Who is Bob Lazar?
You might have heard the name.
Lazar has been called a crackpot and a fraud for the last thirty years. Not only by skeptics, but by the UFO community as a whole.
There is little in-between when it comes to the validity of Lazar’s story —either people believe him or they discard his testimony wholesale.
What did Lazar claim?
Lazar says he was hired in the late-80’s to reverse-engineer extra-terrestrial technology at a top-secret military facility known as S-4. He says that S-4 is/was located a few kilometers south of what is popularly known as Area 51. (Part of his story also includes Element 115 and extra-terrestrials themselves. But I will not take up those issues here.)
That is a huge claim. And it is easy to see how so many are intrigued by his story.
Lazar initially shared his experience(s) at S-4 in May of 1989. And he has maintained his story for the past thirty years.
Why does Lazar matter now?
Lazar was pushed out of mainstream coverage for a long time, but he has now made a return for a number of reasons.
1.) There has been a documentary made about his story entitled “Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers” — directed and produced by Jeremy Corbell. (It is also important to include George Knapp — a co-producer and award-winning investigative journalist who has followed Lazar’s story since its inception.)
2.) Lazar appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience with Jeremy Corbell. (You can watch the full video-interview here.)
3.) Lazar wrote an autobiography about his experience in a book entitled Dreamland: An Autobiography. This book is published by Interstellar — an imprint of Tom DeLonge’s company To The Stars… (There has been controversy over whether To The Stars endorses Lazar’s testimony, or if they are publishing it from the company’s creative department.)
The sources above are all in support of Lazar’s testimony. But there are a number of gaps in Lazar’s story. There is no evidence (ie documentation) that he attended CalTech or MIT (both of which he says he attended), and there is no evidence (ie documentation) that he worked at a place called S-4. Lazar also said that he worked in Los Alamos before he was hired to work at S-4. There was, at first, no evidence to support his claim. Not until George Knapp (et al) recovered a Los Alamos phone book that listed Lazar’s name. The discovery by Knapp came after those at Los Alamos denied that Lazar had any connection to the lab.
Lazar’s testimony on Los Alamos was initially dismissed by most as another false assertion. But it turned out that he did, in fact, work for Los Alamos. He even brought Knapp to the facility, and showed him around. Lazar knew the building very well — as well as someone who had worked there.
Lazar has said that there was an effort — made by the U.S. government — to invalidate his claims. He says they (the government) deleted his birth certificate. They erased any proof that he attended CalTech and MIT. And they erased any and all proof that he worked at Los Alamos and S-4.
Lazar mentioned in the video-interview (with Joe Rogan) that he has given names of those who can corroborate his claim that he attended CalTech and MIT to Jeremy Corbell. He says that he refuses to give the names publicly — for fear that those he mentions will get in trouble by the U.S. government.
Bottom line: There is a lot of information swapped behind closed doors. And it is difficult to determine the validity (much less the truth) of these claims.
There is also a document known as The Lazar Report. This 49-page document explains some of the inconsistencies of Lazar’s testimony. I will say that there are a lot of logical fallacies and straw men in this document. The document does not set out to analyze the information in a fair manner. The Lazar Report is a piece of hyper-skepticism that, in my view, doesn’t do anyone any good. It does not treat the information fairly.
I think it is important to keep an open mind when investigating Bob Lazar’s claims. It is not helpful to accept what he says at face value. But it is equally unhelpful (and I’d argue intellectually lazy) to dismiss his claims because they appear too grand.
The U.S. government is notorious in creating and maintaining top-secret programs that are destructive. Operation Paperclip. MK-Ultra. Pentagon Papers. AATIP. Project Blue Book. CIA Detention Interrogation Program. To name a few.
Why would it, then, be unusual for the U.S. government to try and erase Lazar’s credentials? It doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility. The U.S. government has done worse.
I don’t know if Lazar’s testimony is true. But I do know that some of the information he had given in the past was corroborated several years later. (I am thinking of element 115 and the hand scanner. Both of which he discusses in his interview with Rogan.) But there certainly are gaps.
Lazar’s story seems too grand to fabricate. It seems like it would be a story easy to disprove, but that has not been the case. In fact, the last thirty years has done well to validate the claims made by Bob Lazar.
Is Bob Lazar telling the truth?
We may never know.
This article by Joe Murgia is a great analysis of the Lazar case — along with comments by his critics.
