Vanessa Grigoriadis went on NPR the other day. Simon Scott hosted the talented writer – who wangled a rare media interview with Keith Raniere as well as Clare Bronfman, Nancy Salzman, Lauren Salzman, and Allison Mack. The funny thing is that every one of those people is now a criminal defendant in a RICO-based criminal case.
In fact, it was Vanessa who got Allison to confess to originating the idea of branding women – not Keith Raniere.
Here are some excerpts of the interview:
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:… So what [does NXIVM] promise? What’s so alluring?
GRIGORIADIS: Well, NXIVM, on the face of it, is one of these intensive therapy outfits that offers courses that maybe last a weekend or several days, 12 hours a day. Very wealthy people were involved in this, right? You could spend $200,000, $300,000 on their classes no problem. They claimed that they could help people overcome childhood trauma, a divorce, by integrating – is what they called it – those experiences into their lives. And they were using kind of a form of hypnosis to help people see their way through these terrible events in their lives. And it worked for a lot of people by many accounts.
***
GRIGORIADIS: I think [NXIVM] is squarely in that tradition of self-help, and certainly, there is a secret side to it, much like Scientology, where we are now learning that there were some things going on in this group that were extremely unsavory.
SIMON: Like what…?
GRIGORIADIS: Well, you know, it’s clear that the group was demanding fealty not only to the ideas that they had but also to the leader, Keith Raniere, middle-aged guy, lived in New York all his life. They called him Vanguard, and they believed he was some sort of evolved being. So behind the scenes, there was also a lot of – you know, he had many, many girlfriends. And in the last couple of years, he was using some of the women in the group to bring other women to his bed with what we think are pretty coercive tactics.
SIMON: What’s a coercive tactic?
GRIGORIADIS: The women claimed to other women that they could kind of move more quickly down their personal growth path if they joined this women’s-only international self-help group. There was a man who was involved in this group, and it was the leader, Keith, who knew much of what was going on. He was in at least one case, if not more. Those women were coming to his bed, and he was then seducing them….. they were branded with a symbol that [was] his initials K and R. And the women were not told that.
SIMON: How does this boorish and reprehensible behavior become sex trafficking or a sex cult?
GRIGORIADIS: You know, the argument that the prosecutors are making is that there was, you know, coercive sex here that some of the women were actually acting – or specifically Allison Mack, this actress, she was coercing women into having sex with him and that she was indeed kind of a madam where she was bringing in these women, and she was also getting some sort of financial benefit within the group from Keith himself.
SIMON: So financial reward for sexual favors.
GRIGORIADIS: Financial reward for sexual favors – exactly.
SIMON: Even after these charges, is the group still operating?
GRIGORIADIS: Well, they’ve closed down all of their classes. You cannot go to them anymore and try to work out your problems. But even after the news came out at The New York Times about women being branded, at least a hundred members stayed with the group. They think that they have not done anything wrong, and they believe that they’ll be vindicated.
***
This suggests to me that Vanessa is hardly completely supportive of NXIVM. If I understand her correctly, she thinks there may have been some good in NXIVM and seems to condemn Allison and Keith for their coercive and deceptive practices.
Frank Parlato 
Janine Morrison 
J.J. O'Hara 
Richard Luthmann 
Marie White 
Paul Serran
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The title of Scott Simon’s well-rehearsed interview of Vanessa Grigoriadis set the tone for the entire interview:
“Understanding NXIVM, Group Critics Call a Cult.”
Vanessa Grigoriadis and the neo-liberal-controlled MSM are still portraying NXIVM as a self-help group that improved a lot of people’s lives. While this may be true to some extent, it certainly belies the fact that the NXIVM Cult is/was always a criminal enterprise that was structured as a top-down cult of personality with Keith Raniere securely ensconced at the capstone of his criminal enterprise pyramid-scheme.
When Scott Simon asks Ms. Grigoriadis the key question in his entire interview, “What’s a coercive tactic?”, Vanessa does not bother to answer him directly. She does not bring up the collateral that the women of DOS were required to hand over in order to become a slave. She does not bother to mention that the women of DOS had become slaves once they handed over their compromising nude photos, deeds to property, and confessions of criminal acts. The word slave is never uttered by Ms. Grigoriadis.
In my opinion, such neo-liberal MSM organizations as the New York Times and NPR (“National Propaganda Radio”) do not want to understand the criminal enterprise that is/was NXIVM, especially now that Clare Bronfman has been arrested, charged, and braceleted. These neo-liberals simply cannot bring themselves to call a criminal cult a criminal cult. The neo-liberal media genuflect and bow to the Bronfman family name, and for very good reasons. They are afraid not to bow and genuflect to the Bronfman name!
Visit the website: Bronfman Rothschild | Wealth and Retirement Plan Advisors. Lynn Forester de Rothscild is on the board of directors of this investment firm, and so is Matthew Bronfman. Matthew, whose mother was a Loeb, is an older half-brother of the lovely Bronfman sisters, Clare and Sara. Lady Lynn De Rothschild is the charming, intelligent, capable, and elegant wife of Sir Evelyn De Rothschild, who is financial advisor to Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, The Queen of The United Kingdom and other Commonwealth Realms. QE II knighted the good Sir Evelyn in 1989. The banking families of the Kuhns, the Loebs, the Schiffs, the Warburgs, and the Rothschilds have been inter-related through banking and commerce for generations.
But alas and alack, the Bronfmans are the troublesome, blatantly-criminal black sheep, who have been welcomed only relatively recently into the “more-respectable” financial fold by the Rothschilds and the Loebs. The Bronfmans’ acceptance by these deviant elites came about as a result of Sam and Edgar Bronfman’s tireless extra-curricular activities on behalf of the Rothschilds and other elite and wealthy banking families. Of course, the Bronfman wealth and how they were able to acquire that wealth (through their past criminal activities) directly benefited many of Great Britain’s financial oligarchs during the 20th century. These financial benefits to British elites were a major factor in the Bronfmans’ acceptance into the “high society”of these “respectable” deviant elites. The Bronfman clan of Mr. Sam had turned out to be a very useful gang. Sam Bronfman and his son, Edgar Bronfman Sr., both proved their usefulness and loyalty to the Rothschilds and to the British Crown over the decades, and they did so in some highly questionable (some might say criminal) ways. Mathew Bronfman is tirelessly at work. continuing the “respectable” tradition of both his elite-deviant father and his elite-deviant grandfather.
Nonetheless, whether it was Edgar Bronfamn Senior’s crooked cousin, Mitchell Bronfman, who was a front-man for organized crime in Montreal; or Samuel Bronfman II (another older half-brother of Clare and Sara) who tried to extort ransom money from his father in 1975, by way of a hoax-kidnap scheme that was concocted by him and his gay lover; or the lovely criminally-charged Clare Bronfman and her, as yet uncharged, lovely sister Sara, both of whom so generously funded the NXIVM criminal enterprise throughout most of the two thousands – the Bronfman family just can’t seem to shake that old moniker that the press had given to them when they were indicted, prosecuted, and fined for their criminal activities in the roaring twenties and dismal thirties, “The Bronfman Gang.”
Thank you Larry, once again you see through the bullshit and aren’t afraid to point it out. There doesn’t appear to be any noble, classy wealthy families left for us peasants to look up to. And anyone out there who doesn’t believe in the fake news isn’t paying attention. I sat back and watched the Clinton era liberals destroying our country, then Obama finished the job. It took a while before I realized we finally had a president who was making a difference . It had been so long we had all given up hope. The Fake News is all our younger generation knows , thank God for the internet. For all that damage it has done it has created an outlet for people to verify truth from fiction. The wealthy used to realize they had an obligation to use the wealth they didn’t earn in the first place (In most cases), to do good in the world. As our world changes so do the needs of the people. The Bronfman are classic of today’s wealthy, selfabsorbed, entitled and rather useless as human beings. We can also thank the liberals for the corruption that has reigned in LE, the DOJ, the FBI, AND OF COURSE THE POLITITIONS. Let us hope that as evil groups such as Nxivm are taken down that we see a change in how we take down corrupt mayors (Cuomy) . Got an important call anyway this is just my opinion
Vanessa must have read The Frank Report. Good. Vanessa if you’re reading this article and comments: In the end, there was no positive take away or ‘integration’ — no one who was part of NXIVM gets out unscathed – returning to one’s old life is impossible, in part due to the destruction of past relationships with family and old friends.
Vanessa Grigoriadis is an idiot. She bought into NXIVM like a baited fish.
Now she’s attempting to back away when she had the chance to be a real investigating reporter.
Makes me wonder how much Clare paid her to do just a positive report?
Not enough to keep her loyalty for any length of time, although she certainly seems content to try to throw Allie Whack under the bus.
I mean, really, poor Keith, this nasty sleazy actress just bringing him women to bed (and spread herpes to).
No Ally Wack threw herself under the bus. She should have been content to just stay on twitter and instagram so my dad could have kept an eye on her, to fulfill his perversions. Instead Keith got to fulfill his and my dad can’t live with that thought.
I’m in the Pacific northwest where it is on right now on NBC (CH. 5) RIGHT NOW 10:00pm
His very lack of defense of Rainere plays right into the belief that his real goal is to protect the Mexican connection.
Yep. Nice to see someone else with a brain here to see what is really going on.
Can somebody please post a link to that Dateline interview?
After seeing Keith’s lawyer on Dateline tonight, it’s clear to me that his extremely weak defense is that DOS was nothing but female empowerment.
It’s not going to work.
There was a shoutout to Frank Report on there, too. Catherine Oxenberg is quite a badass, and I’m glad that she was able to leak her info here.
Also I don’t believe she persuaded Allison to confess to creating DOS, the whole point of the interview was to show that Allison was taking the fall
I don’t see it, she does not come across as a credible reporter imo, why doesn’t she mention her interview in Mexico where she made them sound noble and misunderstood. Granted, she probably signed something giving them authority over what was printed, now she could make up for that fake article and give a real opinion. Where are the real reporter’s who print the news
Much has come to light since she interviewed them all in Mexico.
I agree. She did not practise due diligence in her coverage of this story. There was a lot of information out there that she could have examined more closely, but she just skimmed the surface. I think she completely underestimated the potential and missed the scoop.
spot on – or she took the bronfman shilling, either way incredibly for such privileged positioning, she definitely missed th…
There are no real reporters who print the news in any mainstream media sources anymore.
It’s journalists that are lacking.
Loads of reporters (repeaters).
She’s backing down. Just as she shoud (if she is smart).