
If you’ve never heard the story of Bob Lazar the infamous whistleblower, strap yourself in; this one’s a doozy.
Bob Lazar, at one point in his life, was just your average, run-of-the-mill Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist playing with chemicals in his driveway and strapping jet-engines to the back of his car. The year was 1982, and the only thing that made this character stand out was his obnoxiously loud, 200 mile per hour jet-engine Honda, a creation that looked like something straight from the film Back to the Future.
Lazar, being a bit of an introvert, didn’t want any attention, but It didn’t take long for the people of Los Alamos to notice his peculiar method of travel, and so his infamous Honda ended up on the front page of the local newspaper. So much for blending in.
Edward Teller, a theoretical physicist otherwise known as “the father of the hydrogen bomb”, just so happened to be in the area giving a lecture at the time of this particular publication, and so, Lazar being a physicist himself, felt the inclination to go meet one of the most famous physicists of his time, in person.
After spotting him leaning against a wall by himself, Lazar noticed he was reading a newspaper, the very same newspaper that his Honda had been featured in. After introducing himself as the person Teller was serendipitously reading about, Lazar and Teller spoke for a moment and then parted ways. Little did Lazar know, that meeting may have changed his life in ways he’d only come to truly understand much later down the road.
Fast forward a few years later, and Lazar is in Las Vegas. By this time, he had concluded his business with the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and was attempting to find his way back into the scientific workplace. After sending a resume to Teller which mentioned their meeting a few years prior, Teller gives him a reference to work with a company called EG&G, a national defense contractor. The company responds to Lazar, offering him an interview for a position related to research in advanced propulsion, specifying strange hours, and a remote workplace location.
That location, he came to learn, was Area 51, more specifically, Area S-4.
His first day on the job, after being flown in from Las Vegas to Area 51, was like any other first day on a job, albeit, a job with more than the average amount of security clearance. It would be some days later that Lazar first noticed something was very different about this position in particular, and this had nothing to do with the fact that he was working at Area 51.
Remember, this all occurred during the early 80’s. At this time, Area 51 was just another military base, and like any military base, security clearances are required for just about anyone setting foot on the premises. As such, Lazar was hardly fazed by his first day.
However, things took a strange turn after he was led into Area S-4.
In an exclusive interview with Joe Rogan of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Lazar explained in candid detail much of what he experienced in the top-secret military research installation; most notably, the work he did on a supposed aircraft of extraterrestrial origin.
“Normally, we had pulled in with the bus, and gone around the front through a normal double door.” Said Lazar dryly, as if he had told this story a thousand times.
“This time I had went in, there were hangar doors open. I went in through the hangar door and in the hangar door was the disc, the flying saucer that I worked on…I thought ‘Oh my god, this finally explains all the flying saucer stories, this is just an advanced fighter.’”
However, after being introduced to his lab partner Barry, as well as the sub-components of the supposed advanced, man-made saucer, Lazar realized that the aircraft he had seen in the hangar may not have been man-made after all.
As Lazar recounted, “Barry was very anxious to get a new lab partner, so he was talkative and couldn’t wait to show me different things. It was in the demonstration of the reactor working where it caught my attention to where this is technology that doesn’t even exist.”
As Lazar describes, the reactor itself, about the size of half a basketball, had no wiring to connect the subcomponents together, and was “borderline-magic.” The reactor was powered by an element not known at the time, referred to today as Moscovium, aka element 115, and as far as Lazar and his partner could surmise, utilized some kind of particle accelerator in it’s functioning. He goes on to further explain that the reactor produced a gravitational field, something that could only result naturally from a significant amount of mass. “This is something that we can’t do. We cant produce gravity.” Explained Lazar. “It pushed my hands away, just like two like-poles of a magnet.”
Lazar also mentions being provided with documentation stating the possible location where the craft came from, a star system within a relatively short distance from our own.
“There was some paperwork that indicated this was from the Zeta Reticulii star system.” Said Lazar. “It was Zr3, the third planet in that star system.”
The way that this extremely confidential project worked, according to Lazar, was in a compartmentalized fashion. No single individual knew the entirety of the project, and so each researcher was confined to work with their lab partner and their lab partner alone. In the case of Lazar and Barry, their specific task was the propulsion and power systems of the craft. This was why they were given access to the reactor, and also exclusive access to the craft itself.
“Everything is one color, a dark pewter color, and there are no right angles anywhere. Everything looks like it’s fused together.” Said Lazar when he described the craft. “The seats were small too. Obviously it was made for something small…There’s no control panels, there’s no bathroom. There’s no decorative components or artwork or anything that you would recognise. It’s a very barebones thing.”
Below the main floor of the craft was the section devoted to propulsion. Apparently, what the craft used to fly were three gravity emitters which looked as Lazar describes, “like a trash-can hanging on a pipe.” The three emitters could be moved in any direction to push the craft around with an anti-gravity field, and as Lazar explained, could be directed together for long-distance travel. Lazar also mentions that the craft utilizes a gravitational envelope to “separate” itself from the laws of physics. This allows the craft to achieve flight maneuvers that seem impossible, and even bend light itself.
“If the craft is sitting in the air and you walk underneath it and look up, you actually cannot see the craft. The light bends around. Gravity Bends light.” Explained Lazar.
As Lazar recounts, his position was put at risk after his wife was caught cheating on him. One of the pre-requisites for the job was that the employee in question have a stable home life. Not having one would make the employee a liability. Since his position at S-4 was so confidential, the powers that be had bugged his phone (which Lazar allowed to happen, as per the employment contract) and discovered that Lazar’s wife was having an affair. As such, he was relieved of the position without being told why.
Soon thereafter, Lazar decides to secretly take a group of his friends out to see the craft in action from a secluded location near to the test site. Since he had exclusive knowledge that the flight-tests of the craft occurred on Wednesdays when traffic was least likely to see anything, he knew that they could catch a glimpse of the UFO in action. As Lazar recounts, the craft was seen doing some pretty incredible, physics-defying maneuvers to the amazement of Lazar and his pals, but their fun was short-lived. After their third observational outing, they were caught red-handed by a group of soldiers tasked with protecting the site from unwanted observers such as themselves. Lazar, being an employee of the facility, was of course brought in to be questioned.
“I went in for debriefing the following day at Indian Springs Airforce base…This is when they brought out the transcript of the phone call with my wife. They sat me down and said ‘you know, when we meant to keep this secret, we meant you cant tell your friends.’”
Despite the obvious problem on their hands, Lazar was released from questioning with little more than a slap on the wrist.
During the interview on Rogan’s podcast, Rogan was obviously a bit perplexed at Lazar’s lack of serious repercussion. Lazar retorted, “I’m not sure they knew what to do, but they did let me go that night.”
Regardless, Lazar was desperately anxious after his debriefing. Realising the serious nature of his situation, he decided to divulge his information to a news outlet, presumably to ensure his safety should anything happen to him.
“Now I know I’m being monitored, and now I know I’m in trouble. It wasn’t a short time after that that I had contacted the only investigative reporter I had heard of in Las Vegas, George Knapp.”
George Knapp, an award-winning investigative journalist, then broadcast Lazar’s story for everyone to hear on November 11 and 13 of 1989 on KLAS-TV in Las Vegas, but not before putting Lazar through four separate polygraph tests to confirm that he was indeed telling the truth. He passed the tests, and the story was aired.
Now that the cat was out of the bag, the US government apparently fought back. Both Lazar’s work and educational history were, according to Lazar, tampered with in an attempt to sully his credibility. Any documentation of his work experience at Los Alamos National Laboratory was gone, as was the documentation associated with his time spent at Caltech and MIT achieving a Masters in electronic technology and a Masters in physics respectively.
“Its’ frightening. It’s absolutely frightening.” Lazar said of this experience.
To prove his story, KLAS obtained a phone directory from Los Alamos National Laboratory and found a Bob Lazar listed. As for his educational background, there has been little, if any evidence to support the claim that he ever attended either of the schools.
More recently, in 2017, Lazar’s laboratory was raided in a murder investigation. According to Lazar, this was not because of a murder investigation, rather they were looking for a sample of element 115 that he had supposedly taken while at S-4. This raid happened, coincidentally, around the time that he was involved in the shooting of a Netflix documentary called Bob Lazar: Area 51 and Flying Saucers.
The director of this documentary, Jeremy Corbell, further corroborated Lazar’s story by locating a security guard who handled the S-4 location. This particular guard was dodging Knapp’s interview requests back in ‘89, but finally allowed an interview with Corbell. After talking to him, the man remembered Lazar, specifically the day he confirmed his clearance.
So really, the jury’s still out on whether or not Lazar’s story is true; regardless, he stands defiantly by it to this day, almost four decades later. In regards to all the naysayers, and those that say he’s a liar, Lazar ended his interview with an exasperated, yet hilarious message:
“First of all, I don’t get any money out of this at all… I don’t take any money from this stuff. And as far as attention: I hate fucking attention. If you think somehow we came up with this thing, then you gotta tell me why we did it.”