Lazar’s Revelations
Robert Scott Lazar — Bob to his pals — is a figure who, when it comes to UFOs, has quite possibly caused more headaches for American officialdom than anyone else on the planet. Whether that is because Lazar has successfully blown the lid off a conspiracy of otherworldly proportions or because he has spun an elaborate web of fantasies that the government is constantly forced to deny remains to be seen. But whichever way the coin falls, the story is a humdinger, to be sure.
It was an otherwise normal evening in March 1989 when the cosmic shit hit the fan — with unrelenting force. As the unsuspecting citizens of Las Vegas turned on their televisions at dinnertime to watch KLAS-TV, they could have been forgiven for thinking it was April Fools’ Day. (Some might say they were not so far off the truth.) But let’s not jump the intergalactic gun: They saw a man on TV telling an amazing story to an investigative journalist named George Knapp. The slim, 30-ish, bespectacled speaker was Bob Lazar, but you would not have known it then — at the time (as a result of serious worries for his personal safety, he claimed), Lazar was going by the alias of Dennis. So as the good folk of Sin City sat and listened, Dennis/Lazar claimed that in late 1988 he had been recruited as a physicist into a Top Secret research and development program out at a particular section of Area 51 called S-4. He said it was an intense R&D effort that focused on nothing less than the analysis of nine captured, donated, or otherwise acquired spacecraft from other worlds. The craft operated on fantastically advanced technological principles, and Lazar had seen the evidence for himself.
Despite warnings and less-than-veiled threats from Area 51 personnel to never, ever reveal what was afoot at the mysterious base, here was Lazar doing precisely that: spilling the beans to the world at large. As a result, his life was under threat of termination. With the alien secrets tumbling wildly out of Lazar’s mouth, a government-wielded Sword of Damocles was ready to fall upon him at any moment. His tale of an alien conspiracy and extraterrestrial power systems in the hands of the government was a newsperson’s dream story. It was Woodward and Bernstein for the space age. It was what UFO researchers the world over had waited for so long to hear. But was it true? Simple question; not-so-simple answer.
Who Is Bob Lazar?
Bob Lazar is a character as enigmatic as he is intriguing. Some members of ufological circles view him as a crusading hero, and others view him as an outrageous fraud. Let’s start with the facts: Born in Florida in 1959, Lazar is known to have taken courses in electronics at the Los Angeles — based Pierce College in the 1970s, and to have spent some time employed with Fairchild, a company founded in 1959 by Nobel Prize — winner and coinventor of the transistor, William Shockley. But that’s only part of it. Lazar claimed — and continues to claim — that he received an MS in electronics from the California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech), and an MS in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and also that he worked on some pretty classified stuff in the process.
In 1982, we find Bob splashed across the front page of the New Mexico — based Los Alamos Monitor newspaper, in a lengthy article that detailed his skills in relation to one of his personal passions: building and racing super-fast jet-cars. The article described how Lazar and a NASA friend hauled the engine out of an otherwise innocuous Honda, and then did something pretty remarkable: They replaced the old engine with a new one made of stainless steel and titanium that burned liquid propane, allowing for speeds close to 200 miles per hour — pretty much the automobile equivalent of mutating Dr. Bruce Banner into the Incredible Hulk. The article showed that Lazar certainly does have brains and technical savvy, but what’s particularly notable about it is that it specifically detailed the hero of the hour as being a physicist then working at the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility. Today known as the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center, the facility has long been at the forefront of cutting-edge research into particle physics. So, despite the fact that Lazar has been dismissed as a hoaxer or fantasist, we have at least some evidence that he was plugged in to the secret world of the highly classified Los Alamos facility, approximately six years before he allegedly began tooling around with alien saucers at Area 51. But how does one go from unleashing super-fast Hondas on the world and earning a wage at Los Alamos to getting the lowdown on the biggest secret of all? It was all due to fate; a chance, life-changing meeting.
In June 1982, legendary theoretical physicist Edward Teller gave a lecture at Los Alamos, and Lazar attended. As Lazar approached the venue on the day in question, he was amazed to see Teller sitting casually outside on a wall, reading the aforementioned Los Alamos Monitor article on Lazar himself. This was highly fortuitous, so Lazar introduced himself and had a brief chat with the man who was one of the inspirations for the deranged Dr. Strangelove in Stanley Kubrick’s classic 1964 movie of the same name.
Lazar’s Introduction to Area 51
Now let’s fast-forward to 1988. At that time, Lazar was running a photo lab in Las Vegas, but was on the lookout for far more gainful employment. He sent out a resume to Teller, who remembered Lazar and his beefed-up Honda. This was very good news. It got even better when Teller agreed to use his contacts to see about getting Lazar back into the world of physics. As a result, Lazar was approached by a representative of Edgerton, Germeshausen, and Grier, Inc. (EG&G), a U.S. defense contractor. Thus began a strange saga filled with many a cloak, dagger, and hall of mirrors.
After interviewing at the EG&G offices at Vegas’s McCarran Airport for a job he was quickly deemed way overqualified for, Lazar was pleased to be called back, for a different potential position. This one was reportedly focused on something that was vaguely explained as an advanced propulsion-based project — surely an understatement of mammoth proportions. The fact that, at the time, Lazar had his very own particle accelerator in his bedroom was enough to impress his interviewers. They made an offer, and Lazar quickly accepted the gig. Things were moving forward. Just how far forward, Lazar had no real idea. He soon found out, however.
Lazar was met at EG&G by a mysterious man named Dennis Mariani, described as being military-like, stern, and to-the-point. Mariani would become Lazar’s immediate supervisor. They took a brief flight, followed by a short drive in a bus with blacked-out windows, to Area 51’s inner sanctum: S-4. Lazar was about to graduate from playing with jet-cars to handling craft that, he was told, originated from the depths of another solar system. The location where the alien ships were being held and studied was appropriately out-of-this-world too: The S-4 facility was said to be just like something out of a James Bond movie. Lazar claimed it was composed of a number of buildings and large hangars that, rather than being built in the open, were actually sculpted right out of the rock of one of the huge mountains that dominated the area. To help camouflage the mysterious installation and protect the dark secrets hidden deep within, the huge outer doors were spray-painted in a sandy color that blended in quite naturally with the surrounding desert landscape.
Initially, things were pretty intense for Lazar, who was still unclear about the precise nature of the program to which he had accepted a position, beyond the fact that it was shrouded in secrecy, sounded seriously intriguing, and was maybe somewhat off-the-wall. Upon arrival, Lazar quickly became acquainted with the fine spirit of teamwork at Area 51 and S-4: He was forced to agree to have his home telephone monitored, and was made to sign a security oath that included a clause to the effect that, upon accepting the position, he agreed to waive all his constitutional rights as an American citizen. The outrageous intensity didn’t end there: Threats were made, guns were pointed, and there were warnings about the use of sophisticated drugs and hypnosis to silence those on the project who failed to toe the line. Lazar was even monitored by an armed guard when he had to go to the bathroom. What was going on? Now was the time for the ace to be played, for the UFOs to finally be unveiled.