The Revealing Truth of Ufos, Secret Aircraft, Cover-Ups & Conspiracies: Area 51
Undoubtedly, Area 51 would not have attained the high degree of mystique and mystery that it has without the input of Bob Lazar. He, more than anyone else, thrust both the base and the name solidly into the public domain. It should be noted, though, that others knew something of the tales of aliens at Area 51, which has added to the claims of Lazar. One was a man named Roy Byrum; he provided tax-based services to some of the employees at Area 51 from 1976 to 1979. Several of Byrum’s clients quietly told him what they knew of the alien craft held at Area 51 and of how massive funding for the UFO programs was being siphoned from other government programs as a means to hide the paper trail and the money. After Byrum shared this information with journalist George Knapp, Byrum was leaned on by government agents, who paid him a less-than-friendly visit.
Also in the 1970s, several employees of a company called Holmes and Narver Corporation revealed certain data on Area 51’s alien angle. It’s a company that provides engineering and construction services. One of the sources —a former employee of Holmes and Narver—was a woman who worked in the Clark County court system and was ready to speak with Knapp. That was quickly nixed, though, when the woman’s life was threatened, as was that of her family.
Also pre-Lazar is the story of Doug Schroeder, an electrical engineer who confided in Las Vegas TV producer Bob Patrick about what he was told was going on at Area 51, namely, the reverse engineering of alien craft and extraterrestrial technologies, although Schroeder stressed that in terms of actually flying the craft, not a great deal at all had been achieved. George Knapp noted that in 1991, Schroeder “died in somewhat mysterious circumstances.”
Now back to Lazar.
Certainly, one only has to compare Area 51 in pre-Lazar and post-Lazar eras. Prior to Lazar making the controversial claims that practically made him a household name, the term Area 51 was practically completely unknown— outside of the employees of the base, that is. In the immediate aftermath of Lazar going public, though, Area 51 was like a bad rash: it was all over the place. For decades, the secrets of the base were well kept. Thanks to Lazar, they were soon unleashed, but how, why, and under what specific circumstances did Bob Lazar become the poster boy for Area 51? Let’s see.
Robert Scott Lazar entered this world in 1959 in the Sunshine State of Florida. It’s accurate to say that much of the history of Lazar’s early years is swamped by mystery and controversy. What we know for sure is that Lazar signed up to take a class in electronics at Pierce College in California in the late 1970s. He also spent an unclear amount of time working for Fairchild, but undoubtedly, he was employed there. Now things become controversial and murky. According to Lazar, he obtained a Master of Science from Caltech and a Master of Science in Physics—the latter secured from none other than MIT, the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This claim has been dismissed by several high-profile figures in the field of ufology, including nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman—as we shall see later.
The next thread in the winding saga of Bob Lazar came in the early 1980s, specifically in 1982, when he was profiled in an article that appeared in the pages of the New Mexico-based Los Alamos Monitor newspaper. This is where we see evidence that Lazar did indeed work on a number of government- /defense-based programs of a sensitive and secret nature. Much of the article was devoted to Lazar’s love for fast cars. As in really fast cars. Lazar and a buddy from NASA took an old-school Honda car, hauled out its regular engine, and replaced it with one that was fueled by liquid propane—which is a pretty astonishing achievement by anyone’s standards—and get this: the new engine was made out of titanium. For Lazar, one hundred miles per hour was not enough. Nor was 150. This baby reached speeds of two hundred miles per hour.
The Los Alamos Monitor article revealed something else, too—something that provides a great deal of food for thought when it comes to those who suggest or maintain that Lazar was nothing more than a Walter Mitty-type character. As the newspaper article makes clear, at the same time that Lazar and his pals were zooming around the desert landscape of New Mexico, he was in the employ of none other than what back then was called the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility. Today, it’s the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center. The website of the LANSCE states: “For more than 30 years the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE) has provided the scientific underpinnings in nuclear physics and material science needed to ensure the safety and surety of the nuclear stockpile into the future.
In addition to national security research, the LANSCE User Facility has a vibrant research program in fundamental science, providing the scientific community with intense sources of neutrons and protons to perform experiments supporting civilian research and the production of medical and research isotopes.” The important part of this statement is the revelation that the LANSCE staff works in fields that revolve around U.S. national security. The fact that we can prove that Lazar worked for the organization under its earlier name is notable in terms of demonstrating that Lazar was definitely plugged into the world of government secrecy, even when he was just in his early twenties.
Just a couple of months after the Los Alamos Monitor ran its feature on Lazar, the man of the hour had what may have been a fate-driven encounter with one of the most legendary figures in the world of physics, someone who became known as “the father of the hydrogen bomb.” That man was Edward Teller.