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.