Man who exposed Area 51 (Bob Lazar) defends UFO information 25 years later to the day

LAS VEGAS -- It has been 25 years to the day since a live interview with a shadowy guy named "Dennis" changed everything for America's most secret military base.
"Dennis" turned out later to be a man named Bob Lazar, who claimed he worked at a secret facility built into a mountainside just south of Area 51's main facilities.
The story started a UFO stampede that continues to this day. Lazar has tried to put the UFO tales behind him, and has been discredited in the eyes of some critics, but it is a story that simply won't go away.
The I-Team's George Knapp coaxed Lazar into talking about the last quarter century of UFO craziness.
The story that Bob Lazar told 25 years ago this week has gone around the world many times over, inspiring books and TV shows, and movies. Who knew that Indiana Jones' warehouse is out at Area 51?
Another repository of Area 51 lore is the exhibit at the Atomic Testing Museum. While in town recently for the interview, Lazar took the tour. He watched tapes of the first interviews he ever gave about his time working at S-4 and plowed through boxes of paperwork about his claims. Lazar re-iterated his preference that people don't believe his story.
"Look, I'm not out there giving UFO lectures, producing tapes. This is not a business of mine. I am trying to run a scientific business, and if I'm the UFO guy, it makes it really difficult, it is to my benefit that people don't believe the story," Lazar said.



These days, Lazar and his wife operate a scientific supply firm in Michigan. He has received media coverage because of the odd stuff he sells online but not everyone has made the connection to Area 51 and the stampede he started back in 1989, when he told of working at S-4 south of Area 51, where he saw flying saucers so advanced they had to be from somewhere else.
This is a model of the reactor that he says was able to generate its own gravitational field, powered by what he called element 115.
"Barry turned on the reactor, which is a flat plate, half a basketball essentially on it, just a hemisphere. And once activated you could not touch the sphere. You put your hand on it, just like poles of a magnet. The exact same type of force. We had a little golf ball and threw it at it and rebounded and knocked a ceiling tile out of place. That alone is something amazing that could change everything we know today," Lazar said.
The story exploded among UFO researchers, and just as quickly, led to questions and denouncements. The I-Team confirmed that Lazar previously worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory, but the I-Team also reported that his claimed education credentials could not be proven.
UFO experts including physicist Stanton Friedman also dug into his background.
"Here is a bright guy. I did a lot of checking. I find a lot of things didn't check out. It doesn't mean I disagree with everything he ever said, or that he was a liar all the time. It means I can't find the story as presented. What he did out there I don't know," Friedman said.
Lazar says there is no end to the questions, and even if he could prove he worked at S-4, someone would say he could have been the janitor, so he generally avoids the topic altogether.
"You want some of the fame? The fame. There is no big dump truck dropping off money at my house every Thursday night. I have better things to do. Generally, people have to twist my arm to come out and do things like that, as you know, you're the arm twister," Lazar said.
Those who were around him at the time the story broke, or took trips into the desert to see the craft fly above S-4 say, you really had to be there.



"There is a MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) moron that calls me every once in awhile and he says, 'you don't still believe that guy do you?' And I say, 'I lived it.' The whole two years, and it was fantastic, one of the greatest times of my life," aviator John Lear said.
"He wouldn't go to the trouble to make up a story to lie to the people and then perpetuate that lie. Bob has no idea who won the Super Bowl last year, or the World Series. He is just busy doing scientific stuff in the Bob Lazar world. He wouldn't waste his time perpetuating a lie on anyone," friend of Lazar, Gene Huff said.
"Look, I know what happened is true. There is no doubt. Period," Lazar said.
Lazar was known to have unconventional interests and a spotty financial record. So why would a top secret program let him in? One theory is that maybe someone predicted he would spill the beans, and was chosen because they wanted the UFO story to be planted. Lazar told the I-Team he can't rule that out entirely.

NOTE: The Area 51 exhibit at the Atomic Testing Museum is having a grand re-opening on Saturday, May 17. It is located at 755 E. Flamingo Rd. The phone number is (702)794-5151 and it is open on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Sunday from noon to 5 p.m.


Scientific UFO Studies

Articles & Documents

 

AIAA Committee Looks at UFO Problem

AIAA UFO Subcommittee, Astronautics and Aeronautics, December 1968, p. 12

The Committee has made a careful examination of the present state of the UFO issue and has concluded that the controversy cannot be resolved without further study in a quantitative scientific manner and that it deserves the attention of the engineering and scientific community.      
              

Report on a Survey of the Membership of the American Astronomical Society Concerning the UFO Phenomenon - Summary

Peter Sturrock, Stanford University

Refereed journals, to which scientists turn for their reliable information, carry virtually no information on the UFO problem. Does this imply that scientists have no views and no thoughts on the subject, or that all scientists consider it insignificant? Does it imply that scientists have no reports to submit comparable with UFO reports published in newspapers and popular books? The purpose of this survey is to answer these questions.      
              

UFO - An Appraisal of the Problem (A Statement by the UFO Subcommittee of the AIAA)

Aeronautics and Astronautics, November 1970, p. 49

At the suggestion of the AIAA management, the Technical Committee on Atmospheric Environment and the Technical Committee on Space and Atmospheric Physics jointly formed a UFO Subcommittee in 1967. The Subcommittee was asked to arrive at an unbiased assessment of the present situation and to serve as a focal point in the AIAA for questions regarding the UFO problem.                     
 

UFO Articles Published in Scientific Journals and Literature

Ufopsi

Bibliographical listing of articles on UFO's published in leading (mainstream) scientific journals and literature.     
              

UFO ENCOUNTER 1: Sample Case Selected by the UFO Subcommittee of the AIAA

Astronautics & Aeronautics, July 1971

The American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics published this case file in the journal Astronautics & Aeronautics. "The selected case, which occurred on July 17, 1957, is treated in the Condon Report. This sample case may serve to illuminate the difficulties in deciding whether or not the UFO problem presents a scientific problem."
                  

UFO Reports from AIAA (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics) Members

Peter Sturrock, Stanford University - Astronautics and Aeronautics, May 1974

Most UFO reports concern the experiences of laymen, but scientists and engineers divulge accounts resembling others when asked to do so in appropriate circumstances. The Executive Committee of the San Francisco Chapter of AIAA gave permission for a survey of its membership. This article describes the survey and gives the results.  

UFO caught on security camera in Puerto Rico

Published on 8 May 2014 By  Puerto Rico UFOs

Una cámara de seguridad capta lo que un testigo en la ciudad de Fajardo, Puerto Rico descrito como un objeto extraño, brillantemente iluminado volando erráticamente sobre la ciudad.

Bing translation:

A security camera captures what a witness in the city of Fajardo, Puerto Rico described as a strange, brightly lit, flying erratically over the city object.
 

TV crew records two UFOs in New Zealand

 

By Jason McClellan



An Australian television production crew unknowingly filmed a pair of UFOs over the New Zealand town of Queenstown.

 

 

The crew was in New Zealand filming for the seventh season of their series titled Colour In Your Life. On April 3, 2014, Producer/Presenter Graeme Stevenson and Director Sophia Stacey were filming the opening sequence for the show. It was during this filming that two mysterious aerial objects were recorded. But these UFOs were not noticed until the edited footage was being reviewed. On Monday, May 12, Colour In Your Life issued a press release explaining the discovery:

In the past week, when editing of the episode was complete Graeme noticed something strange in a wide shot – two objects travelling from left to right of the screen at great speed. When the images were slowed to a frame by frame sequence you could see the shapes emerge from the trees and move across the sky, eventually disappearing.



 Birds are a possible explanation for the UFOs as these objects seemingly emerge from the trees and move quickly through the sky. But in response to this possibility, Colour In Your Life posted to their Facebook page, “From the trees to where I was on the bike is about a half a kilometer. If you look at the speed in real time, that means that if it were birds they would have accelerated to about 4,000 kilometers an hour in one second.” Some have also suggested the possibility of military aircraft. But the crew again points to the incredible speed of the objects and the lack of nearby air bases to rule out traditional aircraft.

 

The Queensland, Australia newspaper Daily Mercury reports that, after seeing the UFOs in the footage, Stevenson Googled “UFO sightings” and found that a Holland UFO video shot that same week shows a similar object. That UFO is at the 3:25 mark in the following video:



It seems peculiar for a production company of a TV show to issue a press release, or “Media ALERT,” as they’ve titled it, about UFOs in recorded footage. Although it may seem like a marketing ploy for the show, it is possible that the production company is genuinely interested in identifying the mysterious aerial objects they captured on film.

UFO TV: THE SECRET MARS COLONY

 

Published on 12 May 2014 by UFOTVstudios

 

Evidence of a Secret Colony on Mars has sparked the interest of UFO Researchers around the world. Recent whistle-blower revelations from President Eisenhower's great granddaughter and others give renewed credence to the evidence that planet Mars is being prepared as a SURVIVAL COLONY in the face of imminent catastrophic events that may decimate the population of planet Earth. This film presence the best evidence available the there is indeed Life on Mars.



UFOs: An Orbiting Threat?





By Nick Redfern

It’s hardly surprising that in the aftermath of pilot Kenneth Arnold’s now-historic UFO encounter in the summer of 1947 (near Mount Rainier in the Cascade Mountains, Washington State), the theories put forward for what lay at the heart of the flying saucer phenomenon were many and varied. Secret weapons of the Russians, visitors from other worlds, or the results of classified American government programs were discussed – by the public, the U.S. military, and the media, all to varying degrees.
One particularly fascinating scenario for the sudden appearance of UFOs in the Earth’s skies was brought to the attention of officialdom by a little-known, but well-respected, source. His name was Edwin M. Bailey.
In the summer of 1947, Bailey was living in Stamford, Connecticut. At the time, he was working in the Physics Division of the American Cyanamid Research Laboratories on West Main Street. In the 1970s, the American Cyanamid Company was one of the United States’ top 100 manufacturing companies. Its output included antibiotics, vaccines, industrial chemicals, pesticides, and acrylic plastics.
Far more notable is the fact that at the height of the Second World War, Bailey worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Not only that, the specific branch of MIT to which Bailey was assigned was the Radiation Laboratory. It was a body that played an important role in the development of the atomic bomb, under the overall control of the Manhattan Project. On top of that, Bailey had graduated at the University of Arizona.



In other words, Bailey was no fool. And he was certainly not a wild-eyed fantasist either. He was a man with his feet firmly on the ground and his mind on the development of groundbreaking technologies and products. So, when Bailey spoke out about UFOs, people listened. Amongst them were the FBI.
Shortly after the news of Kenneth Arnold’s encounter of June 24, 1947 hit the headlines, Bailey contacted the FBI, in somewhat concerned fashion. Interestingly, Bailey had a story to tell that dated back to 1945, specifically after the end of the Second World War. As the FBI noted:
“Bailey remarked that immediately after the conclusion of World War II, a friend of his [Note from Nick: a person whose name is deleted from the files that have surfaced via the Freedom of Information Act] allegedly observed the ‘flying saucers’ from an observatory in Milan and Bologna, Italy.”
Very likely, Bailey was referring, in part, to the Astronomical Observatory of the University of Bologna, which was built in 1936.
Bailey added, said the FBI: “…apparently at the time the ‘flying saucers’ had caused a little comment in Italy but that after some little publicity they immediately died out as public interest.”
This, alone, is interesting: if Bailey was not speaking in error, then it’s entirely possible that a still-unknown wave of UFO activity may have briefly hit Italy around two years before Kenneth Arnold’s encounter even occurred. It was, however, what Bailey had to say next that really stood out.

 

The FBI recorded in its files the following:
“Bailey stated that the topic of ‘flying saucers’ had caused considerable comment and concern to the present day scientists and indicated that he himself had a personal theory concerning the ‘flying saucers.’”
As to the specific nature of that theory, it was, to say the least, grim. The FBI noted: “Bailey stated that it is quite possible that actually the ‘flying saucers’ could be radio controlled germ bombs or atom bombs which are circling the orbit of the earth and which could be controlled by radio and directed to land on any designated target at the specific desire of the agency or country operating the bombs.”
The files do not reflect which “agency” or “country” Bailey had his worries about, although I suspect – and consider it logical – that he was focusing on the former Soviet Union. Precisely where he got the idea of “germ bombs” from, is anyone’s guess. However, the fact that the American Cyanamid Company- which Bailey worked for – produced vaccines, antibiotics and pharmaceuticals, makes me wonder if this had a bearing on Bailey’s particular train of thought.
And, doubtless , his references to, and concerns regarding, radio-controlled atomic bombs was surely born out of his time spent attached to the Manhattan Project, during the Second World War.
While Bailey’s fears – that a hostile force would unleash a fleet of flying saucers to drop deadly atomic weapons, or equally deadly germs, on the American population – thankfully did not come to pass, it must be said that he had clearly given such a scenario a great deal of thought, and to the extent that he felt it was his duty to contact the FBI.
Perhaps this was all Bailey’s personal, wild theory and nothing else. On the other hand, maybe he had contacts who knew more – and who feared more, too. After all, let’s not forget that Bailey told the FBI that the flying saucer phenomenon had “caused considerable comment and concern to the present day scientists.”
Who those scientists might have been remains unknown. Fellow colleagues from MIT perhaps? Those that worked on the Manhattan Project? Maybe we shouldn’t rule out such possibilities…



Are We Ready for Alien Contact?



By Tom Head

Gabriel G. de la Torre, a psychologist at Spain’s University of Cádiz, isn’t sure we should be in a hurry for SETI and similar initiatives to succeed—because we have a skewed and incomplete understanding of how we should respond to first contact with an extraterrestrial civilization, and what our next step should be. After sending questionnaires to 116 students at American and European universities, he reached the unsettling conclusion that “the knowledge of the general public … of the cosmos and our place within it is still poor” and that “we need a new Galileo to lead this journey.”
But I’m not sure de la Torre, or anyone else, is in a position to assess just how huge contact with an intelligent extraterrestrial civilization would be. In a relative sense, the fact that we’re disagreeing about issues of scientific literacy and ethical priority pales in comparison to the fact that any civilization we encounter is statistically likely to be much more advanced than we are, and its mere existence will tell us things that will blow our minds—and that kind of dramatic paradigm shift will have unpredictable consequences on all of us.
But maybe it doesn’t matter. As Carl Sagan explains here, taking into account the finitude of the speed of light and the vastness of the universe, we may not hear back from another civilization until 2350 or so:



It’s no coincidence that this process towards a more cosmic view—which Sagan calls “the deprovincialization of our planet”—is in our best interests as well, whether we actually contact another species or not. If contact with an advanced extraterrestrial civilization does shock our cultural system, we can hope it will do so completely enough that we will finally give up violence and exploitation—because those very terrestrial threats have threatened our survival as a species as completely as any extraterrestrial civilization could.