As we continue in our study of cult leader Keith Alan Raniere, AKA Vanguard, I think it is important to look at the legend he tried to create about himself. That legend began, as legends often do, with our little hero as a boy wonder.
We have at least three published sources for the early history of Keith Raniere:
Source 1: His published bio, formerly found on http://www.keithraniere.com. [BIO]. This was written and occasionally update in the early 2000s.
Source 2. A story published in the Albany Times Union entitled “TROY MAN HAS A LOT ON HIS MIND – IQ TEST PROVES WHAT MANY SUSPECTED: HE’S ONE IN 10 MILLION” by Irene Gardner Keeney, Staff writer. This was published on June 26, 1988. [TU 88]
This story is important for the information comes from an interview Keith Raniere gave to Keeney.
Source 3: Mr. Raniere’s sworn affidavit in 2003 in the Rick Ross lawsuit. [RossAff]
Keith Raniere was born on Aug. 26, 1960.
1961 age 1
[BIO]: “By the age of one, he [Keith Raniere] could construct full sentences and questions;
1962 age 2
[TU 1988] “By age 2, he could spell the word ‘homogenized’ from seeing it on the milk carton.
BIO: “[H]e was able to read by the age of two.
[Being able to read is not quite the same thing as being able to spell the word homogenized. It seems Keith kept on improving his history.]
1964 age 4
[TU 88] He had an understanding of … quantum physics and computers by age 4.
[Wait a minute: He was four in 1964 and he understood computers then? Computers were not available in people’s homes and they looked like this:}
1971 age 11
BIO: Mr. Raniere “was an East Coast Judo Champion at age eleven.”
1972 age 12
TU 88: “He was East Coast Judo champion at age 12.”
[We have already revealed that this is a bullshit claim. There is no East Coast Judo Champion. There is an east coast judo tournament – mainly for children. He competed with other children his age, and may have won a match with another child but he was not designated a champion.]
BIO: “By the age of twelve, he taught himself to play piano at the concert level; his passion and aptitude for music would inspire him to master many other musical instruments.”
TU 88: “He says he plays seven musical instruments.”
[Keith never played any concerts that anyone knows of. His skill at piano, based on available recordings, is nowhere near concert level. At least not the kind of concert where people pay to hear someone play the piano.]
BIO: “He taught himself high school mathematics in nineteen hours at the age of twelve”.
[More bullshit.]
[Ross Aff] “It was at the age of 12 I read The Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov and was inspired by the concepts on optimal human communication to start to develop the theory and practice of Rational Inquiry™.”
Author Isaac Asimov was one of Keith Raniere’s heroes
1973: age 13
BIO: [H]e was proficient in third-year college mathematics and was a professional computer programmer.
[Ross Aff]: “I have been a computer analyst/scientist for the past 30 years.”
Keith claims he was a computer programmer in 1973 – which would mean that he worked on computers like this? For whom?
{Ross Aff]: By the time I was 13 I had taken and passed the 9th, 10th and 11th grade NYS
Mathematics Regents exams and had taught myself the first two years of college Mathematics and several computer languages.
1976 age 16
[TU 88]: “By the time he was 16, the Brooklyn-born genius says he had exhausted the curriculum at his high school. He dropped out of school and entered RPI where he simultaneously earned undergraduate degrees in math, physics and biology. To do that, he had to take 60 credits in addition to the 124 credits required for a single major.
[BIO]: “Keith Raniere entered Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) at age sixteen. From his first semester onward, he began taking Ph.D. level mathematics courses, ultimately taking most of the graduate-level physics and mathematics courses available at the time.”
1977 age 17
[Ross Aff] I entered RPI just after my 17th birthday and started to take high level (PhD) graduate courses in Mathematics. These courses are normally reserved for advanced graduate school students. To my knowledge I was the first 17 year old to take advanced 600 level mathematics courses in RPI’s then-153 year history. I continued to develop Rational Inquiry™ and formalized a new method of computer programming which I called ‘functional programming.’ It was my demonstrated ability to optimize computer programs that enabled me to obtain a position as a systems programmer/physicist for the Gamma-Pi physics group at RPI and the MIT-Bates National laboratory (MIT-yTt), MIT-y7r was examining atomic particle properties using a scattering methodology through a Quadra-pole magnet. I helped devise, construct and utilize the B-field measuring tool for this magnet. Its utilization involved measuring the B-field at millions of points within the magnet array and constructing a 3 dimensional mathematical model of the field. At this time I noted that a human could often ‘see’ a data pattern quicker than a computer. So I created a visually driven computer system to allow for ‘human intervention’ in optimal parameter selection and curve fitting. This successfully reduced our system’s search time by over 90%. I thereby refined and tested my model of how the human mind, with sense capability, compared to a computer and how the human mind, equipped with a motivationally driven projective mechanism, ‘understood’ and strategically made decisions.
[It came out as part of the government’s revelations prior to trial that Keith was anything but an exceptional student. He had a 2.26 grade point average.]
TU 88: [He] “tied with the state record for the 100 yard-dash.”
[This is claim that Keith did not put on his online bio, though numerous people heard him say it. There is, of course, no record of Keith tying or holding any record for the 100-yard dash. To one person who questioned him about his oft stated claim, he admitted that he tied the record for the 100 yard dash in an unofficial setting with Pam Cafritz, as I recall, keeping the stopwatch and verifying the truth of the sprinter’s statement.]
The wonderkind.
It is fascinating that Keith found it necessary to lie about his youth making himself appear to be a prodigy.
From what I could gather, his family considered him to be a boy genius, and may have helped to reinforce this madness in him. He became part of his psychosis. As her grew up, he became desperate for everyone to acknowledge him as the smartest man, a genius. It became his way of living. It led him to work so hard to authenticate his genius. He did this by utilizing a take home IQ test – perhaps the only kind of test he could score very well on – because it was one which he took at home – and not in a controlled setting where he could not cheat.
He then worked assiduously to get the test results place in the Guiness Book of Records in 1989, Australian edition.
The editors at Guiness realized that the IQ test was not reliable and not only failed to put Keith and other’s who took the same take home test in their American edition of the same year, but actually wound up retiring the category of “Highest IQ”.
Why this is important is that while Keith appears to have been exposed and placed in a facility that will likely prevent him from harming others, there are others like him who seek to have people follow them and use them.
These people, psychopaths like Raniere, will attract victims and so what we are attempting here, with the continued study of Raniere, is to observe the mind and actions of a psychopath.
For Raniere, part of his disease was to lie about the exploits of youth. These lies are pretty obvious and many thought so even before he was exposed. But he was able to fool many of his followers for years who believed in the absolute veracity of his claims.
For a psychopath to attract a cult, he needs many gullible victims and a few psychopaths and sociopaths whom he can bring in to a greater or lesser degree and reveal the secrets of his diabolical nature.
He such as Nancy Salzman, Clare Bronfman and a few others who were full blown participants in his evil. And he had a number of hybrids who were half-evil and half-victim. And then he had many mainly victims who supported him believing his lies and in his goodness.
That is how he built and kept a cult.
