Bob Lazar and Area 51: His S-4 Claims Explained
Growing up in Coral Gables, Florida, in the 1960s, Bob Lazar probably didn't think that one day, he'd reveal some of the biggest secrets in the history of ufology.
But when this self-described physicist says he took a job at one of the US government's most extraordinary facilities, that's exactly what happened.
Now Bob Lazar has dedicated his life to publicizing some of the world's most esoteric knowledge: the existence of extraterrestrial lifeforms and the mechanics of their transportation.
Some call him a conspiracy theorist, others write him off as a crackpot, and still more consider him one of America's undersung heroes.
But just who is Bob Lazar, and what's the real story behind his out-of-this-world claims? We're about to find out.
Bob Lazar's Early Life
Born on January 26, 1959, in Coral Gables, Florida, Robert Scott "Bob" Lazar had a penchant for science from a young age. By 1982, he was living and working in Los Alamos, New Mexico, home to the laboratory that designed the first atomic bomb during the Manhattan Project. The Trinity test itself took place about 200 miles south of Los Alamos.
A 1982 newspaper profile described Lazar as a physicist at the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility and featured his so-called "Honda Jet" — an ordinary Honda car to which he attached a real jet engine. Sporting custom license plates that read "JET-U-BET," the car was said to reach speeds of up to 200 miles per hour with the additional jet power.
According to Lazar, the car caught the attention of Edward Teller, the physicist frequently called the father of the hydrogen bomb. Lazar says he saw Teller reading about the car in the newspaper and introduced himself.
Lazar says he made a big impression. Years later, he believes Teller's good word helped him land an interview for a position working with "advanced propulsions" in Nevada.
In Lazar's account, all he initially knew was that the job would be in a remote desert location with an unusual schedule. After filling out mountains of paperwork and receiving security clearances, he says he began working at S-4 near Area 51, where rumors placed some of the government's most closely guarded technology.
Inside Area 51
According to Lazar, he was assigned to S-4, a facility located south of the main Area 51 compound. He described numerous aircraft hangars built into the mountainside and concealed within the rocky faces.
Normally, Lazar entered S-4 through a set of regular double doors, but one day, he arrived to find one of the hangars open. Inside the hangar was a massive disc-shaped craft that bore an uncanny resemblance to a flying saucer.
Noticing the American flag on the side of the disc, Lazar reasoned that it was simply an advanced military aircraft and that all the mysterious UFO sightings had actually been of Air Force test flights. But when he reached out to touch the craft, he was immediately reprimanded by an armed guard and told to move on without looking at it.
Later, Lazar was partnered up with another scientist, Barry, who showed him different components of the craft. One of them was a basketball-sized reactor that, when turned on, seemed to produce its own gravitational field.
Lazar was awestruck. A controlled gravitational field was unlike anything in public science, yet he said his hand was pushed away when he tried to touch the sphere, similar to the repulsion between matching magnetic poles.
He had read some briefings at the beginning of his job that seemed bizarre, referencing strange propulsion methods, but had written them off as a test to see if he would leak or otherwise mishandle the info. Now, though, he understood what he'd been hired to do: reverse-engineer an alien aircraft.
Compartmental Comprehension
Lazar said he was assigned to work on one of nine aircraft located at S-4: a flying-saucer-like disc made of something that resembled stainless steel but wasn't. He nicknamed the craft "Sport Model" and, over time, became thoroughly convinced that it was extraterrestrial in origin.
From Alien to Zeta
For starters, there was the paperwork that described the origins of the craft: the binary star system Zeta Reticuli, about 30 light-years from Earth, and more specifically a world Lazar called planet ZR3.
The paperwork also suggested that Earth had been involved with "grey aliens" from Zeta Reticuli for the past 10,000 years. Though it didn't say how humans came to possess the craft, this information seemed to imply that it had belonged to the grey aliens.
Elemental Energy
Then came the revelation of how that gravity-producing reactor worked. Lazar and Barry broke open the reactor and found that it contained a particle accelerator and a fuel made from an element with atomic number 115, which they called "E115."
Today, we know E115 as moscovium, the 115th element in the periodic table, which is a wholly synthetic radioactive element that decays within a few hundred milliseconds. But in 1988, moscovium had never been synthesized and was only speculated to even possibly exist.
In Lazar's account, a stable form of the element was inside the reactor at S-4. He said it produced a gravity wave that enabled the craft to fly and bent light around the vehicle, allowing it to disappear from view.
Lazar said he viewed the reactor through an infrared camera and saw no heat while it was running. To him, the observation suggested that the device operated through principles far beyond the technology he knew.
Lazar described the reactor as being located at the bottom of the craft. In his explanation, the vehicle would travel toward whatever the gravity amplifiers were pointed at.
Disc Design
Then there was the craft itself, which didn't seem designed for humans at all. Lazar said he was allowed inside only once, after convincing his superiors that he needed to see where the reactor would be located in order to determine how it worked.
The craft had no right angles, no decor, no bathroom, no control panel and, eerily, no colors other than solid pewter gray. Its ceilings were about three feet high and its four seats were tiny; other than the seats, reactor and a few subcomponents, the craft was completely empty.
Lazar also said he caught glimpses of some of the other craft stored in S-4. One looked like a Jello mold with large, rounded ridges; another resembled a straw hat with a large, flat brim.
Feats of Flight
Lazar said the craft were taken out for test flights. High-performance tests involved flying the craft around the mountains, while low-performance tests were conducted outside the hangars.
Lazar said he witnessed a low-performance test up close one night. The Sport Model powered on and began to hover around 10 feet in the air, moving left and right and emitting a bluish glow from the reactor.
By then, Lazar's friends and wife had grown suspicious of his odd work hours and tendency to disappear for days on end. His wife had even begun to suspect an affair.
So Lazar consulted the test flight schedule and, one Wednesday night, brought his closest friends out to the desert surrounding Area 51. Armed with a camcorder, they witnessed a high-performance test flight for themselves.
But that was about as far as Lazar's research took him.
For security reasons, the project was highly compartmentalized, with each scientist analyzing just one part of the craft and receiving no information about any other parts. Different teams were also prohibited from communicating with one another.
Employees' phones were also bugged and monitored to ensure that they weren't revealing any top-secret information. Unfortunately, Lazar had done just that in a phone conversation with his wife.
He was brought in and shown a transcript of the call, then interrogated for several hours. When he was finally allowed to return home, he knew that things were getting serious — and that the public needed to know.
The Big Reveal
Lazar contacted the Las Vegas-based investigative reporter George Knapp, who conducted an extensive interview with him. The first televised report, in which Lazar's identity was concealed under the pseudonym "Dennis," aired in May 1989.
In November 1989, Lazar appeared under his own name. And that's when he realized that entering the public eye gave his story a new dimension.
The Sudden Celebrity
UFO enthusiasts began showing up at Lazar's house, camping out on his lawn and accosting him with their own stories of alien sightings. People would drive from across the country to talk to him, both in praise and in disgust.
On one side, you had the conspiracy theorists, whose stories Lazar found not credible and unhinged. Their obsession unnerved Lazar and prompted him to clarify that he was not a UFO enthusiast, just a man attempting to tell the truth.
And on the other side, you had skeptics who examined his education, employment history and changing details in the story. The debate over those records soon became almost as famous as the S-4 account itself.
Disappearing Documents
Lazar states that he earned master's degrees in physics from MIT and in electronic technology from Caltech. His attendance has not been verified through publicly available records from either school.
His connection to Los Alamos is more complicated. A 1982 Los Alamos telephone directory listed Robert Lazar, and a local newspaper described him as a physicist at the Meson Physics Facility. The exact nature of his employer and position remains disputed.
Lazar claims that he has been truthful about his education and employment, and that his records have been erased due to the controversy surrounding his story.
The Aftermath
Over the years, the constant media scrutiny, character attacks and fanatical attention have made Lazar anxious about speaking out regarding his time at Area 51. But in 2018, he was the subject of a documentary titled Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers, directed by Jeremy Corbell and featuring the reporting of George Knapp.
Detractors claim he's a liar, a lunatic or both. Supporters claim he's the most important whistleblower in American history. But no matter what you think of Bob Lazar's story, there's no denying that it's one of the most detailed, fascinating accounts of UFO encounters the world has ever seen.
Sources and Further Reading
- Los Alamos National Laboratory: Our History
- IUPAC Periodic Table of Elements
- Royal Society of Chemistry: Moscovium
- KLAS-TV interviews and archival reports presented in the videos above
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