Is Area 51 the new Roswell?

Bob Lazar

The UFO enthusiasts believed that they received confirmation of their beliefs in 1989 when Bob Lazar came forward stating that he had been an employee at S4, a top-secret facility just outside Area 51. Lazar claimed that during his first day of employment at S4, he was transported to his workplace in a large passenger bus with blacked-out windows. Upon arriving at S4, Lazar was placed in a "holding area" with various top-secret reports stacked up on the table in front of him. He was told that he had approximately 20 minutes to thumb through the blue-covered reports in what he believed was a ploy to keep him busy. As Lazar began to look through the various reports, he found that they were filled with shocking information that would cause most people to completely change the way in which they viewed the world! These reports contained pictures and information on alien autopsies, the mechanisms of an antimatter reactor and various other technologies that do not exist even to this day, 18 years later. In 1989, Lazar came forward on a local Las Vegas news station to do a series of interviews regarding his employment at S4 and what he saw while he was there. He chose to come forward because, according to Lazar, he felt that someone or something was trying to erase his existence. Lazar claims that when he tried to retrieve a copy of his birth certificate, the hospital at which he was born stated that they had no record of him having been born there.

Courtesy of Dreamland Resort

For better or worse, Lazar could be considered the catalyst of the UFO phenomenon at Area 51. Although there had been whispers of aliens, UFOs and conspiracy theories associated with Area 51 because of its top-secret existence, Lazar solidified these beliefs for many people with his claims of having actually viewed aliens and alien spacecraft. In his Las Vegas interviews, conducted by investigative reporter George Knapp, Lazar told viewers that his task at S4 consisted of investigating the propulsion system of one of nine disc-shaped aircraft being housed at the facility. The first time Lazar was able to view one of the discs, he believed that it must have been a secret terrestrial invention that was responsible for many of the UFO stories circulating throughout the area. Only after viewing many of the briefing documents associated with the craft and inspecting it much closer did he come to the conclusion that the craft was most definitely of extraterrestrial origin. Lazar stated that the propulsion system of the spacecraft used element 115, or ununpentium as a type of nuclear fuel. He was told that under particulate bombardment, element 115 would provide an energy source which produced antigravity. As the strong nuclear force field of element 115's nucleus was amplified, the surrounding gravitational field would be distorted. If a vehicle could produce this type of distortion, it could alter its relation to the space surrounding it. This could allow the vehicle to shorten the distance between itself and its destination, making travel from distant planets or universes much faster.

Lazar's claims were met with considerable doubt from much of the public and were denied by the government. It did not help his cause that many scientists and scientific groups were announcing his claims as unfounded. According to physicist Dr. David L. Morgan, "On no occasion does [Mr. Lazar] acknowledge that his scenario violates physical laws as we understand them, and on no occasion does he offer up any hints of new theories which would make his mechanism possible."

Lazar also claimed to have graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California Institute of Technology; however, his name does not appear on the alumni roll of either institution, nor do his pictures appear in their yearbooks. According to Stanton D. Friedman, a physicist and UFO researcher, Lazar's high school transcripts show that he graduated in the bottom third of his high school class; this fact alone would have made him an unlikely candidate for MIT. Lazar went on to state that after receiving his degrees he worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and worked on experiments using a one-half-mile-long linear particle accelerator. The laboratory claimed that Lazar never worked there; however, investigative reporter George Knapp found Lazar's name in the Los Alamos National Laboratory phone directory, indicating that he did work there as a technician.

Original work by Greg Robson Courtesy of PUMBA

While it may seem that each of these facts alone would indicate that Lazar was lying, he claims that this is the result of the government trying to disprove his claims and erase his existence. However, there are many more facts which suggest that Lazar actually does know more than the rest of us. To determine the veracity of his allegations, Knapp had Lazar take two separate lie detector tests. While the first was inconclusive, Knapp states that the second determined conclusively that he was telling the truth. Knapp also stated that Lazar was able to answer questions posed by a known employee, such as: "Where is the cafeteria?", "What color is it inside?" and "How do you pay for things?" Probably the most telling information provided by Lazar was the fact that he knew exactly when and where the UFOs could be seen. For one month in 1989, Lazar led expeditions to a lonely black mailbox just off of Highway 375 near the tiny and remote town of Rachel, Nevada. Almost exactly when he would indicate, bizarre discs would rise, hover and dart across the desert in front of them. These discs were captured on video by the many people who joined Lazar on these expeditions.