S4 - THE ROBERT LAZAR STORY
TAPE 2 -- SIDE A
Q: Question
L: Lazar
L: ... happened like that to me. This was sometime later, about a month later I had, I mean, unbelievable amounts of blood in my urine.
Q: I missed the set-up for this... this was after... I'm sorry, you probably just said this, they made you drink something?
L: It was a little plastic cup... this is part of the allergy test, but this was, you know, drink it!
Q: How soon after did you collapse?
L: When I got home. It was also extremely hot that day. Gene's air conditioner wasn't working in his car and I had seen so much and been through so much, I really honestly didn't think too much about it. 'Cause I was dying of heat stroke, anyway, driving around in his car. I just drank a lot of fluids and went to sleep, but sometime later, I had a lot of kidney problems after that. Which, it may have been a mere coincidence, but I've never had any medical problem, ever, I've never even been to the hospital... and after that, from then on, I've had wierd kidney problems. I've always blamed it on that. It might be a coincidence.
Q: This was the day that Bob saw the disc for the first time...
L: No... this is still the second day.
Q: Oh, I'm sorry. The third day you saw the disc.
L: The third day.
Q: You didn't stay over night though, you kept flying back each time?
L: Correct.
Q: So day three... that's pretty early...
L: Now this isn't three days from when...
Q: But over a period of time...
L: Yeah, but now we're coming up on three weeks from when I first...
Q: So you're free to just go back to your normal...
L: Right.
Q: You're still not doing work assignments yet.
L: No, not yet. On day three was a different story. Day three I came in. One of the hangar doors was open and I didn't drive around the back of the building as normal... we stopped out front...
Q: You're on this bus every time?
L: Every time. It's the only way you can come and go.
Q: And they still had the guard.
L: Always... he was always standing in front of me.
Q: You're still almost alone every time or there's more people?
L: No, that was the only time there was ever anyone else. From then on it was always Dennis and I.
Q: In the back of this huge bus?
L: Yeah.
Q: That's great actually.
L: So, we stopped, instead of making the turn as normal, and got out and the hangar is... literally this craft is sitting inside of the hangar...
Q: With the door open?
L: Oh, yeah, the door's wide open.
Q: You're still making small talk... he's not talking about a disc?
L: No, now he is. Now... he knew about it before... 'cause before we got on the bus he said, I want to show you what you're going to be working on and I said, great, and we got out of the bus and this is when that all ran through my mind... I said, this is the secret fighter of the future is what we're working on. So on and so forth. We came in the hangar in the entrance, walked around it, and this is the first time that we picked up, what I call, parasitic guards, that just are walking, and as you walk by they just attach themselves along side of you.
Q: Did they speak to you ever?
L: Yeah, they did. They asked me to keep my eyes forward and walk directly to the door on the right. If the entrance was here... on the very back here there would be a door... actually this way... that goes to a corridor and I was walking here and he said, keep your eyes forward and enter in that door on the back. And I did. Now Dennis disappeared. Maybe because I didn't turn around. As I went back, I purposely came really close to this, so I could slide my hand on the belly of the disc, feeling that it was cold, just to see what it felt like.
Q: Did it feel like normal metal to you... nothing special?
L: It was cold, so I thought it was metal. And to this day I still don't know... it felt metallic.
Q: What were you thinking?
L: Uhh... that this is the fighter of the future. That we're working on.
Q: Ahh... bene!
L: Oh, absolutely, no question about it.
Q: And you were probably really excited, because you were going to be part of this really exciting...
L: Right. For one brief second, as I came by, the disc was rotated... the door was on this angle... as I was coming out, to the door here, was the first time I got to look inside and there were three or four people inside and I looked up, inside there, and it was the first time I registered how small the seats were inside. And it was the only thing that didn't make sense to me...
Q: But it still didn't occur to you that it might be aliens?
L: No, but it was odd. It stood out in my mind. There was nothing that looked normal inside. There was no... I'd seen the insides of fire aircraft plenty of times... everything in the military looks exactly the same, whether you're inside a tank or an F16...
(LAUGHTER)
L: ... they're all... but it looked different inside. There was nothing in there... and then I just thought, well, maybe they weren't seats, maybe they were something else. The thing's not finished being built, or whatever. It just blew off the top of my head, in either case. So I went in, again, into the briefing room. Dennis met me there... we went inside... now there's a lot of briefings to read. He said I'm going to leave you here for about an hour and then I want you to go in with Barry again and maybe we're going to have you start doing something... so this is when I began to read it. This was a different briefing room this time. And this was I think the first time I saw the "They're Here" poster.
Q: It just has a saucer and says "They're Here" on it.
L: It has it hovering right outside, if you were to look right outside the hangar door, just the drylake bed, and it just says, "They're Here" ... there's nothing else... no other wording... and it's a regular lithograph poster. And I kind of thought that was funny. But still it reinforced my idea that this was what everyone had mistaken for flying saucers.
Q: What about the briefings this time... the files...?
L: These were extensive... these really contained just about everything.
Q: You still thought this was our...
L: Well, after seeing the poster, it was already seeded in my mind that something was... that now something was strange. And immediately, when I picked up the briefings, I don't really remember what I got into immediately, but it was all back engineering, so on and so forth, and this was the first mention of an alien craft.
Q: Did they use the word "alien"?
L: Yeah.
Q: So, if we had to pick a moment, that was the moment that you really knew?
L: Right. That was the first time. Immediately after that, I don't remember how it was worded, but they went right from that to gravity propulsion and that rings a bell... and that says it all there... there is no gravity propulsion system. And from there, they're talking about the reaction and it was one after another, and that really changed my line of thought on everything.
Q: What did you feel? You're sitting in the room alone with one other person...
L: No, no one. There's no one else.
Q: And now you know that right outside the door is...
L: Right, this was a completely different feeling. It was... I reread the same paragraph over, I think, a couple times... because I, I don't know if you do this, but when you find something interesting, you just become excited and purposely start skipping to see if there's a punchline at the end... or what else... if there's drawings or pictures or anything... and so I found myself skipping more, so I go and reread it again, just to see, in case you missed a word. Somewhere... of some importance... like... The following is... just a joke.
(LAUGHTER)
L: But there was no such thing like that and it was a very... I'd say exciting, at that point, almost... it's so hard for me to put it in words. It's almost like you're kidding. This is not possible. I guess until it finally soaked in a little and I proceeded on... and then began to read some of the lab notes and I think the next briefing I picked up was the notes from the guys that were working on the reactor. And that's really when it hit me because it talked about, there were notes at the end, after their entries had stopped, they had died from the tests and that's kind of when it took on a serious note. Very shortly after that is when Dennis came in and I went in with Barry and that's when we first started...
Q: You had to have been in a really stunned state of mind, but, I'll tell you, when I happened to see this UFO I saw, I was basically underwhelmed by the whole thing.
L: No, I wasn't underwhelmed.
Q: You were quite taken with it. That's why, they called me at specific times, that's why I really felt that they had to have been watching me.
Q: Was there a mirror in the room?
L: No. Right after they had taken me out of there, right after I finished that briefing, I went in with Barry and Barry was much more laid back... talkative... made me feel much more at ease, type of guy... and it was... I don't remember what he said, but something along the lines of... you feel like you're in the "Twilight Zone", don't ya? And we were able to converse like that... more or less alone, so he said, well, let me show you what we've got... basically from the briefings did you read so and so... and I said, all I've read is that this is an alien craft from another planet and we're trying to find out what makes it work? And he said, that's where we are. Let me show you what we've got. And that's it. That was the first time it was actually laid out for me as a confirmation, he said, and that's when we started talking about my specific job. He said, what we deal with...
Q: Can I stop you for a second?
L: Yeah.
Q: Was Barry about your age or a contemporary of yours in some way?
L: Ahh... he was a little older than me. About five years.
Q: You felt that he had a similar background or something?
L: Yeah.
Q: So he was just a scientist as well.
L: Yeah, but a lack one. Not a regimented... yeah. And he basically, very nonchalantly said, let me show you what we've got. Our specific project, which you know is called Galileo, is going to deal specifically with the propulsion system and its power source and that's it. And, speaking of which, this is the reactor, these are the amplifiers and this is what we're dealing with and then, of course, we took a few minutes and then went into a conversation about everything. And this is where I learned a lot about how everything connects together. He said, there are other projects and it was really just rehashing things continuously. No matter what we talked about, I'd come back with, this is from another planet? Yes. Okay, and we'd go on.
(LAUGHTER)
Q: How long had Barry been in the program?
L: Oh, it seems like a long time. Because he knew the guys that were killed. So that had to be...
Q: Five years... ten years...
Q: Did he ever say how long they'd had this craft?
L: No. That I never knew. I think I even asked that to Barry and he didn't know.
Q: Where it came from?
L: Where it came from it was... it was both told by Barry and, in the briefings, that it was from the Zeta Reticuli star system, as if I was supposed to know where that was... when I came on, I started looking through all the star maps and it's thirty light years away... southern hemisphere sky...
Q: It's still in our galaxy?
L: That's in the Milky Way galaxy, yeah.
Q: How did they actually acquire it?
L: I don't know. I say I don't think it was a crash retrieval. Because it was not damaged.
Q: In any of these memos at any time was there an inkling that there was some cooperation between these guys and the government?
L: Yeah, and I find that so hard to believe... that is just beyond...
Q: It's not our job to believe it...
L: I know... I'm just saying, I find that so difficult to believe that... there again, I...
Q: To tell you the truth, from an objective point of view, it's not that tough... the event itself, not for me but for our viewership, it will be tough to believe as it was for you at first, but you had to work on that saucer which it's hard to believe is the one thing you didn't see... which is...
L: Right, I'm saying, because I was exposed to the actual hardware and got to deal with it, it makes everything else much more difficult for me to believe now.
Q: Where did it first mention the aliens referring to us as containers that they genetically altered...
L: In the reports...
Q: But before this particular...
L: No... that's later on.
Q: The chronology makes perfect sense... the last thing they'd do is show him aliens calling us containers before they really had him working on the ship. But... what was the nature of the briefing that suggested there was cooperation? Did they just lay it out... the aliens were there... we were there... and they gave us this ship and we had to give them...
L: No... I was going to say it was like an accident report... but it was kind of on the forms that you would see that... that apparently there was a conflict at some time that dealt with munitions there were carried by guards...
Q: On the base...
L: On the base... and...
Q: And were there grays... do they call him grays or do they call them kids... or what do they call them?
L: They were referred to as... no one ever called them "the grays"... that's what they call them in UFO lore... they were referred to as the kids... or, one time, someone I remember -- Barry or Dennis -- referred to them as gourds...
Q: Gourds...
L: Gourds like, you know, those things on Halloween. That was the only reference to them, but at one time there was supposedly some cooperation taking place and there was a conflict started that dealt with the munitions being carried by the guards.
Q: A section of S4 guards walked in with munitions they weren't supposed to have? Is that it?
L: Yeah, from what I can understand there was a place where... I've tried to make sense out of this before where it was either an area where there were actual live aliens doing something... what they were doing there... cooperating or... I mean, they were physically there doing... or just alive standing there in the room, but they were not permitted to carry... I don't know if it was the bullets themselves that contained an explosive mixture...
Q: The guards were not permitted by the aliens to enter...
L: No... they just were not permitted to enter that area and maybe it was for the guards' sake... maybe something would set them off... maybe there was some wierd fields in use or maybe aliens didn't want guards in there... I mean, to me, this is an impossible set of circumstances... but, apparently one of them did enter and then a conflict broke out and the bottom line was the guards died. And that was the last entry that had anything to do with cooperation between the two.
Q: Did they say how many guards died?
L: Yeah, they did and I can't remember. There were a lot. There were more than you think you could hide with telling people... well, a bunch of people died...
Q: You had told me forty-four at one time...
L: Yeah, it was an unusual number... you can't imagine that forty people can be killed and there not be a news story about it. Which is another thing that rang in my mind... it just didn't sound right. How can you hide the deaths of forty-four people.
Q: You had mentioned one to me that the guards... they were telling you about the guards and they said that these guards are orphans... that they have no traceable family... blah... blah... blah...
L: Yeah, I think that was Barry and after I read his report this is what I was questioning him about.
Q: What did Barry say?
L: Yeah... Barry came in and said, well, yeah a lot of these guards are handpicked that work down here... they have no connections to family and stuff like that... and that's kind of when a discussion started, well, it doesn't matter, you can't hide forty-four people being killed. It's just not possible.
Q: What did Barry say about that?
L: I really don't remember. I think it was more like... well, whatever... now, we've got to get back to doing this... it was just kind of side-stepping because neither of us knew for sure what was going on... 'cause it seemed like just the same briefing I did.
Q: Let me ask you something subtle about that. Does Barry skip the issue because he knows it's a hot issue that could be nothing but trouble or does he skip the issue because he doesn't know and just wants to talk about work?
L: How am I suppose to know the answer to that?
Q: You couldn't tell?
L: No...
Q: He wasn't a guy who seemed scared by talking about it?
L: No... he seemed very at ease with everything, though he did relate to me that at the beginning it was just as unusual as it was for me, even more so because when he first started there was no one he could talk to... so that's why I always firmly believed that...
Q: Was he married?
L: He never did say. He never said where he lived either. Though I had a feeling Barry didn't leave. I had a feeling that he had an on base...
Q: Was he a happy guy?
L: Oh, yeah, Barry was a happy guy.
Q: That's interesting. I almost picture the poor guy as a prisoner of what he knows. If he doesn't leave...
L: No... you can really get into that... I mean, even with the oppressive security... I mean, I felt really privileged... it was neat to be in on a secret like that... I mean, after I found out we were dealing with alien craft... you felt really cool and began to look down on other people...
Q: The ultimate Lions Club...
L: Right. Right. It was something... it was certainly worth putting up with.
Q: This is so fascinating.
Q: What time's your flight, by the way, because we can go on forever and ever...
Q: Well, one thing would be a question of just getting tired of talking that's why we expected you to come out for a day or two and continue when...
Q: My flight's like around nine o'clock.
L: Some water... are you getting tired?
Q: No, not at all. Are you?
L: No, it doesn't matter to me.
Q: Do you have any sense of this event happening two decades ago or two years ago with these guys getting killed?
L: Not two decades ago. I'm relatively sure that the installation... that particular S4 installation was built after '76...
Q: So they didn't have this craft before '76?
L: Almost positively not...
Q: So they built S4 because they had a craft?
L: Yes.
Q: That's cool. So S4 was all about... how many of these crafts?
L: Well there are nine total.
Q: Nine doors that are all connected all...
L: Well, see inside the hangars...
Q: That's wild... it's like a car show...
L: That's exactly what it is... a car show room... though they were all the same... they all fit... the hangars were all the same size... there are bay doors that open like this to the outside, but there are also big garage type doors that open this way... and one of the times I went in all the doors were open and you could see all the way down through the hangars...
Q: All the ships?
L: Yeah... and they were all different kinds, but I could never walk past... I mean the line of death was on the other side of the disc...
Q: That's fascinating... so there were parasitic guards at every hangar... so there were dozens of guards...
L: There were red lines on the ground... marking lines...
Q: What uniforms did these guys wear?
L: They were the desert kind... Desert Storm camouflage...
Q: The gray desert kind.
Q: And did these guys have a sense of... they'd been there awhile so... even though they're tough guards... they chat with each other, chew gum and hang around... or are they like outside the Queen's Palace and they're quiet all the time.
L: No... they're quiet all the time.
Q: So this is dead serious... at attention kind of guys?
L: Ahh... pretty much so... but I was convinced that they had no idea that these were alien craft. These guys thought like what I did when I first walked in... just like they were guarding a secret fighter.
Q: I've spent so much time seeing this one design, the idea of being in a position to show that shot you just described... which is like... wow... do you have enough of a recollection of the shapes or general appearance...
L: Oh, yeah.
Q: So you've got sketches of everything?
L: Well, that's when I made up the names for them.
Q: So we have sketches of all of them?
Q: I'm working on most of them... the Jello Mold, the Sport...
Q: Will they be in this detail... this accuracy... or is this the one you worked on?
L: No, this is the one I worked on... the other ones are from 200 feet away.
Q: But, still, you can get the silhouette right, even...
L: Yeah, the silhouettes the only thing...
Q: That's all we care about... that's all we need, that's all I want...
L: I mean they look nothing like you would think... they look ridiculous... one looks exactly like a Jello Mold... the ones that you... you know, the Jello molds with the hole in the middle and it has all the variations like that... exactly... it looks like a giant...
Q: Does it have portals on it?
L: No... it was a solid... it was a flying Jello Mold... it was ridiculous looking... that's why I said this is the Sport Model... this is the only thing that looks like anything I'd want to own... everything else just looks like kitchen hardware...
Q: That's wild. What was the smallest one, you remember?
L: I don't know... I even judged this one... I always said it was thirty feet in diameter, which made no sense at all, because after we scoped everything out it was fifty feet and once you go to a hundred feet away... I have no idea how big anything was... so... they all fit inside... they are all approximately the same size... there wasn't like a two hundred foot one. I'd say they're all about the size of a house... well, my kind of house.
(LAUGHTER)
Q: I'm getting out of chronology to a great extent here, but I want to jump around for a couple more minutes... I've got questions I've been dying to ask you... this one issue was sketchy or like an accident report, we know there were x number of men down... does it say how they were found?
L: Yeah... they had all died of head wounds.
Q: Did they say how severe?
L: No... they specified head wounds... I think was the only word...
Q: And there was no date on these?
L: Nothing... zip... nothing.
Q: Why the hell would they give you these... this is what blows my mind.
L: I have no idea. Why would they tell me the origin of the craft... your questions are my questions.
Q: Why give anybody this information about these forty-four guys... but I can believe anything from the military...
Q: Well, as you mentioned... even the origin of the craft... you're dealing with a super heavy element... from a binary star system...
L: Right... it might have something to do with what you're talking about... but what would specifically...
Q: Were there any other memos regarding cooperation?
L: No...
Q: So, really this was the only memo that even suggested that...
L: It wasn't a memo... it was like... it was like an accident report... you know how you fill out for an insurance form your version of what happened... it was a handwritten account from someone...
Q: Oh, it was handwritten... oh, really... fill in the blanks type...
L: It was a big white area of paper with printed text underneath and it says... occurrence was as follows, colon and then you...
Q: Oh, like a tax form...
L: Right an alien tax form...
(LAUGHTER)
L: Alien attack occurred on this date... right.
Q: You just check them off... What government form could possibly cover stuff like that?
L: It stated on it... it was like an incident report... I called it an accident, but... it was an unusual incident form... I don't know... but it was something like that...
Q: That's what I call an understatement...
(LAUGHTER)
Q: Was this also the time that you saw autopsies of the aliens...
Q: Yeah, there was their artifacts... in plastic...
L: No, that was later on, but in subsequent times after that I was looking through there and seeing specifically what they looked like.
Q: So was there a...
L: And I have a feeling that the only reason that there could have been, other than to alleviate some curiosity, is they felt, maybe because they were getting nowhere, we found later on that everything in the disc is related to everything else... there is nothing there for, you know, aesthetic reasons, everything seems to rely on something... so they were, I think, stretching far beyond thinking that where these guys came from might have to do with how you start the craft... so they were covering just a wide...
Q: They probably had gotten to the point where they were exhausted... they hadn't gotten anywhere... they're bringing in new blood and they just said, fuck it...
L: They reduced the amount of information... I never even saw what I think would be more beneficial... why would I have seen an autopsy report and not a metallurgical report? And I never saw anything from the people that dealt with the metallurgy of the craft... this had to be a military line of thinking because it made no sense whatsoever...
(LAUGHTER)
Q: (UNCLEAR)... one of the reasons why I have what I call the "Aha" effect... the effect -- how it would happen, if that makes sense, is it reminds me of one of my favorite fictions which is the end of the first "Raiders of the Lost Arc" where they've gotten the arc and they have it in a box and there's a big matte shot at the end showing them wheeling it... the government finally takes the arc away from Indiana Jones and they show them wheeling it away to this huge warehouse where it will obviously be lost forever and that kind of sludge like governmental thinking is what I'm sure where the level of departmentalization and paranoia is ever going to keep anybody from cooperating or getting the information that might be able to solve this... it's why I can imagine they'd have this thing since '76 and still be lost...
L: Yeah, that is the reality. That really does happen... the way they think. It's their own security measures, their own precautions... if you want to call it that... that just destroy any chance you have of accomplishing anything.
Q: How is Barry still happy in that situation?
L: I don't know.
Q: See what I'm saying? 'Cause I'd think if it's been on earth for years, the guy would have to be half nuts for not being able to do it right.
L: I don't know. Maybe he got to work on other crafts... maybe he got to do other things... maybe he worked for other groups that were making progress.
Q: He befriended the system... the system is your friend and it takes care of him and he takes care of the system... it makes perfect sense...
L: Maybe it was his life... I mean, if you, people really get into... you probably haven't been around physicists... but, for the most part, people that are the most brilliant... the most brilliant ones have tunnel vision, whatever their interest is... there really can be no one else in existence that knows more about it than they do. That is their life. They are complete morons outside of that field of knowledge.
Q: Idiot savant.
L: Yeah, they walk around in a daze... they have nothing... it is their life and when they are involved in it... they are completely happy. And if you take them out... even when they leave work, they walk around like zombies. I saw them all the time at Los Alamos... they just seem displaced. And, if in fact Barry had no wife or girlfriend, and he lived out at the base... I may have been seeing him in that environment, because I have seen other people like that, who just... this is their goal... your goal is to find out how this works... okay, you know...
END OF TAPE 2 -- SIDE A
TAPE 2 -- SIDE B
Q: ... were you full time at this point...
L: No, no, I never made it to fulltime.
Q: How many times a week did you go out?
L: Once or twice... well, no, not even twice... well, yeah, there was a sporadic time in there. It was about once or twice a week.
Q: That's a really wierd life style. So you would go from... if I was only to film, which is my obsession, once or twice a week and then, the rest of the time, I was not allowed to talk about it... I'd go bananas...
L: Yeah, that's what happens. Well, he even told me, you're not going to become productive until you're on full time... so, just try and bear with us...
Q: And the reason why you weren't on full time was...
L: I don't know.
Q: Were there outstanding investigations or...?
L: There might have been.
Q: What's life like at home now on these down days? Do you not know what to do with yourself?
L: Pretty much so... it was really strange.
Q: Did you find yourself, this is a personal thing, but did you find yourself drinking more... or...
L: I just didn't do anything. I wound up on the days off driving out that way.
Q: That's cool.
L: That was when I did lie to my wife and say, I've got to go to work tonight, and I'd go out and just drive out near the area... I didn't want to get stopped by the cops... I didn't want to do anything... so I'd just drive... and I'd take tremendous drives all the way up through Tonapop (sp?), which is two hundred and fifty, three hundred miles, and come all the way around the other side of the state and come back down in the morning. I was just orbiting the area, just so I could... I don't know what I was doing...
Q: You were probably getting obsessed with the work over there.
L: Well, it was more than a fascination... it was... well... maybe they're going to be flying it or something. I just wanted to be around there and...
Q: What about your friends? You just can't talk to anybody at this time? Except for Barry.
L: Right.
Q: Were you?
L: Oh yeah... a hundred percent.
Q: You weren't telling a close male friend either?
L: No... not yet.
Q: Was life at home kind of shitty and that's another reason you were getting out of the house?
L: Yeah... well, it was getting wierd because of the absence every once in awhile... so my wife countered with absence.
Q: Was she supposed to be working someplace?
L: Taking flying lessons.
Q: Something's up in your personal life at this point in general and the absences in the marriage are starting to fill space. Don't let me romanticize you... is the nature of your fascination the fun of solving this propulsion problem or...
L: No.
Q: What was it?
L: The fact that it was an alien spacecraft...
Q: Well, that's great... because that's the most romantic thing for all of us... the most exciting emotion, I should say.
L: I mean I had no idea, after I left at night, if things weren't coming and going from other planets... I just had no idea... I just was thrown out into a different world... so that's why I felt like I had to keep an eye on what was going on. Though, I never did see anything.
Q: I have to confess that when I... I have a very active imagination... that's why I do what I do... and I actually scare myself when I write... I do... Alfred Hitchcock used to say that all the time...
I literally in writing will go too far and live in my head too long on a particular subject... were you ever... were there ever negative feelings... there's an excitement over this alien thing... is there ever literally a fear of an alien thing?
L: Well, the day I walked into the disc.
Q: The day you walked into it... oh, inside.
L: Yeah... that was a non-exciting, very ominous...
Q: It's interesting because when you first glimpsed inside you were very excited... although you knew it was odd...
L: Right... it was odd. But this is after absorbing... all the work I had been doing was in the lab...
Q: On paper...
L: Yeah, on paper... dealing with some components, but separated.
Q: Was there stuff from the ship sitting in your lab?
L: Yeah... that's what we were working on.
Q: Stuff that was cut out.
Q: How big was it?
L: Well, some of it's big... the amplifiers themselves were about two feet in diameter... four feet long... the reactor was about this big...
Q: This is a whole other meeting, but when we get into scenes like that, we're going to have to get into, before we get a draft, sketches... Not that I want the script to be a blueprint or set dressing... but I want the brief description to be accurate.
(SOUNDS AS THOUGH MACHINE WAS TURNED OFF AND BACK ON)
Q: ... when they were flying these saucers around... to your knowledge.
L: You know, I never noticed. It might have been right there, but at the moment...
(LAUGHTER)
L: ... I really wasn't looking around.
Q: That might be a license I take to...
L: I imagine they would have.
Q: 'Cause doing these kind of effects with a live video hasn't been done and would help it look real instead of looking like NBC'S "Abudctions" the TV show or something and doing things with handheld cameras and stuff... there's some really cool techniques there I've decided to try that really would work just for this and not... science fiction... we've seen all that real glossy Spielberg-ie approach to this and I would like to do the slightly more disturbing reality version of it...
Q: You actually, during the flight tests, you could hear the pilot or operator speaking?
L: No, I could hear the guy who was sitting next to me communicating with the pilot. So I could hear half the conversation with headphones on... well, I had a headphone on... it was one of those... and he was...
Q: Sitting outside?
L: No... sitting right inside.
Q: Sitting on the grass out front watching...
Q: No... inside the hangar with the door open...
L: Inside the hangar.
Q: So they're in the hangar looking out the open garage door.
L: Yeah. And it was just before it lifted off the ground... is when I had gotten in there and I heard some talking but I hadn't locked on to what he was saying. But the first thing I heard him say was Oma Prime Configuration Confirmed and right after that the disc lifted off the ground.
Q: What's the nature of its movement... what was the lift off like?
L: It was slow and uneventful... it just lifted as if it was...
Q: Like a helicopter or something?
L: Yeah... but there was no noise other than just there was a slight red under the craft right from the second hump on here... it was a blue corona discharge... just a high voltage glow...
Q: Constant?
L: Yeah constant.
Q: All the way to the ground?
L: No, just off the bottom of the disc... it was a loud, not loud, but a noticeable hiss and it dissipated very quickly... only about thirty or fifty...
Q: We need to get this stuff exactly right and we're going to sell tickets based on that if nothing else... they're going to see the real deal.
Q: We'll get it right like guys do police work on a victim... although the CD stuff is too expensive, we could get a photo shot and get it right.
Q: Actually I've got a full CD system already punching away on a whole series of tests of this right now...
Q: We can own a toaster or something that we don't have to pay time on that we can just keep showing...
Q: No, I have a full cinemagraphics...
Q: You can be toying around with (UNCLEAR -- too many people overlapping dialogue)... until he says... that's what I saw exactly.
Q: I've got a series of flythrus that we're replicating the test flight...
L: It really didn't do anything exotic... it lifted up once to the left and to the right...
Q: Was it doing this stuff... or was it smooth?
L: It was pretty much smooth, but it wasn't digital...
Q: The one I saw moved digitally as it left. It was just still. It may not have been this deal at all. But it looked a lot like it.
L: The tests we saw later on from far away... it was tremendous digital moves.
Q: Well, that's it... this is what excited me so much about it... because when I saw it fifteen years ago no one was talking about this stuff, so I wasn't projecting shit... and I saw the thing go... and stop dead again like a wasp... I thought I saw an airplane coming towards me... which is so stupid... and this it goes.... and I said, it's not an airplane coming towards me... and then it goes... I was in the mountains, so I could see the entire Salt Lake Valley with this German guy and this thing goes ZIPPPP and it was really gone. It was gone like a flashlight moves... like it had no physics...
L: Right.
Q: Like there was no physics to deal with whatsoever.
L: Right... that's exactly how it moves.
Q: So I bet you I saw some maneuvers that we were doing. Or maybe I saw some real...
L: Who knows who was in there.
Q: Suddenly I got my "abduction experience"...
Q: That's when you got the first implant.
Q: I've got a whole sequence of video tape for you of it lifting off the ground and doing things and flying around, but the one thing I never asked was the test flight at night... twilight or day?
L: It was twilight.
Q: Perfect. Magic Hour.
Q: We call it Magic Hour.
Q: That's great. Describe this incident for me. This little lift off... you were inside...
L: It was going on and Dennis came in and got Barry and I and said come on there's a test flight going on... I want Bob to see it.
Q: Were you surprised that there were such things as test flights at that time?
L: No.
Q: You'd heard there was.
L: Yeah.
Q: Who told you?
L: Well, in the briefings...
Q: That alone is another piece of startling information to me... when you first heard that there were...
L: Yeah, like when I said after there were amplifiers and a reactor... it was one thing after another... it was kind of an avalanche...
Q: Yeah. Were they test flying all of them or just the Sport?
L: Just this model.
Q: So, they rolled it out.
L: They could have flown it out... they could have towed it out... I really have no idea how it got out, but it was out there and it hadn't been...
Q: What did you feel when you saw that?
L: Oh, it was... it was great anticipation for it to take off, but it was strange, because I think at the exact moment it left the ground, I wasn't looking at it... I was noticing the frequency on the transceiver... that it was around 200 mega hertz, which I thought was odd, I thought... I didn't think it was possible to communicate on a standard frequency with something that's bending... working with the gravity amplifier... and, when I looked back over, waiting for the thing to... it was already lifting off the ground. It was inconceivable to me...
Q: You didn't hear anything?
L: No... I was just mesmerized. I only heard the hiss after I looked at it... 'cause I thought it was just a random noise from somewhere, but it wasn't even anything noticeable and it just stood there in the air... it was big just to be standing... it should not be floating, I guess...
Q: Did it lift off slowly... kind of like that and then just keep going up... or did it kind of jump up for a bit and stop?
L: No, it was an acceleration... a very slow and then stopped like that.
Q: Okay. Not much of an ease out and then a little bit of a dip after it stopped.
L: Right.
Q: Just like that.
L: Yeah, just as if you'd made a correction...
Q: Yeah, yeah.
Q: I think showing it doing corrections is another thing... it's literally new in cinema... I don't want to make everything such a big goddamn deal but... there's a regular person flying this thing at this point.
L: Yeah, but it absolutely did not do one of those...
Q: When it moved sideways... did it tip and move?
L: Yeah, it tipped.
Q: So thus the idea of rolling down hill...
L: Yeah, after I saw what they were doing, I...
Q: So, it kind of has this almost walking (?) look to it...
L: Well, it will as they come into density in the grounds... at different gravitational levels it'll... it looks ridiculous when it's flying... but I guess none of that is perceptible inside.
Q: That's fabulous. I'm in to demystifying this and making them look ridiculous but will a level of optical effects where you are sure what you're seeing is real...
L: It's not... I mean that's exaggerated...
Q: But no, but to show that there's a dip in the ground and when it hits there it mirrors it.
L: Well, it's not necessarily a dip in the terrain... it would be the density underneath.
Q: Of the atmosphere?
L: No, of the ground itself.
Q: Oh, I see.
Q: The gravity strength...
L: The density is... like is you're over sand as compared to bedrock... when you go to bedrock, you're going to get a bump.
Q: That's wild.
L: Because the gravity's proportional to...
Q: How long's this flight you watched? Seconds... minutes?
L: A couple minutes.
Q: Was this Wednesday night?
L: Yeah.
Q: All test flights were Wednesday nights.
L: Yeah.
Q: Was the ground... the dust underneath it moving? Did it disturb the ground?
L: There was the slightest bit... and I don't think it was from that... I think it was from the updraft... of it moving up... it just sucked up... and then it fell back down... but there was no wierd swirling while it was in the air... it just came back down...
Q: To your knowledge could a person walk under it? Did you ever see that happen?
L: I never saw that happen. I can't imagine what would happen if you walked under it... I heard specifically, as if someone had done it, because Barry told me that if you walk under it you can see only the sky above it. Because of the way the amplifiers work, they're bending the light around it so if you stand here and look above it... you can only see the clouds, cause your vision...
Q: That's just the kind of thing that in the final script I would love... 'cause it's a lie to you, but you've heard it, it's the kind of thing I would love to do in the movie... something...
L: No, it makes perfect sense...
Q: Something that you've heard happen... that's as far a stretch as I would make in a movie like this... is something you can say... alright, I didn't do that, but I know that's what it does. That to me is very exciting, to show...
L: Well, see I saw demonstrations like that with the amplifier in the lab so I know that is probably what happens.
Q: Do you know how to dramatize something like that? I don't know if it's with his character or another character 'cause there's always the opportunity to put other... were there other green scientists coming in at different points on this?
L: Not that I know of... and there were only 22 in total.
Q: To just have a character watching it fly... if we end up being able to do this... and walk forward and have some anxiety like... the reason I ask that question is it's not that far off the ground. What would happen... we've already established that guys have died doing this... if one scientist or observer gets a little carried away and starts to walk closer and someone else is... hey, what... we don't know what is going to happen... that's Hollywood... but that's dramatizing it without a big lie. Because there can be a sense... if your character's watching someone walk under it... of wait... what's going to happen... and we go to that character's POV and see the sky appear... it explains a lot of things about flying saucers, which is how do they get away with their being around and you don't see them all the time. You know, and that's startling.
L: Well, it depends on the vantage point... but you don't know what'll happen... I don't know what'll happen if you walk directly under the locus of the amplifier... is it like walking into a column (?) are you crashed or does nothing happen at all. That I really don't know.
Q: I have to assume a certain percentage of sightings are real... to some extent I'm like you... if I read about "abductions" I start to feel like car sick, I can't quite get a handle on it at all. To think about all the hovering these things supposedly do if it killed anybody underneath it... there'd be a lot of reports of crushed people.
L: Right. And, in fact, Barry telling the story that that's what you'd see underneath, it almost makes me think someone did that.
Q: I would think if anything you just would incur the discharge from the high voltage.
L: Well, if you're on top of it... if you touch it... but when it's that high up in the air, I don't think...
Q: It would be like the cyclotrons almost...
Q: But that discharge disappears three feet after it takes off.
L: Yeah, that's probably it's proximity to the ground...
Q: Okay, that was the first time you saw a saucer go... how long were you at this job before you got pulled off? Roughly.
L: I don't know.
Q: Under a year.
L: Yeah.
Q: Under three months?
L: Five months, maybe.
Q: Well, it was December of '88 to April '89...
L: Yeah... thank you.
Q: How often did you see these flights? Were you allowed to see them all the time?
L: No that was the only one I was allowed to see.
Q: So that was the wildest thing you saw a saucer do?
L: No... then there were times outside... after I had seen the test flight schedule... that I went to see on my own.
Q: And that was taking a risk each time?
L: Oh, yeah.
Q: This is great stuff.
L: That's when I saw the most amazing...
Q: What was the most amazing thing you saw?
L: That was probably when I had other people out there... when Jim and Gene...
Q: This was after the shit hit the fan...
L: Yeah, we saw a neat test and it was... I mean... it was flying everywhere. It was really neat.
Q: Same one... just the Sport Model?
L: Yeah.
Q: And you were now on the outskirts of the base hiding? Watching?
L: Yeah... laying out in the desert.
Q: How many miles away... can you guess?
L: We were thirteen miles from there.
Q: And on a hill so you were overlooking it, or something?
L: No... there's the mountain range and it comes up over the mountain range and we were laying out in the desert.
Q: So you got a kind of low angle view...
L Right.
Q: And what did it do? Was it doing all the step stuff?
L: It came up and made wierd moves and blasted to the left and blasted to the right and then at some point...
Q: Night time?
L: Yeah.
Q: Was it lit up... how did it look at night?
L: Oh it glows. It works almost like a fluorescent tube with the amount of energy that's on the craft... what you're doing is ionizing the air around it... they really can't avoid that...
Q: How the hell... that's why everyone sees them all the time.
L: Yeah, unfortunately, that's just the way it's going to be.
Q: You're seeing the air, not the craft. They're seeing the ionized air... they're never seeing the craft.
Q: That's interesting... this is fascinating... 'cause I've always read accounts saying like this ball of fire... ball of light... and it's always blown my mind 'cause there's metal in there... but the metal has to disappear so we're seeing the ionized air.
L: Yeah, it doesn't disappear it's just an envelope around it... electrons are screaming off there and they hit...
Q: What color is it?
L: It's a sodium yellow color... almost like yellow street lights.
Q: Does it get red or anything... does it change color at all?
L: I didn't see it do that... it gets brighter or dimmer but I didn't see it change color.
Q: How long was that flight approximately?
L: That was quite awhile.
Q: Many minutes.
L: Yeah.
Q: That must have been really fun.
L: Yeah, because everyone had seen it... that was a great relief. That was finally when I had...
Q: Now... let's go back 'cause I've jumped so far... what got you from that first flight to being in a position of watching this with friends out there?
L: Well, that's a lot of stuff happening.
Q: Well, take it a little bit at a time... we don't have to finish it all today. Let's just pick it up with... after you saw that first flight, were you now into... I think it's ultimately going to be our job, I'm not going to worry too much about it right now, but I think ultimately it's going to be our job to find a simplified way of depicting the problem you were working on. And this is something that will be hard to do and will take probably a lot of your help on the specific dialogue... was there one... like was there a math problem that you were dealing with the entire time? And was there a break through that you came to or was it just generally working with your team? What was the nature of it?
L: No, it wasn't a math problem... it was... the first thing was identifying... we had focused mainly on the reactor... and it was identifying (UNCLEAR -- sounds as though machine was moved).... was number one.
Q: So we're trying to find out... you had this... the fuel sample?\
L: Yeah.
Q: So you were essentially analyzing this fuel sample.
L: Right. Which was my contribution to the project because we did find out what it was.
Q: That's really great for us... because... was there a break through moment of victory?
L: Yeah... pretty much so.
Q: That's fabulous... I mean I really couldn't make this story up any better to be perfectly honest. Can I get a sense of team spirit? How many people were on this?
L: Two. Me and Barry.
Q: Shortly afterwards the Soviets were involved in the program... was it then that they were asked to leave the base?
L: No, something else had happened. It had nothing to do with our project. But I know, from what they told me, the Soviets were involved at some point and there was some other really major breakthrough... something with the craft... and after that the Soviets were never permitted back there. They were never given the information either.
Q: We must know some exciting stuff about this goddamn thing by now then.
L: I would imagine so.
Q: Barry had been working on it for years?
L: Well, maybe, maybe he was working on other projects.
Q: Well, let's put it like this... was there a sense from Barry that when you guys made this breakthrough, that you concerned your contribution of great relief... that the problem had seemed unsolvable?
L: It was a big deal... but not that big of a deal. Not... oh, everything's easier now.
Q: Did you hear what I said about European films... that this is the problem... and this is your challenge and this is the most exciting thing you've ever worked on... there is a way... I'm sure... of dramatizing this event.
Q: What was the key to discovering it?
Was it just luck and persistence or... how did you come across
what it finally was? Is it possible to put on these tapes?
L: Yeah, it was simple tests, really. Just simple steps that they
hadn't done.
Q: Was it an angle that you came in with? I mean to try this...
L: Yeah.
Q: And what was the nature of the angle that they hadn't thought of?
L: Well, it was that they were making it more technical than necessary. They were doing spectral analysis... they were doing x-ray defraction... they were doing everything in the world to find out what the substance was... they were doing chemical analysis, but... the bottom line is, the only time any of those yield results is if it's a common material that we already have data for... that it matches. 'Cause if it's a completely unknown and there's nothing to compare it to... yeah, it shows up, but it shows up strange numbers and strange readings and strange lines... and we just say, wow, what's that... so it was more of a simplistic view of what's going on. The first thing was... well, where is the gravitational wave coming from... that couldn't even be determined... there are simple things that were done... firing a laser over the top of it...
Q: What happened?
L: Well, the only thing that can bend light is gravity. Is there a gravitational wave actually being emitted from the element itself? Well, who knows... there's no instrument to detect gravitational waves... well, if you take a laser and fire it a great distance and then near the source of the laser put the element itself... then hundreds of feet away put a piece of graph paper and make a mark where the dot is... if there's any deviation at all you're bending light.
Q: Is that the deal? Could you see a bend in the light with the human eye?
L: No, you can't see the laser you just can see the dot.
Q: I see.
L: Other things that were done...
Q: Did you guys know about smoking up the room?
Q: You can put on goggles, can't you? Goggles to see the laser.
L: No, not really... not that type of laser.
Q: This is probably a (UNCLEAR)... I'm making a wisecrack, but that's what we do.
L: It was a helium neon one... if you have a high power argon one... bright blue beams you can see... those are real visible, but there was no need for anything like that.
Q: Poetic license.
Q: I recently did a laser beam with string and some fluorescent light, because the laser beam didn't... the bad guys had a high tech (UNCLEAR -- volume low) machine and, you know, like everything else in this picture, nothing worked... and they're like oh, well, we can't use it... and I said just get a piece of string... lit it with blue and fluorescent light and it was a little beam of light.
Q: Just do a reveal animation if you want to see...
Q: Part of my job is to do the cheesy Doug Henning part of it...
Q: A low budget David Copperfield.
Q: Well, it looks like a laser beam in my shot.
L: But there were some other tests that were done... the reason why we had to find what was going on... if we knew the element... it was kind of the starting point, then we could find out what the reactor was doing. After we find out what it was and how it was working, we later discovered that the bottom of the reactor was probably an accelerator of sorts. If anything it was like a cyclotron... where particles would rev up to high speed and then be diverted up and impact the element?
Q: They didn't realize that at the time?
L: No. That's almost exactly where... at the point they were at when they wanted to cut into it.
Q: (GROUP "HMMM")
L: What was that group "hmmm"
(LAUGHTER)
Q: Well, it almost makes fun of themselves... that's fabulous. Well, let me finish this though. You'd worked on cyclotrons before?
L: No... not cyclotrons... but accelerators.
Q: Okay... and is that background what made you realize what this really was?
Q: The beauty of this is... I don't want to insult Bob, because I'm completely unscientific, but as we get closer... the fun of this stuff is... the guy who inflates these garbage bags and they bring him in because he's got a different point of view is able to say... of course this is working... because you're overcomplicating it. We can come up with a visual... when we meet him... that he is reminded of when he discovers what it is. That he's working with... what did you say it is... it's not cyclotrons?
L: Accelerators.
Q: We find a visual shorthand regarding particle accelerators that reminds our character, finally in his moment of eureka, what it is. There's ultimately ways where we can use the real language, but have visual cues that go a, b, c... so the story does turn into his tape... doesn't turn into a lecture... but it can still have the fun of his odd point of view... or his eccentric point of view... or his unencumbered point of view... is probably the best way to look at it... the fact that the other guys who worked on this were encumbered... and he's unencumbered... is part of the solution... which leads me to another kind of dynamic in this kind of story... which is once you have your moment of discovery of victory... you would normally, now I'm guessing, so again I'll apologize, wouldn't the person normally be able to exercise that in some fashion... a patent... an announcement... a paper... you know what I'm saying? Was the nature of this in some way frustrating... was there a let down after this?
L: No, because normally... even when you're working for larger companies or a national laboratory... you normally can not patent anything anyway.
Q: The company owns it.
Q: Did you once say to me that you had to write down your own reports to some extent. Is this my imagination... was there something to do with as you report there was a sense of your paper was going on to someone who wasn't a scientist?
L: Well, you always had to keep a log of everything you did.
END OF TAPE 2 -- SIDE B