raineri did.
And by the way, he started preying on little girls when he was a little boy.
There was a news report of him at the age of 10 terrorizing a girl at school until she news report, it was published.
Yes, yes.
And it's also, by the way, you can find all of this information archived, fully documented within the Nexium archive at Culteducation.com.
So Keith Raineri, unbelievably sick individual.
I mean, a pedophile, uh, a rapist, uh, someone who I regard as a misogynist.
I believe that he hates women, and that what he ultimately did was torture women.
And by the way, he one way or another, through video or audio, witnessed the branding of these women.
And he devised with Alison Mack, and there is, of course, audio recordings of their discussions that were presented to the prosecutors and shared with the jury at trial, that they planned the way that these women would be tortured with a cauterizing iron.
Uh, let's not minimize it.
They had no anesthetic.
They laid on a table, and someone took a cauterizing iron and used it to engrave his initials near their genitals on their pelvis.
What kind of individual conceives of that?
No one normal.
And what I would regard Keith Raineri as, and he has been referred to as by a number of mental health professionals, a psychopath.
And my heart goes out to Nikki Klein.
My heart goes out to the people that feel loyal to him, that gave him years of their lives that sacrificed for him.
But I'm sorry to say that he is a monster and not worthy of their sacrifices.
So, how is it that rational, intelligent people from fairly normal backgrounds can have a relationship with somebody like Keith for decades and still be absolutely devoted?
Yeah, that's you know, look, uh the woman who administered the branding, who used the you know, the the iron to brand these women, was a doctor, and she would later lose her license as a as a doctor as a result of her complicity in all of this.
So, how could someone as intelligent as a doctor, as talented as Nikki Klein, uh as intelligent as uh as so many of these people uh were and are, how would they get involved?
I mean, I met India Oxenberg, and we talked at great length, and she is a very smart woman, and so is Catherine Oxenberg, who became involved.
So, you know, how how do people like that get involved?
I would say that it is a slow process, that it comes on slowly, uh, that there is a great deal of deception.
It's a kind of bait and switch con.
You think You're signing up for an uh a course in ethics and something that will make the world a better place.
You're idealistic, you want to improve yourself, you want to improve the world around you, and you become involved in what you think is a philosophical group that is all about betterment and improvement, and it becomes something entirely different.
And so you are lured in with these false promises and this deception.
And then once you become part of the program and you're in these intensives, uh, that's when they begin to break you down.
Uh I would call it coercive persuasion or thought reform.
And that is a deliberate process of breaking people down, manipulating them emotionally, psychologically in a controlled environment, and then locking them into being a changed kind of person, a changed person with their critical thinking largely shut down and their ability to function independently compromised.
And then when as they go through these intensive trainings, which can last two weeks, in which they're sequestered with other members, their time is controlled, their environment is controlled.
Uh the human mind is more fragile than we would like to believe.
And people can be changed.
And I think that most of us don't want to deal with that because it's very uh unsettling to think that some someone could mess with our mind.
Uh, but look, there are negative political, there are negative political ads.
There is propaganda online.
Uh, there are there's advertising.
Uh there are many different ways that we are influenced by the world around us.
And in my book, Cults Inside Out, I have a whole chapter uh devoted to understanding these techniques.
And I would say that there are certain seminal books that are building blocks that I cite and footnote in my in my book uh to put it together.
For example, Robert Cialdini's book, Influence about how we are influenced uh by advertising by people around us.
Uh, the book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism by Robert J. Lifton, uh, the book Snapping by Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman, and also their book Holy Terror, in which they talk about the way that groups can emotionally manipulate and control individuals.
So as you put it together, you can understand that it's like a machine.
And what Keith Raineri did was he copied other groups.
A lot of of Nexium is Scientology.
And landmark education or the forum or Earhart Seminars Training, as it was originally known.
And there's a lot of Ayn Rand philosophy, sure, uh, you know, objectivism, and then there's a good dose of AM way, the multi-level marketing scheme that Keith Raineri himself was once involved in.
So ironically, he would sue me for intellectual property rights, copyright, trade secret violation, when in reality he was a glorified plagiarist who copied other sources and cobbled together what he called his philosophy or rational inquiry.
And even the exploration of meaning exercises are largely derived from Scientology and predicated on what they would call auditing or their kind of spiritual counseling.
Or at best, I've been audited at a science church of Scientology before.
Not audited, but they hook you up to the cans when you show up the first time.
Right.
So I've had that experience.
And well, and I wanted to bring that up too because I did um I've done as much research as I as I can uh about Nexium over really about a year.
And I um was able to find um Keith's patent applications for the rational career method, and I've read it, yeah, you know, it's 221 pages with all the different modules, and I could see how somebody who was interested in going through a self help program would be um intrigued and not immediately off put by at least the text.
I don't know what the sessions were like themselves.
And so I can see how one would, you know, I don't know, fall fall into it to dabbling at so to speak in in the ESP sort of realm.
Well, but here's the thing about about the modules and about the the you know the intensives and the training is that it's deliberately designed to manipulate and control people.
So if you look at the study notes, which I have uh a copy of, and you go through what they expect you to do through through the process of their training, what you see is they're breaking you down and they're manipulating you.
You're you you have a coach who's coaching you.
Uh you're told that people that are negative or critical about Nexium could be seen as suppressive persons, SPs, which is directly copied from Scientology.
Right.
So right, and like all the Scientologists call them oppressive or something.
No, no, no.
Raneri didn't even waste uh he didn't waste any time trying to reinterpret, he just plagiarized.
So suppressive persons, that's exactly what Scientology calls someone that is critical.
Oh, yeah.
For example, I am an SP.
Uh, I've been branded an SP by Scientology.
Uh, and I would suspect that Katie Holmes has been uh branded an SP as well as Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruise's uh former wives.
And I think the reason he doesn't visit uh very often Surrey Cruz, his daughter, is because she is, according to Scientology, considered to be very likely a PTS, a potential trouble source.
So Scientology has these thought terminating cliches that Keith Raineri saw as useful.
He incorporated them into Nexium training, copied them, and copied basically a lot of Scientology, because when it comes to creating a machine that can break people down and control them, L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, was a genius.
He was he was masterful.
I I've been doing my work for 40 years, and in my opinion, Scientology is the master class in creating a machine to it control other people.
And so so many groups will copy Scientology because it is so well developed and it it is it has all these redundancies in the machine that overlap each other in order to systematically uh hector people and control them and manipulate them.
And Keith Renere uh clearly was fascinated with Hubbard.
And I would suspect that he read Lyfton Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, very likely read coercive persuasion by Edgar Schein, and basically schooled himself in what was really his uh his vocation, which was manipulating people, uh, gaslighting people and uh breaking them down so that he could dominate them.
And and if you really study the profile of a pedophile like Raineri uh or a rapist, uh they are all about power and control.
It's not the act of sex, it's the ability to dominate, to control people.
And Rinere was all about that.
I mean, that's why he was starving women on a on a diet of less than a thousand calories a day, so that they would become wafishly thin, they would be weak.
He could uh he could dominate them.
It was always about that.
And and Keith Rineri could not stand one word in the English language.
No.
No, I don't agree with you.
No, I won't do what you want me to do.
Tony Natale, his girlfriend, uh, before he started Nexium, and at the point that he met Salzman and began to put together what would be known as Nexium, uh, Natalie realized that he was a jerk and dumped him.
And he could not accept that.
You know, he had her stalked and harassed for 20 years because she told him, No, I don't want to be with you anymore.
I'm done.
Go harass other women.
I don't want you.
And uh I came to know Tony pretty well over the years because of uh her being sued, me being sued, uh being pursued often by the same people.
Uh Keith Rainier actually had her dog killed, her house broken into.
Yeah.
And he had people.
He he drove he drove Natalie into bankruptcy, her parents into bankruptcy, her brother committed suicide, her parents died.
I mean, you talk about someone who was harassed, tortured, and demonized by Nexium.
It was Tony Natale, you know, but but that's the kind of guy he was.
I mean, we're talking about a psychopath, and he would always have these grandiose conspiracy theories.
I was in because I'm Jewish, I was involved with a Jewish conspiracy that included uh Chuck Schummer and uh Edgar Bronfman and other Jews, and we were all waiting around and plotting against him.
In reality, we were just being sued.
Uh, I was being sued by him.
Shummer did, I doubt that he even knew who he was until he was arrested.
Edgar Bronfman wanted nothing to do with him.
He, after he was quoted in Forbes magazine, uh saying that the group was a cult and his daughters uh, you know, just really cut him off and broke his heart.
Uh, he really didn't want to do anything regarding Nexium.
I know that from firsthand uh communication, that he he did not want to do anything to upset Keith Raineri.
He wanted to just leave him alone in hopes that his daughters would reconcile with him, which they never fully did until the day he died.
In fact, when Edgar Bromfman was on his deathbed, Claire was still trying to get him to apologize and make a uh an a video saying that he was wrong about Nexium, it wasn't a cult.
That's how crazy the whole thing was.
So Keith Rineri, just one of the most horrible people.
I mean, someone that was uh incredibly narcissistic, obsessed with his uh his own ego gratification and feelings of of power and control, and he had little, if any, ability to empathize with anyone, which is typical of a deeply narcissistic person.
Uh, someone like Rainier would be regarded by mental health professionals as a malignant narcissist, someone far beyond just a friend that is uh narcissistic that you find obnoxious.
Uh, he was really a piece of work.
So, where does that where does that come from, though?
I mean, where does such loathing for the opposite sex come from and such um animosity toward uh any sort of rejection?
Well, I think it, you know, some are now hypothesizing and theorizing that this is in your DNA, that the brain is hardwired, that some uh psychopaths are born, not uh not nurtured or created through their environment.
Uh Keith Rainier was certainly acting like a psychopath at the age of 10.
I mean, he terrorized the little girl.
He got her to admit secrets that became collateral, and he would then threaten her with that collateral.
He would hold it over her head uh and say he would call her and threaten her.
And she Would cry and and you know uh become very distraught and eventually he would be held accountable for that.
But he was doing this type of thing at the age of 10.
So you have to ask yourself, was it in his DNA?
Was it was it uh hardwired physiologically into his brain?
Is he an example of someone that was born a psychopath?
Or or was it his environment?
Uh I've talked to people that met his father, uh, that uh knew his family, and they they say that his family was nice, that they were normal, whatever that is, and uh that they were not people that uh came across as harsh or or or punitive that would have created someone like Keith Raineri.
Uh Raineri would always blame others for whatever his problems were, whether it was problems with Nexium, there was a conspiracy, or problems in his life.
I think he he would say negative things about his mother, about his family background, about his troubled childhood.
Uh, but I I honestly think that he was just like that.
There's not a lot of talk um about his kids.
Doesn't he have kids?
He has, I think two children.
Uh, one that reportedly looks just like him, a boy that uh is the child of Keith Raineri and Kristen Keith.
I think he might be around 12 years old now.
And uh what a what a legacy to have this father that you really don't know, but that you can read about and learn about who is this notorious cult leader, uh, similar to uh David Koresh, uh, who had also had a son who grew up without him, uh, and uh was the child of of David Koresh and Robin uh Bunt.
And she escaped from the compound before the standoff, raised the boy as a single mother, I think.
And he did interviews later talking about uh how weird it was to be the son of a cult leader.
You know, I I was listening to um some of your other podcast um appearances the other day, and I can't remember if it was the one that you did with Michaela Peterson or the concrete one that you did, both I thought were great.
Um, but you mentioned how I believe you mentioned, unless I'm just making this up in my head, how you've encountered Scientologists who have said, you know, I was in a really bad place when I joined the cult, whether it was substance abuse or or some other issue, and and they sort of brought me out of that and then into this like different kind of hell, right?
And so my question for you is um have you encountered or or spoken with people who got a lot of good out of the out of the modules in Nexium?
Or is that just something that didn't occur?
No, I I think that there is good stuff in in the Nexium training.
There has to be, because otherwise, why would anybody stay and put up with it?
So what you find in Scientology, Nexium, uh many of these groups is that there is good stuff.
Uh, for example, uh Kirsty Alley, who recently passed away.
She swore by Narcanon, which is Scientology's uh drug rehabilitation program that is based on L. Ron Hubbard's teachings.
And it was through that that Allie said she stopped using cocaine and other drugs and lived a drug-free free life and and had a career uh that that you know did she did very well.
And so there can be aspects of of a group in which people benefit.
Another example would be the young man you interviewed who had Tourette's, who said that uh Nexium helped him, or or was the reason that he recovered from Tourette's.
And uh the young man that I worked with in an intervention and the people that I work with, I actually uh worked with through interventions uh four people uh that went through Nexium training.
And I spoke At great length with uh Mark Vicente, who I'm sure you you're aware of in you know the documentary The Vow, which I briefly appeared in.
And Mark would talk about what his what he got from from Nexium.
And there were many people who felt that way.
The question is not what was the good stuff.
The question is what was the bad stuff?
And what was the motivation for Keith Raineri creating these modules?
At one point in the VOW, Nancy uh Nancy Salzman is confronted by a cult de programmer who says to her, uh Nancy, you knew you had to know that what Keith Raineri designed this all for was to manipulate and control people, that this was not a benign educational experience.
This was not something that he hoped to uh, you know, make people have have better lives through.
This was something that he used to manipulate and control people, extort them, uh, get sexual favors from them, and so on.
Uh and Nancy Salzman found that very difficult to deal with, uh, that confrontation.
Uh, but I think she knew that.
I think Reneri knew that.
Uh, but there were things that, like, for example, in the EMs in the exploration of meaning, uh, you're you're trying to get at the core of something.
You're trying to, in a kind of Socratic QA process, uh question and answer to get to a point where you understand something more clearly.
And that can be very freeing, very beneficial for people, uh, because you're in a sense confessing.
You're confessing what it is that you're all about, what it is that you care about, what it is that you think about, uh, and what is at the core for you uh as a life's purpose, as a sense of meaningfulness.
And in that sense, the EMs can be very helpful.
I mean, it's good for us to get down to the nitty-gritty and understand ourselves and others.
Uh, that's what psychotherapists would say they're about, or certain encounter groups.
That's what uh the forum or landmark claims to be about.
Uh, but what I think it was for Renere was a way of cracking people open, of identifying their vulnerabilities so that he could exploit them.
And and I would say that uh even though people benefited from this process in in various ways, uh that was the underlying purpose.
And therefore it really turned out to be a very negative thing.
When we look at examples like Scientology and perhaps Nexium in this case, um and other cults throughout the 20th century, 21st century, it seems like there's a motif that a lot of these leaders began with the end in mind, right?
You're suggesting that Keith sort of for decades knew what the purpose of this system was.
Um obviously L. Ron Hubbard developed a very sophisticated system as well.
Have you ever encountered a situation in which a cult leader actually started a cult with good intentions and then was later corrupted by it?
That uh L. Ron Hubbard, when he first wrote Dianetics, was thinking I can help people.
Uh, it's possible that Charles Diedrich, who was the founder of Cynanon initially a drug rehabilitation process, a community that helped people kick drugs, uh, help people recover from heroin abuse, alcoholism.
Diedrich himself was a recovering alcoholic.
Uh but at some point, these leaders went off the rails.
Uh Jim Jim Jones, uh, the People's Temple, which was aligned with liberal Democrats, and uh Mayor Muscone appointed Jim Jones to the Urban Planning Commission in San Francisco.
He was friends with uh assemblyman Willie Brown, later mayor of San Francisco.
Uh He posed in photo ops with Governor Jerry Brown when he was governor back in the 70s.
So Jim Jones was a celebrity.
I mean, people thought he was great.
He was feeding the hungry.
He had programs for the elderly.
He also rehabilitated drug addicts.
So there was a perception that he was a positive person, a community activist who wanted to help people.
Now, I would argue that at the core, it was all about his own self-aggrandizement and that he was always a psychopath.
But there was a period of time that he was perceived as a community asset, as somebody that was to be someone to be admired, someone to be looked up to.
so i think it is possible that you can start out perhaps with good intentions i actually once had a i frequently testify as an expert in court proceedings i've testified in 11 states as an expert and also in federal court And that includes child custody cases, criminal cases, and personal injury cases.
So at any rate, I was once retained by a man who earnestly felt that his martial arts school was a positive thing, and that he was being sued for being a cult leader, and he felt that he was not.
And he retained me, asked me to read his book, go through his training uh process, and determine am I really a cult leader?
And uh at the end of reading and going through all of his training and everything, uh I came to the conclusion that he had created a cult, whether he uh whether he wished to acknowledge it or not.
And and just so that we're clear on this, my definition of a destructive cult is very uh narrow.
I don't lump lots of groups together, and uh my defining characteristics are not really that squishy.
Uh so I would say there are three core characteristics that form the nucleus for any definition of a destructive cult.
And they were first established by Robert J. Lifton in the 80s in a paper that was published at Harvard University.
Lifton taught at Harvard for a period of time.
Uh, he is, by the way, a psychiatrist.
So those three core criteria are number one, an all-powerful totalitarian leader who becomes an object of worship and is the defining element and driving force of the group.
Number two, that the group is using identifiable coercive persuasion and thought reform techniques to gain undue influence over the members.
And that can be determined by looking at the characteristics of thought reform.
There are eight key criteria, or the three principal characteristics of coercive persuasion is defined by Edgar Schein, a professor at MIT.
And uh you look at that and you say, if it quacks like a duck and it walks like a duck, it's a duck.
So if they are using thought reform techniques, that can be determined by analyzing the behavior of the group, not its beliefs, because what the group believes is really irrelevant.
Uh what how they behave, the group dynamics, how they affect people, that is what is pertinent that we want to look at to define the group if it is a destructive cult.
And then finally, there might be a group that has an all-powerful uh leader that is an object of worship that indoctrinates uh its members through thought reform and coercive persuasion, but that does no harm.
That I would call a benign cult.
But if it's a destructive cult, we will be able to see that the group hurts people.
And that varies by degree from group to group.
So some groups are much worse than others.
And I would say that Nexium at the point that I intersected with it uh in 2001-2002 Was uh not a benign cult, but I would give it a maybe a three or a four on a scale of one to ten, ten being Jim Jones or Charlie Manson.
Uh, but by the time Keith Rineri was arrested, I would say Nexium was definitely an eight or an 8.5, and that Raineri had escalated the destructiveness, the harm being done by the group over a period of time.
Because in my experience, an absolute authoritarian leader that lacks any meaningful accountability, like Jim Jones, like Charlie Manson, like uh Keith Raineri will get worse and worse because there's no one there to put a check on them.
There's no one there to hold them accountable for what they do to say, hey, you're really hurting people, stop it.
Uh, an elected board, democratic governance, checks and balances.
Uh, there were none in Nexium.
It was just whatever Keith Raineri wanted, he did.
And he kept wanting more sex, more money, more power.
And in my experience, absolute power, as they say, corrupts absolutely.
Uh, you know, that saying power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
And I think Keith Raineri uh was uh in this bubble, uh surrounded by sycophants, people that would constantly uh ingratiate themselves to him, agree with him, who were afraid to do anything but go along with him uh for fear of being labeled a suppressive person, uh being called out in some process that he would lord over, in which they would be broken.
So he was, in a sense, a victim of his own thought reform.
Uh, he created this environment in which he was supreme, he could do no wrong, and this constantly uh fed his ego, and it became worse and worse as time went on.
And like a drug addict, he he he developed uh uh a craving for more.
Uh and it just yeah, it kept escalating over the years, and I worried that people were going to die in the end, because it appeared to me very close to the end, that he was weaponizing the women that were under him, that uh they would be potentially armed and dangerous.
And and so it it became rather ominous.
Uh there were people like myself that to some degree lived in fear.
I mean, keep in mind that I have been under the protection of the Department of Justice, the FBI, and Homeland Security at different points regarding different cult leaders through my career.
And and Keith Renere was someone that uh there were times that I felt that he he wanted to kill me, that he wanted to get rid of me.
And I say that because through Interfour, this private investigation uh company, big one in Manhattan that he hired that is headed by this uh Israeli, now an American citizen, I think, Yval Aviv, uh they set me up in a phony intervention.
I was supposed to go on a cruise ship with uh a family to do an intervention to get a woman's daughter out of Nexium.
They actually retained me, and there was this plan going on to get me on this cruise ship in the middle of the ocean.
And yeah, in international waters.
And they were talking to me about it.
At one point, I said to uh this woman that worked at Interfour under Yvalviv.
Uh I said to her, just so that you understand, I will never be alone with the woman.
I am never alone with someone that I'm doing an intervention with.
There must always be family there.
And I would propose that Mr. Aviv be there because he uh lied and said that he was a close friend of the mother, who I later found out was also a member of the staff of Interfour who was acting uh pretending to be the mother of uh a daughter in Nexium.
So why did they want to get me on this cruise ship?
Why did they want to do this intervention there?
And why did they suddenly and abruptly pull the plug when I said I would never be alone with this person in on the ship in a cabin?
And as soon as I said that, it was over.
There was no intervention.
Later I heard that Kristen Keith was supposedly going to pretend to be this daughter.
And she told people, according to what I heard, that uh she was going to try to convert me and make me a Nexium member.
Well, that that's very unlikely.
I I suspect, and my attorneys suspected, uh, that there would be a balcony in that cabin.
And that uh maybe I would be given something to drink, coffee, tea, and uh it would have something in it, like a roofie, and I would end up getting pitched over the rail of a balcony in the middle of the ocean.
So there were people that Reneri controlled, the women that he controlled that would do anything for him.
Uh, there was a time that I think Kristen Keith would have done anything he told her.
And to the extent that he had that kind of power and control, I think it was his intention, perhaps, it seemed to me, to weaponize the women.
And then things could have gotten even worse than they than they were at the end, which was pretty bad anyway.
So let me ask you this, and I know that we're coming up on time, but it's interesting that you mentioned Keith surrounding himself with women sort of throughout his life.
Why did he invest so much time in Mark?
Because Mark was a documentary maker, because Mark was connected, because Mark uh had made uh uh an of a documentary that was very highly praised called What the Bleep.
And what Mark did, Mark did was he did a documentary for a woman, Jay-Z Knight, who headed a group called the Rompha School of Enlightenment.
And it gave gave it gave Jay-Z Knight Cachet, it gave her credibility.
Uh, and of course, this group has also been called a cult.
Jay-Z Knight claims to speak for a 35,000-year-old dead uh general from the lost continent of Atlantis.
That's okay, but what if he does name?
Well, if he actually does.
Well, you know, I was wrong about him.
I I think Mark, when I talk with Mark, and boy, we talked at length.
I remember those conversations, and Mark read my book, and and he said to me, you know, I sought you out, Rick, because they told me in the group that you were Satan, that you were the devil.
And so I thought, if if I now think that Keith is the devil, maybe the person that they told me was the devil is somebody that can help me.
Uh, somebody that really isn't that bad, who who has knowledge that they're afraid of that I should have.
And so we talked, and Mark told me that I don't want to be a cult hopper.
I don't want to be this guy, I'm already middle-aged, going from one cult to another for the rest of my life.
It's gotta stop.
I went from Ronta School of Enlightenment to an even worse cult, uh, Nexium.
So I don't want to do that anymore.
Now, why did Keith Raineri take an interest in Mark?
Come on, because this guy made a documentary on Jay Znight, and Keith Raineri wanted a documentary on him.
That's how Mark had that access.
He had all that video of the trainings of Keith Raineri of people in Nexium, because Keith Raineri, uh grandiose narcissist that he that he is, thought that Mark Vicente would make him even make him famous uh for being this great teacher, this great philosopher.
And of course, Mark was at one time enthralled with him.
Uh Mark once, Mark once tearfully said to me, you know, I I loved him like a brother.
And I cannot handle how he betrayed that trust, how he betrayed that love that I had for him.
And that's what he did.
He played people, and he wanted to play Mark.
And he hoped that Mark would make him famous.
You know, it's ironic.
What Keith Rineri became famous for or infamous for is being one of the most notorious cult leaders in American history.
That's his niche.
And he'll be occupying that niche as he lives the rest of his life in prison.
I just feel so sorry for people like Mark who who you interviewed, and people like Nikki Klein, who I think are really good people.
But I think uh people are vulnerable.
And uh, and you you alluded to what is one narrative of cult members, which is that they had bad luck, that at a particularly vulnerable time in their life when things weren't going well, someone came along, someone they trusted, probably a friend, a co-worker, whomever, and said, Hey, I know this self-help training course, the seminar, and it can really help you.
Or I know this church where it's just very uplifting, they've got a great choir, or I know this drug rehab that can solve your problem with drugs.
And so at that vulnerable point, a person is looking for relief, looking for an escape from that pain.
Uh, and they reach out and they don't realize that they're reaching out to a cult.
And uh this is this is what Eric Hoffer wrote in his book, The True Believer, published in the 1950s, and he was talking about communism, fascism, and he said, Look, countries that are happy, people that are happy, don't have a revolution.
It's when people are unhappy and people feel that they've been betrayed, their their situation is bleak, that when someone like Lennon or Hitler or Mussolini comes along, they say, hey, that sounds like a way out of this.
And so what Hoffer would say is happy campers don't join up.
And I would say that's true, that most of the time, in my experience, the narrative is I was depressed, I was sad, this happened, that happened in my life.
And it just so happened that I had the bad luck that's at that point I got an invite to a Nexium seminar.
Or at that point, this group pulled me in.
And the person who approached me was a true believer, you know, as I'm sure Nikki Klein is, and this person wanted to help me, and they believed in the program.
And so I believed in them, I trusted them, and I joined, and the group was deliberately deceptive.
They didn't tell me where I was going to end up, what their plan was for me.
And so I made a decision based on what information I had, which was not accurate.
So that's the process that pulls people in.
I have one final question before before we call the day.
Are there any organizations or groups today that are not cults but could very easily have been or become cults?
One of the one of the figures that I think about, and this is someone I'm a fan of, uh, is Tony Robbins.
He he could so easily become a cult leader just because he has that much influence and money and right.
But like well, but you know, I'm like comment specifically, but are there any that come to mind?
Uh well, look, I think Tony Robbins is kind of uh, in my view, kind of a con man.
I mean, he's a lot of people feel that way.
That's one of the reasons.
Uh, but but you know, he I don't consider him a cult leader.
What I consider a cult leader is someone who, like Raineri, not only has the seminars, but is encouraging people to move to a location to become full-time, to call him Vanguard, to worship him.
Uh, Tony Robbins is more like uh he comes to town, he makes a bunch of money, he moves on to the next town.
Right.
There are there are a bunch of people like that.
I don't consider them cult leaders.
And I think it's uh it's possible, you could look at Jehovah's Witnesses, which I think is a pernicious group, very destructive.
I would call them a destructive authoritarian organization.
But I would not call them a destructive cult, and I'll tell you why.
Because they don't have a single all-powerful leader.
They did, and I would say that in the beginning of Jehovah's Witnesses, when they were founded by Charles Tayes Russell, and they were called the Russellites, uh, they were a cult.
And then subsequent to that, in my opinion, under a man they called Judge Rutherford, again an absolute dictator, they remained a personality-driven cult.
But then after Rutherford died, power devolved, and they have what they now call the governing body.
And so I think that that single feature, which is the single most salient feature of a destructive cult, which is a dictatorial leader that has total power, and that that leader, whatever that leader says is right is right, whatever that leader says is wrong is wrong, and no one dissents.
Uh, the only way to go against the leader is to leave.
And there is no legitimate reason to leave.
So when you leave, you're ostracized, you're wrong, you're bad.
And in Jehovah's Witnesses, they still have a lot of that baggage uh from their cult days, and they're still very destructive.
They have what they call disfellowshiping and shunning, in which people are shunned if they if they do something that the elders at the Kingdom Hall feel is uh negative enough for them to be disfellowshipped.
And uh that could be criticizing or questioning what Jehovah's Witnesses are doing.
So there are groups that started as cults that evolved into what can be seen as a destructive religious organization, very authoritarian.
And then there are groups uh, I think like Seventh-day Adventists that arguably became mainstream.
Uh so at one time the Adventists were uh led by a man named Miller, they were called the Millerites, subsequently Ellen White became their prophet and wrote many of their distinctive writings and teachings.
But after she died, Seventh-day Adventism evolved and changed until it became, in my opinion, a fairly mainstream Protestant religion that is pretty much like all other Protestants, with the exception that they celebrate the Sabbath on Saturday, uh they're devoted vegetarians, and they have these peculiar white writings of Ellen White about health and diet that they think are very meaningful.
So it's possible for a cult to evolve into a benign religious group.
It's possible for uh power to devolve from the top and them still to be a destructive authoritarian group, but not a destructive cult.
So my definition is fairly narrow.
And I I think that when we call political parties or movements, cults, uh, it's a disservice to understanding the nature of destructive cults and what they really are all about.
And I find it as um uh just uh really it's name-calling and using that word cult as an invective to dismiss maybe a political group that we don't like.
For example, saying that uh Donald Trump is a cult leader, and that uh that people that are Republicans that have that agree with him on policy and and various issues are somehow brainwashed.
No, they're not brainwashed.
He is uh identifying things that they care about, that they believe in, that they believed in before he ever came to run for president.
And uh they endorse him as Long as he continues to uh espouse what they believe in.
I mean, uh, I don't know if you remember when uh Donald Trump did a he did a rally, I think it was in Alabama, and he started to uh talk about the vaccine for COVID and he got booed.
Cult leaders don't get booed.
Right.
You don't Reverend Moon, Charles Manson, uh uh Keith Raineri.
Nobody booed them.
If if you didn't believe what they were saying, you had to adjust your beliefs to conform to what they are saying.
And you had to acquiesce, you had to submit.
Uh the fact that Donald Trump's uh supporters at times disagree with him on issues like uh taking the COVID vaccine, taking a booster, uh shows that they are not brainwashed, that they are individuals, and you might not like what they think or they believe if you are a liberal Democrat or or whatever, uh a never Trumper Republican.
Uh, but that doesn't mean that uh they're brainwashed.
It means that there's a genuine disagreement that you have with them.
Right.
Right.
So where can people find you, follow your work, as well as um just generally keep up with with what you're doing?
Well, you they can go to cult education.com, which is a huge archive of information launched in 1996 with all hundreds of groups archives, such as Nexium.
They can follow me on Twitter, they can find me at Rick Allen Ross on Twitter, where my tweets are basically a kind of daily review of what stories are breaking in the news and what I think about them in regards to cults.
Likewise, the Cult Education Institute has a Facebook page where they can go.
And my book is Cults Inside Out How People Get In and Can Get Out, and that's available at Amazon.com.
It's been an honor and a pleasure to have you.
I'm so grateful that you took the time to speak with me this afternoon and um share your knowledge and wisdom with my audience.
Well, thank you very much.
I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you as well.
