Friday 16 May 2014

Bob Lazar- 25 Years On

“It’s all a bit Bob Lazar!” as Richard D Hall says, but who is Bob Lazar? He is actually one of the most remarkable and influential people in the world of conspiratorial UFOlogy. On May the 13th 1989 the TV station KLAS Las Vegas interviewed a man with his face in shadow under the pseudonym “Dennis” on the 5 o’clock news. George Knapp hosted the interview, the first of many with him, and later managed to interview the guest under his true identity, Bob Lazar. Lazar told the viewers an incredible tale. He was a nuclear physicist who had been recruited to a top secret government research programme in 1988. The clandestine project was being run from a compound within the Groom Lake Test Facility, known at the time only by its nickname- Area 51. He had been working at the Los Alamos National Laboratory when he’d been appointed to his new post at the covert base. He travelled every day to work on the Janet planes to Area 51 (See: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/janet-flight-to-area-51.html) and was driven by windowless bus to a place called “S4”, an underground laboratory built into a mountainside a few miles south of the Groom Lake base. Here, according to his claim, he was ordered to study a strange craft kept in a hidden hanger. The craft was saucer-shaped and its pilot seats and controls were far too small for an adult human. It was also propelled by a system that used an esoteric powerplant. It was one of nine that were stored at S4. Lazar quickly worked out that these were spacecraft built by an extraterrestrial civilization. His job was to reverse engineer the powerplant so that the US Government could build one of their own. Lazar was made to sign a security contract as part of his employment; he was directed to tell nobody of what he did at Area 51. However he breached secrecy by inviting some of his friends, including the researcher and famous aviator John Lear, to watch from a distance while the flying saucers were test flown at night. As a result he was violently reprimanded and threatened by his employers. One day he was almost shot. Being allowed to speak out on TV probably saved his life, and that of his wife and children.
 
Time flies. It’s now been twenty-five years since Bob Lazar first hit the media, see: http://www.8newsnow.com/story/25495278/i-team-25-years-later-man-who-exposed-area-51. Since then Area 51 has become a household name, mostly thanks to Lazar. It baffles me how some UFOlogists actually think that Bob Lazar and others like him are deliberately put into the media by the government to draw attention away from Area 51, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/mirage-men-by-mark-pilkington.html. Opinion among researchers is divided. Skeptics have predictably denounced him as an imaginative fantasist and a deceitful fraud. However he is not universally supported within the UFO community either; Stanton Friedman has checked into his background and claims that nothing of Lazar’s back story can be verified. There are no records of him ever receiving the qualifications he professes, nor has his school or university any paperwork indicating that he attended; Friedman describes him as a “Walter Mitty”. However George Knapp, the journalist who brought him to the public eye, thinks that Lazar is being honest. This conclusion comes after spending years talking to him and also investigating his case. Knapp did obtain a payslip from Los Alamos which proves Lazar was on their staff. Lazar himself claims that his entire CV has been deleted and destroyed; this is why Friedman found no trace of him. This kind of “database murder” has been done to others, like Dr Jonathan Reed, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezsxm7SzZYk. Also one of Knapp’s contacts was warned off when he made inquiries. Richard D Hall says that although Lazar apparently has no official qualifications he can tell by listening to him that Lazar must have had some scientific education. He speaks like somebody who has been properly trained in the subject. Lazar has spoken out in great detail about his alleged experiences and has never changed his story. Now, a quarter of a century later, he maintains his position although, as you can see from the interview above, he avoids the public eye whenever possible. He says, half-jesting, that he’d like to apologize to his boss at Area 51 and ask for his job back. He definitely regrets his whistleblowing. Whether I do or not will depend on whether or not Lazar is telling the truth. Hopefully we will find out soon, at least before another twenty-five years has past. How many will be celebrating the half-centenary of the revelations of Bob Lazar?
See here for background: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/area-51-revealed.html.

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