[Jeremy Corbell] I often wonder about the nature of reality, about our relationship to the creative force that forged the particles of our stars and intertwined them with the molecules of our bodies. Who are we, and where are we actually sitting within the architecture of our universe? Are we alone? Or is the answer simply stranger than we can think? My name is Jeremy Corbell. I seek to weaponize your curiosity. And if you're ready to suspend your own prejudice, welcome to the world of Extraordinary Beliefs. [theme music playing] This week, we've heard the contention of UFO researchers that there's a secret government within our government. [man] Well, there are several...
Actually nine flying saucers, flying discs that are out there of extraterrestrial origin. [narrator] Not to burst your bubble, but the Earth is not the center of the universe. At least not anymore. You are not the star of your own movie.
Humans are not the top of the food chain. And fate is a fantasy. But I can't prove any of this, even if I wanted to. [Mahatma Gandhi] There is an indefinable mysterious power that pervades everything.
I feel it, though I do not see it. It is this unseen power which makes itself felt. There is an indefinable mysterious power that pervades everything. I feel it, though I do not see it. It is this unseen power which makes itself felt.
There is... [ominous music playing] [message alert] [narrator] Reality simply isn't what it used to be. Things are not what they seem. Everything around us is a mental construct. [echoes] We create our own reality.
Breaking that down is hard to do. And once it's done, there ain't no coming back. What happens to people when their fundamental beliefs, the bedrock of their understanding, [echoes] explodes into a million fucking pieces. When something comes careening from out of the blue and it messes with everything we know. [echoes] How do we react? [message alert] [message delivery alert] [message alert] [Gandhi] There is an indefinable mysterious power that pervades everything.
[narrator] Beliefs are mercurial things. They direct our lives and choices, moment by moment. This doorway is to the imagination emporium. Harness the hunches polished with proof. They're like clothing you can't afford.
They elevate us, yet they're not ours to keep. We discard them when they no longer serve our needs. Or we find out they weren't real at all. This story is extraordinary.
Especially if it's true. And it all started in the desert, just north of Las Vegas. [mysterious music playing] [newscaster] Area 51, the most secretive spots on the planet is located on the north-east edge of the Nevada test site and is said to be where numerous top-secret weapon systems have been tested over the years. According to some UFO researchers, it's also where the government is test-flying alien spacecraft. It sounds pretty far out, but some Las Vegas residents report having seen these flying saucers. [newscaster 2] A local scientist who says he worked at Groom Lake and saw the saucers joins us in tonight's interview.
He has asked that his identity be shielded. Sir, how do we know you are who you say you are and that you actually have knowledge about what's going on at Groom Lake? [man] Well, I guess there's no way you could really know. Uh... Uh, there's really no way I can prove it without revealing my identity and getting myself into more trouble than I have already. [newscaster 1] Exactly what's going on up there? [man] Well, there are several, actually nine flying saucers, flying discs that are out there of extraterrestrial origin, and they're being test-flown and basically just analyzed. [newscaster 2] You say there're nine saucers. How are those tests going?
[man] As far as what? [newscaster 2] As far as whether they're successful and that sort of thing. [man] Oh, well, some of them are 100% intact and operate perfectly. The other ones are being taken apart. I was involved mainly in propulsion and the power source. [man] Where did we get these saucers, how did they come into the hands of the government? [man] I haven't the slightest idea and, you have to understand, the information is very compartmentalized, and I was only allowed information that pertained particularly to what I was involved in. [newscaster 1] But, I mean, couldn't our government have made them as opposed to getting them from some alien beings? [man] Totally impossible. Uh...
The propulsion system is a gravity propulsion system, the power source is an antimatter reactor. This technology does not exist at all. In fact, one of the reasons that I'm going forward with this information, it's not only a crime against the American people, it's a crime against the scientific community, which I've been part of for some time, who are actively trying to duplicate these systems, yet they are in existence now and basically in the hands of the government. [newscaster 2] What would happen to you if the government learned that you were giving us this information? [man] Anything could happen, I don't know, it's... I haven't the slightest idea. [newscaster 1] You said... You referred to getting into trouble,
have you had some repercussions already? [man] Yeah, I've been threatened with being charged with espionage, I've had my life threatened by them, my wife's life threatened by them. And... I mean, I don't know where else you can go from there. [newscaster 1] Well, I want to thank you for joining us. Pretty interesting stuff you've got to say. Thank you. [newscaster 2] Thank you, sir.
We'll have more news in just a moment. [newscaster 2] Now, first we go to Dan Rather in Beijing for a look ahead at the CBS Evening News. [man] CBS Evening News, from China . We'll have extensive coverage...
[newscaster] The live interview with the shadowy Dennis drew international attention. Portions were broadcast by radio in six European countries and in a nationally televised TV special in Japan. Despite numerous inquiries and feelers, Dennis has remained anonymous until now.
His real name is Robert Lazar. He says he was hired to work at an area called S4, which is a few miles south of Groom Lake. At S4, he says, are flying saucers, antimatter reactors and other working examples of technology that is seemingly beyond human capabilities.
George Knapp, Eyewitness News 8. Good evening, everyone. You're in the right place at the right time. Blasting out of the Mojave Desert like a sirocco blazing across the land into your town, into your home, slamming into your radio like a super-charged nano particle of unobtanium.
Greetings to all of you from the boldest, bawdiest, most outrageous city in the world, planetary capital of sun, fun, sin, sex and secrets, my not-so-humble hometown, Las Vegas, Nevada. [chuckling] You know, there are a lot of people, myself included, who would like to focus on big-picture stuff. Who are these visitors, why are they here, what is the nature of reality, what is their interest in us, where did they come from? Those are the questions that people have been asking about the UFO mystery since the beginning. We're no closer to answering any of them, but Bob got pretty close.
Bob got to read these briefing documents that provided those kind of answers. The thing is, when we were covering his story, so much of the effort was in proving that he really was the person that he said he was. Is it true, is it plausible that really, that was the focus more than the really important stuff.
You have to cover the story of Bob Lazar. And the only way to do that is to talk to Bob. And I don't know if he'll talk to you or not, but you need to try. It's all going to be circumstance for you, is the moment that you approach him, the mood that he's in, what else is going on in his life at the time... You might hit the jackpot and get him at exactly the right time and the universe is aligned and he's willing to talk about it. But you'd have to be awfully lucky.
Because, in general, Bob doesn't like to talk about it. I think he's very happy in his life, he's happy to have left the UFO stuff behind, he misses his friends, he misses John Lear, he misses Gene Huff, maybe even me, to some extent. But he doesn't miss the UFO topic and he doesn't miss talking about it. Because ultimately, it's disturbing. These are disturbing issues.
They go to the heart of who we are as people, as human beings, the nature of reality itself. Is this a computer simulation? Are we all the product of an alien video game? Or some multidimensional movie, drive-in movie theater production or something? Big questions. Disturbing answers. And Bob has never been comfortable in talking about it. Never. He reacted by going into a cocoon in a lot of ways. He didn't like it. He doesn't like the attention, and it totally screwed up his life.
It's not surprising that even years later, he's still is uncomfortable in discussing these things. It's a very disturbing view of reality. [ominous music playing] A young person's guide to UFOs. This looks old, man. Hmm. [clearing throat] Hey, what are we talking about anyway? [man] We'll go through... [mumbles indistinctly] My name's Bob Lazar, I'm known for working at a classified base known as S4, out in the Nevada desert, near Area 51.
And there, we reverse-engineered alien spacecraft. And it's changed my life a lot. You know, it's probably changed every aspect of it. [Jeremy] Positive or negative? Well, for the most part, negative.
I mean, it's really difficult to find positive aspects of that. I mean, I'm sure there are some here and there, but most of them were negative. [Jeremy] Would-- Would you-- Would you take it all back and just be Bob the jet-car guy and never have done this if you can, or are you glad you had the experience? Yeah, it's hard to say. I don't know. I think I'd lean towards not... At this point in my life, I'd probably lean towards not saying anything.
[Jeremy] You know, what would be your message to a young person now about looking at your story and thinking about the world, what would you say to them? Just pay attention. Just pay attention. I can't really say much. The world's a lot different now.
The way information is disseminated and the way things are passed around. It's distorted even faster and more now than it used to be. So, they've got a rough road ahead if they're trying to cut through the bullshit. [Jeremy] What do you want them to know? That in the late 1980s, the US government had recovered alien spacecraft, several of them, and the technology in the Nevada desert that they were keeping quiet and analyzing. That's a fact.
They don't need my story, but, I mean, that's all my story was. Is that I was just one of the people working on this ground. Well, fine, I'll just say everything instead of holding back on anything, and then you can edit it later on. [interviewer] All right. Well, we'll take it from the top then. Okay. Well, go ahead.
[chuckles] How you got involved with this program? I had sent resumes to several national labs, I got a response from a couple of them. I went in for an interview, they had a job in mind, and then they continued questioning me mainly on my interests outside of work. They seemed to be really concerned about that. What, things like jet cars and... Right. "What do you do in your spare time?" You know, "You say you work on little projects."
I said, "Yeah, I have a particle accelerator in my master bedroom," and things of that sort. And some time went by and they called me back in, they said there was a senior staff physicist that was leaving this organization and they basically interviewed me for that job. I was given a lot of briefings to read on... I believe there are 121 different briefings, and they sat me in a room and they had a... While they were going and updating my clearance to a level that they call "majestic..." [interviewer] You start reading these reports, you see some of them deal with flying saucers, what's your reaction? Well, I was completely shocked, I couldn't believe it.
But I was fascinated, I was so excited, I... It's a science dream, really. Eventually, I was shown them. One close-up, one operating. They had one of the reactors out of the crafts, which was an antimatter reactor.
Uh... I was given a demonstration on how it worked, things that it did and the physics of it. The thing I was most interested in is duplicating the reactors without using this element 115. Which is, of course, impossible. They were trying to... And there have been projects before that just trying to use a normal nuclear generator fueled with plutonium.
And that was, really, a futile attempt. [narrator] Some people are sources of gravity. Their certainty and wholeness commands our attention. We are drawn to them by a natural law that requires we don't quite understand the mechanism. But the pull is like a tide, a current you can't deny. And eventually, it wears you down.
Call George Knapp. [automated voice] Calling George Knapp mobile. [phone ringing] Hey, George. Hey, man. What's up, man, how you doing? All right. What's going on? This is now 30 years since you initially broke the story about Lazar.
So, I mean, the amount of the information is overwhelming, and I just want to go over with you some of the details of the case. Sure. We're talking about UFOs, alien craft, back engineering, and there's Lazar saying he did all that. And from what I understand, it spread everywhere.
Yeah, you know, we had that first interview in May of 1989, with him as Dennis, was... not his real identity, not known, not revealed to the audience. And even then, before we knew who Bob Lazar was, that sparked a big... A great deal of interest among the public.
I spent eight months between May and November trying to verify Bob's background, to see if we could solidify the case, to see if we could find out if he was telling the truth. And then to... The plan was to unleash it in November, which is what we did...
...it was the highest-rated news series we've ever done. It was the highest-rated news special that ever aired in Las Vegas. And then it really exploded, it went all over the world. Bootleg copies of the tapes were being sold and shown in movie theaters. You had media interests from all over the world. And I think a lot of it was skeptical at the beginning which, of course, it would be.
But in the end, every major news organization in the world beat a path to Area 51's door. And tens of thousands of people started showing up out there, to see whatever it was that was flying around in the desert. They're still coming, all these years later. And I know a lot of my media colleagues have had problems with that story, but they've all covered it, all of them.
It put Area 51 on the map. It's now known all over the world. Even though Lazar worked at S4, Area 51 is the term that the public knows. So it was huge. It was huge then, it's huge now.
[narrator] The mountains appear to float on dry lake beds. Like spaceships from another world. They seem to ride on a viscous material, channeled through empty space by heat that rises and separates. It petrifies everything it contacts like a green glass honey. A goddamn psychedelic liquid drowning the emptiness with imagination.
This desert is pocked and punctuated by a thousand gaping holes created in the thousand atomic blasts that define an era. What are they building in the desert, north of Las Vegas? [echoing] What are they hiding? [man chuckling] Yeah. [suspenseful music playing] [Jeremy] What is your name and what is your relationship to Bob Lazar? My name is Mario Santa Cruz, and I met Bob actually in my neighborhood. He lived, like, one block over. My attraction to Bob was his jet dragster. I saw this jet dragster sitting out in front of his house in our neighborhood which was extremely...
Just the jet dragster alone was rare. But in my neighborhood, to see something like that was unbelievable. [Jeremy] People were harassing Bob, threatening him, and you were with him in one of those experiences, at least one. A couple of times, actually. I actually had a weapon with me, you know, when we rode together because he had been shot at, you know? What was the weapon, was it the Uzi? Yes. Yeah. [chuckling] [Mario] I don't know why I'm being so careful.
I'm used to being that way when it comes to talking about Bob. Being careful what I say, you know what I mean? So it's kind of a force of habit to kind of just walk on eggshells a little bit. He just wanted to stay alive. That's why he exposed himself. His life was... It was in chaos. Hell, he pulled out of it and he dug deep.
It's a pretty incredible story. [interviewer] They shot at you? Somebody shot maybe as a warning perhaps. It was a good warning. I had my back tire shot out on my car as I was getting on the freeway.
My-- You saw the guy? Yeah. Is this a secret worth killing to keep? I mean, the government, would you say? Obviously. But in fact, the only reason that getting this on tape is insurance. Well, that's one reason, but, I mean, also as an American citizen, you're bothered by... That this stuff is going on and-- Yeah, I am, but not enough to have, you know, stood here and have it on the record.
Insurance is the true motivation behind this. At four months old, in our little apartment in Florida, that's me holding him, very proud mom holding him. We had a beautiful little place in Florida. Look at that. One Sunday morning, must have been about 6:00 in the morning, everyone's asleep, and there's this huge bang.
Bob had put a jet engine in the bike. At 6:00 in the morning, he decided to take it out for a trip. [Jeremy] What did you guys think when he said, "Mom, Dad, I'm building--" Scared out of my mind. I didn't know what he was going to do next. Was he going to blow up the house, blow up the world? I don't know. [Jeremy] It's out there, you know? He's out there.
You know, if he proves his story, let's say, maybe it would cause problems, maybe it would blow shit up. It... More than likely it would. But he's best off keeping things down low, really. But at the same time, he has said there is a way he could prove his story. I want him to be happy.
If vindication is what he wants, fine. But that's up to him. You believe him or not.
It's a fearful thing to think that there's something out there that we don't know anything about. Or are they dangerous? Can they hurt us? Will they attack us? You don't want to know, so you don't believe it. You'd rather not believe. There might be other things out there, other things in the universe. There has to be. We can't be all by ourselves. We can't be.
[eerie music playing] My name is Joy and I am Bob's wife. We've been together 17 years. [Jeremy] What is it that you think is most misunderstood? That he really is an honest guy, you know? He doesn't make stuff up. [Jeremy] I guess it's just so big. So the easier thing to do is to point the finger and say, "Liar." [Joy] Yeah, that's so sad.
That's really sad... That they don't know real Bob. [narrator] There's particular moments that define each one of us.
We may not know it at the time, but we learn it later. Every action creates a cascade of reactions. Life is a web of events.
Actions overlaid by consequence. And woven across the fabric of time. Future determined by past, past defined by present, present experienced throughout the lens of personal history. But for some, it's obvious. You can put your finger on it. That definable, indelible moment when everything changed.
[Bob] I love my job. There's a lot of craftsmanship in the stuff I do. I really like working with my hands. It's a really unique job.
I don't think there's any other job where you get to do this kind of stuff every day. We'll either get a really interesting order coming in, or Bob will get bored and try to come up with a new project, and that's when it gets really fun. So, there's another one that he wants to do... Like recreate a grand atomic chemistry set, something of that sort, and I think that will be really cool if he ever decides to hone in on that. [Bob] This is the atomic energy lab kit. It's something from the 1950s, a toy, like a chemistry set you'd get for your kid. It was made by Gilbert.
[man] Chemistry is, today, a fascinating adventure for youth of all ages. Gilbert has made this exciting science available in safe and easy-to-understand form. Made as completely safe as human ingenuity can devise. [Bob] This actually came with radioactive material. You could really conduct atomic energy experiments in it.
It was fascinating. And it was billed as the most dangerous toy ever made, and still, in some respect, it's still considered that way today. But the thing is it wasn't, it was just people's fear. [mysterious music playing] [Jeremy] So, here I am and I'm watching you do your work. If people don't know you, it''s so easy for them to just make shit up about you and to dehumanize you.
How simple that is to do. The fact that somebody would say you're not a scientist. I mean, all I've ever done, is science-related stuff my entire life.
So, I don't know. I guess the point is, do I really care what people I don't know think? And probably to some extent, I do. But I don't dwell on it. I guess it is easier to discredit someone that you have no information on, 'cause you can just say anything about them, then there's nothing to refute it.
I mean, I feel privileged I got to work in it. So, in some respects, I shouldn't be allowed to complain. I've given the example of, you know, transporting one of those small modern-day portable nuclear reactor back into Victorian times, and giving it to the scientists there. Back in that time, they didn't even know about radiation.
So they'd see a machine making power, kind of like what we're doing, and marvel at it, "Wow it's producing a lot of power, there's no smokestack, there's no coal, there's no fuel. How is this thing working?" They start taking it apart. Well, they'll all die, soon as they get close to the core.
If people would come in to check on them, we'll all die, and no one knows, nothing touched them. So they're going to think it's haunted or something, there's some evil forces or something in there. But, I mean, who says that can't happen to us? The first time Barry showed me the reactor in operation, you know, here it is on the bench, and he said, you know, "Try and touch the sphere on top." And you couldn't, your hand was pushed away. Just like in two light poles of a magnet.
It's the exact same feeling. But there was no metal involved. And that's shocking. That's really shocking because nothing does that. That's an operating powerful force field.
So just seeing something like that immediately starts that whole chain reaction in your mind going, "Wow, wait, if you could do this, there could be force fields on tanks. There can be things that lift off the ground. We don't need jet and rocket engines anymore. That means, wait, there's no use for cars." I mean, boom! The whole thing changes the entire world, the economy, everything.
We'd go end-on-end just if we had an answer to how that machine worked that I was sitting there, touching. [Jeremy] The potential for us to re-understand human experience is-- Right. Right. I mean, there's life somewhere else.
It's a big deal. It's an important part of human history that we've found that out. It was... Awesome but fearsome at the same time. It was being completely fucking scared all day long. It's not exactly the most fun job when you're there.
You know, almost three decades later, the fear drops off and you're just left with the amazement and technology that you were exposed to. Here we have an artifact here from another civilization. It really changes the way a lot of people think.
We're all looking for an answer. Having physical proof is an awful big deal. [Jeremy] I think what a lot of people find really compelling about Bob, he legitimately appeared...
And appears sometimes just perplexed by what he saw. Have you noticed that about him? [George] Yeah, he was aware that this was weird. He was aware it was weird that they hired him. I mean, you know, he's a smart guy, and he thinks outside the box. So in a lot of ways, he might have been just exactly what they needed for a program that seemed to be stalled.
But he knew that he wasn't their kind of a guy, that they could have had their pick of any scientist in the world, presumably, to work on this. So it was strange, and it was strange that they started showing him these briefing books with this incredibly sensitive information. Right off the bat. As soon as he gets there, they start showing him this stuff with alien bodies broken down so he could see their organs and the history of human-alien interaction and all kinds of things that the UFO community had suspected but no one could prove, and he just thought it was weird that anyone would show him this stuff. He wondered what the heck was going on. I think he was thrilled, you know, part of him was really thrilled to be there and thrilled to see it, even if it turned out to be some kind of a ruse.
But, you know, he knew that something was not quite right about the whole thing, or suspected that anyway. [Jeremy] You were telling people since 1989 that there was some sort of hand scanner, there was like a bone scanner. and you tried to describe it. You said you think it took measurements of the bone, there were these pegs, you put your hand on it.
[Bob] It's a small plate with some pins on it that you could put between your fingers. There's a bright light above it... The interesting thing is when you walk into the facility, or even to leave, they have a hand reader. I was told that it has to do something where it measures the...
A bright light measures the bones in your finger, they're unique to each person. It sounds like something out of a TV show, but it's exactly the way it is. [Jeremy] I looked for that kind of thing all over the Internet, I never found anything, and then all of a sudden, this article comes out and it says that at the Nellis Range, they were talking about the stealth program, there was indeed this hand scanner that was used in the secret programs, and they just admitted or announced it publicly, and there were some photos, and I just was interested and so... I never thought I'd see one of these again. [laughing] But I tried to explain this to people so many times, and they either didn't believe me or say, "Yeah, yeah, I'm sure there is."
And there is it. There it is. [Jeremy] It's like a biometric thing for the hands, yeah? The beginnings of, yeah, I mean, it wasn't all that advanced back then but, yeah, that's it. I can't believe you found a picture of this. I really can't. This was the scanner used to get in to S4. And I tried to explain this to people so many times that there were pins in you stuck your hand, a light above, and it supposedly measured the length of the bones in your hand that, you know, is unique in each individual.
It's exactly how it was. Yeah, that's amazing. It's amazing you came up with these. It's amazing to see this again. Back then, this was the hot thing. [Jeremy] What does it feel like when these little things that you said become public, and there's this tiny bit of vindication-- It is, there's little moments of vindication, you know, little pieces here and there, little I-told-you-so's, you know, pop up every couple of years or so, but this is a big one. 'Cause a lot of people said these didn't exist, and, yeah, it was some just...
fanciful thing I came up with. But, yeah, this is exactly it. [narrator] Ideas are the most dangerous weapons on the planet. They creep under your skin.
Dormant, volatile, explosive. They attach to our collective consciousness. And then one day, they bubble to the surface to assert their power... And when detonated, life is never the same again. And we immediately know we're always wrong. We're always fucking wrong.
I did not believe that this should be a security matter. Some of it, sure. But just the concept that there's definite proof...
We even have articles from another world, another system, you just can't not tell everyone. [interviewer] Checking out Lazar's credentials prove to be a difficult task. He says he earned degrees in physics and electronics, but the schools we contacted say they've never heard of him. He also said he worked as a physicist at Los Alamos National Lab, where he experimented with one of the world's largest particle beam accelerators, a half-mile long behemoth capable of generating 700 million volts. Los Alamos officials told us they had no records of a Robert Lazar ever working there.
They were either mistaken or were lying. A 1982 phone book from the lab lists Lazar right there among the other scientists and technicians. A 1982 clipping from the Los Alamos newspaper profiled Lazar and his interest in jet cars. It, too, mentioned his employment at the lab as a physicist.
We called Los Alamos again, and an exasperated official told us he still had no records on Lazar. EG&G, which is where Lazar says he was interviewed for the job at S4, also has no records. It's as if someone has made him disappear. [Jeremy] One thing that people say about your story and your experience is that you were a puppet, a marionette, that you had no control over what was going on at that time, that you were taken advantage of or compromised, and you were being used as a source of disinformation. And what evidence to support that? Right-- Yeah. And what's the evidence to support those claims? Is that just something to say? No, I'm just saying, that's the kind-- If you make a statement, you have to have some evidence to say where the statement came from.
You're basing it on emotion and fear. And you're afraid that I'm right. Tell me what you've heard that makes this impossible. I'm trying to tell you exactly the way things were. Where is it? Show me the alternate reality that you believe that doesn't lock up with my actual reality.
I mean, where are those other facts? Show me what they are, these facts you grabbed together and painted a different story of my life than I did. I mean, I thought I set the record straight 30 years ago. [narrator] Can we ever be made whole if we're not believed? If our life story is challenged by consensus? Most of us are not forced to answer for our past. We couldn't really navigate this moment with an irreverence of what came before. But some people are placed under a microscope.
Their words, their actions scrutinized and challenged. And then they're told to quiet the lies. How much can a man take before he submits to the weight and consequence of distrust? Does he fade back into the shadows that formed him? Or does he lash out? To carve his words into your flesh. [intense music playing] I don't know what else can I say. What else can I say? How can I prove anything else? [Jeremy] At the worst-case scenario, you lied for a girl or you lied to get a job. What does that mean about your story? Do you think Los Alamos just hired me out of high school? If you don't think that's possible, then something had to happen in between.
I don't understand how everybody gets so caught up in the minutiae. Because you can debate that stuff forever. We can go back before MIT. And you can start fighting whether or not, and where I lived in high school. That is not going to translate into answering the questions and the things that I have brought into the public eye. That's the important stuff.
It almost seems like this is an intentional distraction. You need to pay attention to the bigger picture. If you really want to research all the other stuff, fine, go ahead and do it. But you really need to pay attention to what I'm saying.
'Cause I have better things to do than come up with this. I'm not interested in doing this. I'm not... I don't like being in the public eye. I don't have money for doing this.
And quite frankly, I could make up a better lie. But I have no motivation to lie. This hasn't helped me out. What does that mean for Lazar's story that we can't prove his schooling in fact? [George] It was a problem, I mean, I wondered, can we go forward if we can't verify what was going on in his background? The central point for me was, if he worked at Los Alamos, that suggests he had to have an education somewhere. I think he said it to me a couple of times, you know. "What do you think, they hired me right out of high school?" I looked at people who knew him back then, Jim Taliani for one, who said, "Yeah, Bob went to Caltech back then. I dropped him off."
I interviewed another person who also knew Bob then and said that he would drop him off at Caltech, or pick him up from the library. That, if he wasn't going to school there, he sure was making a good show of it back then. Would it prove his story about working on flying saucers if he could show he had degrees from Caltech and MIT? No, of course not. It would not prove that he worked on flying saucers, it would just prove that he went to school.
The people who despise him and who doubt the story the most, the debunkers, would find something else to bitch about. Bob got into some trouble after he became a worldwide UFO celebrity, he did a typical Bob-sort-of-a-thing and got mixed up with some hookers, he was helping them set up a mini brothel in a neighborhood. And when he told me about it, I thought, "Oh, my gosh!" My professional life is flashing before my eyes.
The most high-profile witness in the biggest story I've ever done is now telling me he's involved in this criminal enterprise, and he kind of thought it was funny. But it wasn't funny to me, so I said, "You got to stop this stuff, you got to shut this down." I called the cops. I let some people know, "Look, he made a mistake, it's being shut down." They raided the place, arrested Bob. And in those days,
they weren't many people who were ever prosecuted and arrested for pandering. Lazar was. So, Parole and Probation, they're doing a background investigation, and they're going to make a recommendation to the court what the sentence should be for his crimes. He tells them the same story. Where he went to school,
where he worked, S4, MIT, Caltech, all that. And they investigated. They were having the same problems that I was having. They couldn't verify a lot of this stuff. If Bob truly was a UFO con man, that was the time to come clean. Because Parole and Probation was ticked off. They thought he was misleading them.
And as a result of that, they were going to recommend, they did recommend, that he do hard time, go to prison. He knew it. That was the time for him to come clean. Because it was a much better chance that he would not be sent to prison. He didn't. He stuck to his story.
He told them the same story that he told me. That went a long way for me in showing that he had been telling the truth. Because it was definitely in his own self-interest to fess up at that point, and that's not what he did. He stuck to his guns. And here's the thing, I could see Bob Lazar pranks the UFO world and the UFO community, I could see him doing something like that.
But does he lie to his mom and dad? Does he lie to his wife? Does he lie to all of his close friends and tell them the same story and try to get away with it? If you look back on the people who knew him while this was going on, who knew him before he was hired to work out at S4, who knew him during the time he was going back and forth out there, and who stuck by him after this whirlwind of international publicity kind of rained down on his head. Everyone who knew him, everyone who was close to him supports his story and says he's telling the truth. [interviewer] You saw something up there that you think might have been-- I hate... I really hate to say stuff that I can't put my hands on and say this is absolutely for sure. What did you see? I walked down the hallway and, one time, I was working out there and there were doors, the doors that go to the hangars, the smaller doors from the corridors that have a 9-inch, or 12-inch square window with a little wires running through it just about head level, and as I was walking by, I just glanced in and I noticed...
At a quick glance, there was... There were two guys in white lab coats facing me towards the door and they were looking down and talking to something small with long arms. Now, I was just surprised as I walked by and I only caught a glimpse. But I don't know what on earth that was. [Jeremy] People say you saw an alien. Did you see an alien at S4, Bob?
I don't think I saw an alien at S4. You know, we're splitting hairs here. This had to do with a glance through a window that I wasn't supposed to be looking at anyway. And I'm still convinced. I looked in the window and I think these guys had a doll in a small chair which was, you know, similar to what was in the craft. And I think they were just looking at dimensions and they put something in there.
And I had just taken a glance and it was just, you know, something tiny sitting in the chair. I don't think there was an alien in there posing for them. You know, I think they just had a small character or something. You know, doing measurements or something. Again, we're talking about, you know,
like a 400 millisecond glance, so... Now, how much can you see out of that? I never saw any aliens walking around there. I never heard anybody saying anything about living aliens, so... I don't think that was it.
But they did have a nickname for the aliens-- "The kids." The kids. [mysterious music playing] [narrator] Is someone else here? Maybe visitors interested in us? In our genes, in our souls? Maybe we're property, just a goddamn commodity. Or like livestock. Maybe they'd like our condors and cupcakes. A kimono or a top hat, who the fuck knows? Or maybe, every single sighting of things in the sky is a product of our collective consciousness.
A false hope that humanity desperately needs intervention by external powers. We've always looked to the skies for answers instead of looking into ourselves. [interviewer] All right, so when, at what point... Describe the evolution
of your knowledge here, I mean, that you realized that this thing that you were working on came out of a flying saucer? Well, of course, I know that technology doesn't exist at all. Why? It doesn't. Take my word for it.
[chuckling] It's... It's just technology that doesn't exist yet. I mean, you're talking about... There is... Science doesn't even know what gravity is, much less how to produce it or control it.
And here is a device that's producing it and controlling it and using it as propulsion, so... [Jeremy] You're telling me there's a different physics? That was your job, you were working on that? The science was something we were trying to figure out. But we knew how the devices would operate. You know, for instance, the propulsion of the craft, everything that we have, whether it's a propeller plane or a jet or a rocket, it throws something out the back. Either high-speed exhaust, or a large volume of air.
It's an action-reaction force. The action is, you throw something out the back, and it moves you forward, it's how everything works. This is the first time there's a craft, it's a reaction-less craft. It's a field-propulsion craft. And what it does is it creates a distortion in space and time in front of it. Where space actually bends.
And my analogy to that has always been you put a bowling ball in the middle of your bed and then a foot in front of it, take your fist and push down on the mattress, the bowling ball will roll towards it. And that's exactly how the craft worked. It creates a distortion right in front of it and the craft follows forward.
[Jeremy] Right. So there's a different physics that-- Well, the science that explains how the technology works. I mean, it's all encompassed as one thing, alien technology and science.
[Jeremy] What is the big picture? What is the takeaway of your story after you're gone? You're not a rebel kid with a jet car at Los Alamos today. Today's a different Bob Lazar, right? Right. What have we learned? What's the message of your story? The big thing is the suppression of extremely advanced technology. And the suppression of unknown science. That's it. Those two things, to me, is the only thing that's important about what was going on out there. Yeah, there's another civilization and, like I've said before, that's a crime not to tell humanity about that, but that's a separate thing.
[Jeremy] Meaning that there is something different in science dramatically that we're not allowed to know? Right. Right. That is a true statement? Yeah, that's a true statement. The fact that there is another intelligent, technologically advanced civilization, we have some of their objects. That is really the pinnacle, that there is another civilization in existence that's intelligent that we know about.
And we actually have artifacts from them that can operate. So, I mean, that's a big, big deal. But, in my mind, there's a lot to deal with that. However, the science and technology can change us dramatically, can change the way the entire world operates, the economy, everything. So those stick out in my mind as being critically important.
And we have it? Oh, we have them. You don't have to believe it, but we do. And you've seen it? I've seen it. And you've touched it? I've dismantled it.
After you're exposed to it, just for a little while, it begins to settle in your mind, these are normal things. Like, "Okay, 115 belong there on the chart, and these... this flies, and this is how gravity works, great." It's like someone being... From the 1800s being exposed
to a car for a few days. He takes it for granted very quickly. The most shocking thing was when I actually got to look inside the disc, the seats in the panel associated with them were very small, they were, you know, perhaps that far off the ground. Like something... Now, you've... If we had made something like that we wouldn't have made it to fit children.
It was, uh... It just lead me to believe, with the size of the alien cadavers that I saw, with the size of the seats inside... [narrator] Memory is a mirage and mistress to desire, shapeshifting and ethereal.
She's inherently elusive and malleable. We acknowledge her if it suits our fantasy in the moment. We fear her because she's unpredictable. Can we trust our own memories? [echoes] What if we can't? What if we can? Can we return to the scene of the crime to extract hidden details and to see more clearly what we thought we saw? I was told... The rhythmic shouting and the constant threats, that's a form of hypnosis. [interviewer] When did they... When did this happen?
Oh, this happened almost immediately. They started yelling and screaming at you? Yeah. Fun place to work. Well, no. Like I said, it was a terrible atmosphere to work in. But when you weigh that with what you're going to be around, you'll basically go through anything.
"Yeah, go ahead. When can we go back to the flying saucers?" [Jeremy] You did hypnosis Mmm-hmm. to try to recall details from your employment and from the physics... Right. ...of what you learned. Is that correct? Yeah, that's correct. With Layne Keck. Okay. And did you recall anything? Yeah, I did. I mean, specifics, things you might have missed.
I basically wanted to try everything I could to prove what I was saying. So this was just another tool. [Jeremy] You're familiar that hypnosis can work to recall-- Yeah. And I had-- had it done to me before. So, I'd had proven that, yeah, this really does do something.
Let's try and remember some fine details. You wanted to recall some physics that you learned there? Yeah, I wanted to recall as much as I possibly could. I mean, so much went through my mind. Just imagine all the things you were seeing.
And everyone is completely fascinating and something you haven't seen before. It's just data overload. So I was hoping that hypnosis would get me relaxed enough where maybe, everything was packed so tight together, maybe I could just start thumbing through things and just pick up even a couple little more tidbits could paint a bigger picture and I could, you know, possibly explain things better. Or, you know, possibly locate some of these other guys or anything, any bit of information. So, yeah. It was pretty handy.
So you did recall some things, technically-- Yeah. Technically? Yeah. Technical things and probably others too. More and more hypnosis is accepted, however, there's still a lot of misconceptions about it. [interviewer] Like what? Oh. They think that you go into a trance
and the hypnotist does something and you don't remember it, and all of a sudden your life changes. And that's not the case at all. There's no mind control happening. [Layne] Take a nice deep breath. Close your eyes and just think relaxation. Now, just think about your head and relax your head. Now, what I want you to do is to get as comfortable as you possibly can.
And just relax completely. Now, double your relaxation and the number 100 will be there. One, zero, zero.
Double your relaxation. And the number 99 will come right on in. Bob. Bob. From this moment on... From this moment on, you will recall and remember the material that you seek.
And no one or nothing, past, present or future will stand in your way. Bob. Bob. Bob. You will remember because you desire [echoes] to remember. To remember. [Layne] At one point, he was in hypnosis, I think he was drawing a reactor. He was trying to recall what was in the books.
He saw in the book and then I told him, "Well, you'll come up and open your eyes, and you will be able to draw." And he did. But it didn't mean anything to him. But it was a drawing that he drew this way. [Jeremy] Oh, no way! But it was this way. [Layne] And so afterwards, he looked at it, you know, he came back over and sat down here for a while and, "Oh, that's because..." All he had to do was turn it.
So that's the superconscious and literal, the subconscious takes things literal. [Jeremy] Right. Like, it's like the mind is absorbing all this stuff, and then he discovers what his mind had absorbed.
He's remembering. [Layne] Yeah. I was writing so fast. [Jeremy] I can't imagine what you were thinking too. Because you're discovering with them that kind of shock.
What's the truth? [Layne] Hypnosis is the best possible tool of getting to the truth. If a person makes things up normally, they can lie under hypnosis just as easily as out of hypnosis. But if they're really trying to get to and retrieve information, then it's the best tool that I know of. He came in to find out what he didn't know. We were able to go back, overcome the fear and bring forth those memories. [interviewer] According to Lazar, his employer was the United States Navy.
He says he and other government employees would gather near EG&G, fly to Groom Lake, then a very few people would get into a bus with blacked-out or no windows and ride to S4. [interviewer] So, you get off the bus, what do you see? It's a very interesting building, it's got a slope of probably about 30 degrees. Which are hangar doors. And it has textured paint on it, but it looks like sand. It's made to look like the side of a mountain. Whether to disguise it from satellite photographs or what.
[newscaster] He says he was never told exactly what he'd be working on but figured it had something to do with advanced propulsion. On his first day, he was told to read a series of briefings and immediately realized how advanced the propulsion was. The power sources and antimatter reactor, they run gravity amplifiers. There's actually two parts to the drive mechanism. Uh, it's a bizarre technology.
There's no physical hookup between any of the systems in there. They use gravity as a wave, using wave guides, almost like microwaves. [interviewer] Polygrapher Terry Tavernetti runs a corporate security operation and is a former Los Angeles police officer. He put Lazar through four tests and concluded there was no attempt to deceive. I left there thinking that, um...
...I feel we do have some credibility to what the subject had to say. And that's when I went to some of my colleagues. [interviewer] Tavernetti sent the test results to a third polygrapher who agreed the results appeared truthful. Bob has explained to me multiple times, he tried everything in his power to prove his story.
[George] I wanted to feel better for myself. So I said, "Hey, would you be willing to undergo a polygraph test?" He did not hesitate. He said, "Yes." Four different tests on four different areas of Bob's claims, and he said afterwards, "There was no attempt to deceive at all."
He's telling what he believes to be the truth. I have asked the question many times over the years, "How did Bob Lazar know this stuff if he wasn't there?" He knew there was a place called S4. I called Dallas Air Force Base public information office. They confirmed. Told me there really was a place called S4. Now, there's no news story prior to Bob Lazar about any place called S4.
He knew about it. He also knew EG&G had arranged to hire personnel, that if you were going to get a job out of Groom Lake, EG&G was the company that you would go through. He knew that there had been investigators at his home for the background check, he remembered the guy's name. It was an odd name Mike Thigpen. Now, how did he know?
How did he know that Mike Thigpen works for a federal agency that does this stuff? After 30 years, and this guy dodging you, I found Mike Thigpen. I found Thigpen. That's amazing. I couldn't believe it. He's on the east coast.
I called him, I've talked with him multiple times. You know, he won't go on camera because he doesn't want to kind of put a dark shadow upon the work that he did before, but, personally, he conveyed to me that that was his job, that was exactly what he did in Las Vegas in 1989. And, in fact, he remembers Bob Lazar. [George] Most important thing Bob knew is that they were flying something that looks exactly like the flying saucer over Papoose Lake. And they flew up on Wednesday nights.
And he took people out there three weeks in a row and showed it to them. And at least once, maybe twice, they recorded it on video. That's real. How did Bob know that? There had been no stories about test flights and flying saucers at Papoose Lake. And by the way, that's where it was. It wasn't over Groom Lake, it was over Papoose Lake. We checked out so many details that Bob had told us that turned out to be true.
The existence of S4. Element 115 really did become an element years later that Bob had been consulted by the lab which first synthesized man-made element 115. There was a whole long string of things that he knew that checked out. These milestones along the way, no matter how much we nitpick it apart, no matter how much people don't want to believe it, the evidence that he's telling the truth outweighs the evidence that he's not.
Well, I agree with you. And if I did not believe that, I would not still be working on the story, I would not be publicly defending Bob Lazar. [uplifting music] [Jeremy] What was your function at working on this, you were doing what? What was your job? [Bob] We were to reverse-engineer the power and propulsion system of this craft and see if it can be duplicated with available materials.
[Jeremy] I just want to go over with you what is it that you saw, to draw it out for people, to make a sketch. As you're seeing it, as if you're there at that moment. You've got to go back in the past. Something I termed, the "Sport Model." Underneath this floor, there are three... Three large cylindrical devices.
These are on mounts that allow them to completely swivel up to 180 degrees, and in 360-degree rotation. Directly above each one is a small rectangular object. This is on the floor above. And these are the gravity amplifiers themselves. Looking down from the top, you'd have the center. In the very center, there is a small reactor.
Surrounding this, in three equally-spaced areas are the amplifiers. So, this is looking at it sideways, this is looking at it down from the top. And under these amplifiers, underneath the floor below are the gravity emitters. So it's the reactor here powering the gravity amplifiers.
Gravity amplifiers' output goes into the gravity emitters at the bottom, and the resulting gravity beam or anti-gravity wave can be pretty much put anywhere you want to. Um... There was another level up here. Now, I had access and was permitted to view and look at the operation of this main level, with the gravity amplifiers and the level below, the gravity emitters. There is a level above, which consisted of these two areas that I'm not all that familiar with. I assume these to be some sort of navigational engine.
People called these large black rectangular areas on the top "potholes," I believe they were some planar sensor array that just took in information from the surrounding area, whether it be patterns of stars or what have you. And there was their version of a computer or something to make determinations here that takes input from those sensors and then lets the craft know how to orient itself and where it was in space. So, that's what I assume to be out there. I don't know for a fact, again, that was not part of my job, and I was only led to believe that. The center antenna is really an extension of the reactor in the center. And that's a wave guide which allows the emission of the gravity wave, which forms kind of a heart-shape over the whole craft.
That's how it creates its distortion. These gravity emitters can be swung all the way up to 180 degrees. And this allows the craft to essentially stand on two of them and hover while this one swings up and creates a distortion in front of it, allowing the craft to slide forward.
So that's how their low-power mode omicron configuration operates. The delta configuration uses all three. And unlike science-fiction movies where you see flying saucers just flying on like that, they actually fly belly first. The craft flies along,
leaves the atmosphere of the planet, it turns its belly to the destination, the three amplifiers focus in on the destination, and that's how it proceeds. So that's basically the operation of it and overall how things were laid out inside the craft. [Jeremy] This is an alien spacecraft.
Right. Obviously. [mysterious music playing] [Joy] This was the Albuquerque Journal. [Jeremy] Is that the particle accelerator you had? [Bob] Yeah.
The guy that promised not to say anything that won't say anything about the UFOs. The article's titled... "'UFO Guy' in Spotlight."
Thanks, dude. Isn't that when, after this came in there, then the fire department, police, the zoning commission, everybody descended on our house. Yeah, and wanted to know who. Here's "Lab Supplier in Controversy." [Jeremy] Oh, look at that. So originally, the thing was supposed to be about what? What did the guy say the article-- The hydrogen car, I think-- Well, the raid. It was about the raid. This one? Yeah, that's why, "Lab Supplier in Controversy." Yeah. Oh, okay.
The raid in New Mexico. The guy called, and he said, "Hey, I heard about the raid and all that. Can I come and do that?" And then he says, "Are you Bob Lazar, the Area 51 guy?" I said, "Yeah, but I don't want to get into that, this is something more important."
He said, "Oh, yeah, we won't even mention it, no problem." [Jeremy] Literally, your house was taken over by a SWAT team? [Bob] Yeah. Yes. They don't just send a letter in the mail or call us. [Jeremy] Right. Have the whole SWAT team invite themselves to our home.
[narrator] Hidden things are the most seductive. Secrets reach deep into our desire. They titillate and torment us like a ticking clock or a distant alarm with no origin. They agitate us and force us to react. They endanger our complacency.
There was a missing element to your faith. But that's the nature of faith, that there is something out there that hovers and promises salvation. [automated voice] Your call has been forwarded to an automated voice messaging system. At the tone, please record your message.
Hey, Jeremy, it's Bob Lazar. Listen. I have something to ask you. Something's really come up that's important. If you would text me and let me know when is a good time to call you, I don
2022-12-09