Bob Lazar's Area 51 UFO talk in 1993

Probably the highlight of my experiences at Area 51 was watching Bob Lazar answer questions at the Ultimate UFO Seminar on May 1, 1993. Although circumstantial evidence suggests he is a fraud, I am still awed by his performance.

Today, someone drew my attention to a video of Lazar's talk (above). The 1½-hour video was uploaded in 2011, but I wasn't aware of it until now. (Although the video is labelled as 1991, I know it was May 1, 1993, because I was there.) It makes me remember just how convincing Lazar was—and still is! I am less interested in Element 115 and the claimed details of the alien craft than in his emotional authenticity throughout this free-form Q&A session. Whatever question you threw at him, he had an authentic sounding answer, including expressing skepticism about most other UFO claims. If nothing else, this was one of the best acting performances in history! If he is lying, I don't understand how he did it. This is far better than any Hollywood actor could do.

The talk went on for close to two hours. (It was interrupted in the middle for a UFO sighting—a balloon or floating piece of paper in the sky— but most of that is edited out of this video.) The two-day was held under a tent in the open air outside the Little A'Le'Inn in Rachel, Nevada. There were 100 or more people in attendance, including several reporters. The event was recorded on audio tapes, and now I know it was recorded on video.

(Update 5/5/13: Here is another newly-uploaded video of Lazar's talk. It is better quality but edited down to an hour.)

I stood transfixed at the back of the tent. I asked no questions, but I drank everything in. Later, with considerable time and effort, I transcribed Lazar's whole presentation, working from the audio tapes. Here is the full transcript. Hopefully, it should match what you see in the video above. I figured the transcript was the first step to investigating Lazar's claims.

Once I had the transcript, I investigated the only thing I had the means to: Lazar's claimed educational credentials at  MIT and Caltech. Here are the results of my investigation, showing pretty clearly that Lazar never went to MIT as he claimed he did. (Sure, the government could have suppressed his educational credentials but not every professor or classmate he had.) The only conclusion is that he lied about MIT, and if he lied about that, how could you believe anything else he said.

A few years later, after gaining more experience with the characters and environment around Area 51, I published my most rational theory about Lazar, which I called Lazar Theory #1. If I had to bet me life on anything, that's the conclusion I would choose. (Also see my general position on UFOs.)

Still, since I don't have to bet my life on anything, the Lazar performance of 1993, and all his previous appearances before that, still mystifies me. If it is a lie, how did he do it?

The story was further enhanced by the appearance of Bill Uhouse around 1995. (He is now deceased.) Uhouse basically supported Lazar's claims but from a different angle, like two people working on different details of the same project. Uhouse's claim is that he worked on simulators to train pilots to fly flying saucers. When Uhouse spoke, he was a rambling old man, but like Lazar, his claims had all the relaxed authenticity of  someone who was really there.

It is important to state that I would not trust Lazar or Uhouse today. Both men were caught in verifiable lies in the non-UFO realm. Both were immoral characters, and if I met either one again, I would want to get away from them as quickly as possible. Having had experience with both, I know both were capable of lying and using others. Even so, I still don't know how they were capable of pulling off such complex, subtle and internally consistent lies. Watch the video above, and you'll see what I mean.

Glenn Campbell on UFOs and Area 51

My new blog post: My Position on UFOs and Area 51

Sean Morton: Prolific Prophet Pilfered Profits Forcing Furious Fed To File For Fraud

New update on Sean Morton! Ufo Watchdog: Judge Orders Sean David Morton to Appear (12/24/12)

Poor guy! He was always his own worst enemy.

My only contribution to this investigation is this headline: Prolific Prophet Pilfered Profits Forcing Furious Fed To File For Fraud

BBC Crew Detained Outside Area 51

Article published today: BBC film crew was held at gunpoint after trying to sneak into Area 51

This is what happens when a TV crew fails to consult me. What these clowns don't realize is they could be barred from the USA for their stunt.

Area 51 Viewer's Guide now available FREE online

For the first time in history, my Area 51 Viewer's Guide from the 1990s is available FREE to anyone who cares to download it. This is my visitors guide to the secret military base in Nevada, home of UFOs, government conspiracies or anything else you care to imagine. (Okay, I don't take you inside the base itself, but I tried to catalog and collate all the information we did have at the time.) This guide was instrumental in bringing legitimate press attention to the base and making Area 51 a public phenomenon.

Here is the whole 120-page document is right here in a PDF file.

I am the author and publisher and I am authorizing its free release (superseding the copyright statement in the book itself). Before you download it, however, please read my terms, conditions and warnings below...

• I am authorizing any member of the human race (and alien races with PDF capabilities) to copy, download and print this document for their own personal use.
• However, I still retain my copyright to this work. I do not authorize reproduction, modification or excerpts for any commercial purpose. You can not sell this document or steal passages from it and claim them as your own.
• I'm pretty sure Edition 4.01 was the final one.
• Although 17+ years have passed since the last revision, little has changed in the area. My Area 51 Research Center no longer exists (now an empty lot), but most everything else is as it was. (July 2011 was the last time I visited the area and hiked Tikaboo.)
• The most important change for the traveler to be aware of is THERE IS NO GAS IN RACHEL. Be sure to gas up a Ash Springs or Alamo. The Quik Pik convenience store is closed.
• The Tikaboo hiking advice at the end of the book remains current.
• You can ignore the "unauthorized duplication" warnings in the document itself, since I am now authorizing duplication. You can also ignore the copy number on the front cover. (That was a made up number anyway, to make you THINK I was keeping track of all copies.)
• I'm not really sure how many copies of this document I published and sold, but I guess it was something around 10,000. (Modest for a "book" but remarkable for a self-published document.)
• I assume no liability if any of the info in this book is out of date. Needless to say, I will not be updating it. If you get in trouble because of any outdated info in this publication, that's your problem!
• If you want to tell people about this document, please give them the address of this blog entry (not the document address) so they have a chance to read these notes (which could be expanded later).
• My Desert Rat newsletter that accompanied the Viewers Guide - sort of an ongoing update of it - has always been available online at  http://aliensonearth.com/area51/desertrat/

I am grateful to David Mallinson for scanning this document for me. I would have made it available earlier, but I didn't have such advanced alien technology myself. (It was originally written in MS Word, but I long ago lost the original files.)

As of Feb. 2013, this version is now searchable, replacing the non-searchable version originally released, although they should look the same when printed. This just means that you should be able to search for keywords in the document. 

If downloading and printing this document yourself seems like too much work, you can buy the same thing from an Amazon seller for $50-500 (Amazon's entry & screenshot). Your choice!

Enjoy!

Glenn Campbell

Lazar Story: A Fraud for Bigelow Funding?

I just came across this 1997 article of mine offering a skeptical theory about Bob Lazar and his claims:

Lazar Theory #1: Fraud for Bigelow Funding

Excerpt:

Lazar made up the story on his own based on his own significant technical knowledge, his peripheral work with a contractor on the Nellis Range and the prior Area 51 alien claims of John Lear (aliens eating humans in a vast underground base), which Lazar "cleaned up" and made more plausible.

What was Lazar's motivation? Money. Under Theory #1, Lazar cooked up the story to obtain funding from Las Vegas philanthropist Robert Bigelow, who was known to sponsor far-out projects.

Some details not mentioned in the article...

• The registration for the "Zeta Reticuli 2" corporation is a public record at the Nevada Department of State, which registers corporations. Both Lazar and Bigelow are listed as officers. As the story goes, Lazar not only worked with Element 115; he managed to smuggle some of it out, and the corporation was somehow intended to test or exploit it. (So much for intense base security! How can a low-level employee smuggle what is arguably the most precious substance on Earth?) We still don't know the purpose or business plan of the Zeta Reticuli 2 Corporation. The only thing certain is that it existed. We can also assume that when a private corporation is formed, its intent is to make money.
• Lazar himself had no idea his story would get so big. He was just out to pull off a modest con (according to Theory #1). Almost from the day the story was broadcast (and he was identified publically as the source), Lazar has been trying to put the brakes on it.
• Lazar has never been to Area 51! If he had, he could have described innocuous details of the base that any genuine worker would know -- like the cafeteria or what you first see when you get off the plane. There are a LOT of people who can verify these details, and one former worker in particular (who I met) grilled Lazar in private about them and got nowhere. Funny that someone would be willing to reveal details of a super-secret saucer program but not details of the cafeteria.
• Lazar had reason to be afraid of the government! If he had a security clearance, he could have been prosecuted for releasing classified information or any information about classified facilities -- even innocuous non-alien information. (LOL! So maybe THAT'S why he can't discuss the Area 51 cafeteria! If he had been there, he could have been prosecuted for that, whereas he can't be prosecuted for revealing a nonexistent saucer base at Papoose Lake.)
• FBI interest in Lazar was real. Knapp describes interaction with an agent "Mike Thigpin" who was apparently investigating Lazar. Knapp takes this as evidence the Lazar story is true. My interpretation, however, is that as soon as the Lazar story was broadcast on KLAS-TV, the government itself was scrambling for answers to determine if any classified (non-alien) information had been released.
• Lazar says that he went public on KLAS only to save his own life. There could be an element of truth to this! Remember that Lazar first appears on KLAS in shadow as "Dennis". If the government managed to identify him anyway and Lazar had a security clearance, then they are going to start harassing him. Every if the story is fictitious, he has certainly breached security protocols. The best way to save his own ass is to go fully public with his (fake) story. Then he is protected by publicity and the government can't touch him.
• Knapp says that Los Alamos denied Lazar worked there, but Knapp found Lazar's name in an official facility phone directory. Proof of a cover-up? Not exactly. Los Alamos is a big place, with lots of contractors and sub-contractors. Lazar could have worked "at" Los Alamos without working "for" Los Alamos. There is no question he worked for a contractor there (which certainly would have given him a primer on government secrecy).
• I remember seeing a document in the pre-internet era (although I haven't been able to find it again) which purported to be an internal military memo, released at the time of the KLAS broadcast, confirming that Lazar had worked on the Nellis Range, but that he had never been to any "forward areas", apparently meaning Area 51. It remains plausible but unproven that Lazar worked briefly on the Nellis Range and could have picked up many details of his story there. That he worked on the range and/or had a security clearance was reason enough for the FBI to take an interest in him after his claims were broadcast.
• Lazar is a smart dude, no question about it! (That is, smart in technical ways, not necessarily in his own life choices or in the ways of other people.) Although he probably misjudged public response to his story and probably didn't gain the reward he sought, he can certainly look a few chess moves ahead and say, "If I do this, then this other bad thing will happen to me." That may explain why he hasn't exploited his story in the obvious ways, like taking big fees for speaking at UFO conferences or giving interviews. (However, that hasn't prevented him from seeking Hollywood deals. Maybe he is just trawling for bigger fish.)
• In May 1989, around the time Lazar first went public, Scientific American published an article on hypothetical elements in that vicinity. Back in those ancient pre-internet days, everyone read the same magazines. Lazar was certainly well-read and intelligent, and Scientific American would have been on his reading list. It is conceivable he picked up Element 115 from there.
• My ex-wife once worked at TTR and she drove back and forth in her own car between there and Rachel. She passed "Site 4" every day, although she swears it was labelled "S4". It's a radar facility on a plain with no hillsides you could build saucer hangers into, but this real name could have found its way into Lazar's story. Perhaps he indeed worked there! (If so, then he might have attained a degree of legal protection by displacing it to Papoose Lake.)
• Before making his UFO claims, Lazar was a friend of Jim Tagliani, who worked at TTR at the time. He could have told Lazar about "Site 4" on the Nellis Range as well as other information about range operations.
• There's nothing at Papoose Lake. Nothing. We've looked at it from every angle (short of setting foot there). The key thing is roads. There's no road infrastructure that could support even a few buses a day, let alone a major construction project in the area.
• I like this quote from my article: "True or false, I feel the Lazar story has enriched my life in many interesting ways."

Area 51 Guide Service Discontinued

As of Aug. 2011, I have discontinued my Area 51 guide service, at least for the general public. (I may still do it for members of the media, however.)

The reason is simple: I don't live in Nevada anymore. I haven't lived there since 2008, but until now, I have been a laid-off airline worker who could fly for free, so I could go back there whenever I wanted. As of September 2011, I lose that privilege, so continuing the guide service just isn't practical. (Anyone who employed me would have to pay my airfare to Las Vegas from whether I happened to be.)

I have enjoyed the tours I have given and the people I have met, but the orbs are telling me to move on to new adventures.

I am still VERY active on social media, so check in there to see what I'm up to:

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• Glenn-Campbell.com

Glenn Campbell