S4 - THE ROBERT LAZAR STORY
TAPE 5 - SIDE A
Q: Questions
L: Lazar
Q: Bob, can we start... this will take us in a little bit of a sequitus route, but can we talk about Knapp and you're first contact with him and how the television report went and things like this? Where does he come into the picture?
L: Actually, at the very end of everything. It was that day that they had set up the mobile satellite link...
Q: Who actually made the first contact with him?
L: With George Knapp?
Q: Yeah?
L: I think John Lear did.
Q: At your request?
L: Yeah.
Q: And John knew him or John knew of him?
L: John had done other interviews with him before... other television interviews... so they kind of knew each other. And that's how, essentially, the meeting started.
Q: Were you talking on the phone to George Knapp at all before you actually did the...
L: No.
Q: No contact with him at all. So you had never even seen him...
L: No... I hadn't seen him, in fact the entire interview with backlight... as not to show my face. And they used a pseudo name... in fact the pseudo name under me was Dennis. And that was kind of a dig at Dennis... really it just happened like that... it aired in the middle of the news and...
Q: Six o'clock news?
L: Five o'clock.
Q: Five o'clock news... but, now did you... when was it taped... or was it live?
L: It was live.
Q: So the incident when someone shot at you was just before that?
L: Right.
Q: The same day?
L: I believe there was a day in delay there.
Q: Okay. We'll come back and talk about the shooting that was so interesting...
L: If I can just comment... no, I guess we'll talk about that when we get...
Q: No, comment...
L: Okay, as far as commenting about the shooting... now, although it's incredibly coincidental... no one says that it was anyone from S4, any government official... is it possible that it was a random drive-by shooting that occurs so much in big cities like this? It's possible. Especially, considering I was playing with him more or less in the car, maybe he got pissed off and fired out the window... so... there again, it's one of those things that... I don't know for absolute sure, but it's a tremendous coincidence that at that time... that particular hour of that day, when I started on the phone and went down to Gene's office... I'm going from here to see... to get in contact with George Knapp... so on and so forth... that that occurred... so there's no specific...
Q: Take me through that conversation with Gene where you stated on the phone what time you were going to be there. So that I can reconstruct it accurately...
L: From what I remember... I think Gene was suggesting that I go ahead and do it, because he knew that John Lear knew George Knapp. So, I think I finally agreed and decided to drive to John's place... to talk to John.
Q: Did John know you were coming?
L: Yeah.
Q: You called him?
L: Umm-hmm... actually through this entire scenario, John only pops up two or three times. He's really not a main player in there... I don't know if I've got it across that way...
Q: Yeah, you did express that. But you called him up and said you were coming to... did you say why you were going?
L: I think Gene had spoken to him directly and might have filled him in.
Q: So you said something like... I'd like to see you...
L: Yeah... and something to the effect that, I understand that you know George Knapp or can get hold of him... maybe it would be possible to talk to him today.
Q: When you made that call, did you use your phone? Or a phone outside...?
L: I really don't remember. I think I called from Gene's office, but I can't remember.
Q: So you left Gene's office to talk to John Lear...
L: Right.
Q: And that's when it happened... it happened on which...
L: Charleston Boulevard on ramp.
Q: Did you file a police report?
L: No.
Q: Was there a bullet in your car?
L: Yeah. And in the tire. We looked for the one in the tire, we couldn't find... but there was entry by the rim. I thought the tire had caught it, but then I did drive all the way home, so it probably ejected itself...
Q: Did you think about making a police report?
L: Yeah I really did. In fact, I have people periodically drop film off here... some of the other real estate appraisers... there are little boxes outside... and I was in the driveway and one of them, Nancy Clark, who just works up the street here, had come by right after it had happened... now she knew nothing about all this other stuff... but I had commented on it, you know, how come the police aren't here... so on and so forth... and I don't know why I didn't... I probably should have... but I guess the reason I didn't was because eventually, after talking to the cops, no matter what, you're going to have to tell them entire story to connect everything together and it was just an unbelievable and impossible task at the time. And it just wouldn't have made sense... because eventually the questioning was going to get down to, well who would want to shoot you and this and that... well, the government's after me... oh, really... it just would not have been possible.
Q: What happened that night?
L: I didn't stay home that night.
Q: You were alone...
L: Yeah.
Q: Where did you go?
L: I think at that time I stayed at the hotel up off the strip... the Budget Inn.
Q: What did you feel like that night... do you remember?
L: I can't remember specifically. There were too many things that were going through my mind.
Q: Did you think about packing it in... leaving town? Getting out of here?
L: No, that never really occurred. There were too many thoughts going through my mind... because all that... everything else had happened just before that and I don't know... there were just too many thoughts going through my mind... there was nothing specific to lock onto... believe it or not, I mean, the shooting was not a real high priority... it was just in the stack.
Q: Were you afraid you were going to die?
L: No... I was just at a level of saturation where nothing really mattered at that point. I mean at that time I was probably thinking more along the lines of my wife and what was going on at that point than anything else.
Q: Your wife wasn't in the house?
L: No.
Q: Had she moved out or was she just out that night?
L: She was just out.
Q: What did she say when you told her about this?
L: I really don't remember.
Q: But you did tell her?
L: I really don't remember... it's kind of a blur.
Q: Listen, I understand... I understand exactly... some of these things... simply because everything you can tell me is important for me to know so that I can reconstruct this perfectly. If I ask you something which makes you uncomfortable... don't tell me. Or, if you can't remember, we'll fit the pieces together as best we can. So, I'm going to ask you all kinds of things that most people wouldn't remember...
L: Well, I'll certainly make that distinction... so far there's already been quite a few things I can't remember.
Q: The next day, you woke up in the Budget Hotel... uneventful night?
L: Uneventful night.
Q: Who did you call from the Budget Hotel?
L: No one... just came home and went and did my normal rounds of work.
Q: Did you talk with John Lear that night or with Gene?
L: Oh, probably with Gene. I spoke to Gene all the time. Gene I spoke to several times a day, every day.
Q: Did he tell you to go to the police, or anything like that?
L: No.
Q: He probably told you to get out of the house.
L: Yeah.
Q: You've got the contact now with John Lear where you're going to set up the meeting with George Knapp...
L: That actually occurred in John Lear's driveway...
Q: You drove over there?
L: Yeah.
Q: Alone or with Gene... do you remember?
L: I drove there with Gene, yeah.
Q: Okay.
(GLITCH IN TAPE -- MACHINE TURNED OFF AND ON?)
L: And the truck pulled up...
Q: So John already knew...
L: Yeah, John was updated on what had happened when I got there.
Q: Bob, I'm missing one little step here. You were going to see John Lear... let's follow the night of the shooting night... you were going to see him to talk about doing a story with George Knapp...
L: Right. That's when he was updated on everything.
Q: But you didn't see him that night?
L: George Knapp?
Q: John Lear... the night of the shooting...
L: No, John Lear I saw... George Knapp I did not...
Q: So after the shooting you saw John Lear?
L: Yeah.
Q: Good.
L: I tried to get hold of George and could not... so...
Q: So the next day you went over.
L: Right... and he had stuff set up.
Q: At John Lear's house?
L: Right.
Q: How did you feel about talking to a TV guy that you didn't know?
L: Well, I'd never done it before... I saw kind of nervous and I didn't... I really didn't know if it was the right decision, so it was kind of a compromise... and they said, well, we'll film it in silhouette and we won't use your name... as if... they didn't change my voice or anything... so it was a very obvious...
Q: Were you afraid you might go to jail?
L: Ahh... that had crossed my mind, but it didn't weigh heavily on my mind because... as you know with the clearance, there's that 10/10 provision in there... ten years of jail... ten thousand dollar fine for divulging secret information, but they really couldn't... I mean, what could they say... in order for them to prosecute me on that, it would have to be... they would have to admit that all this... and that was absolutely out of the question, so I felt relatively safe as far as that was concerned... but... jail was not a real worry, it was more a worry of... I was more worried about not doing anything... and, I don't know if you've ever been in that mode where... well, here's a good analogy... maybe it's a poor analogy... you know if you're in traffic and you're not going anywhere... you can get extremely frustrated... though you may be going just a short distance on a straight road, and if it's not moving, you can take a whole bunch of side streets that will take exactly the same amount of time, but you're moving... it doesn't matter... at least something's happening to occupy your brain and you'd get there at the same time and that's... so, maybe it's a poor analogy... it's exactly what I felt... I may not be doing the right thing, but something is happening... I'm not sitting at home waiting for something to act on me... I'm acting and all I felt was, maybe it was a need for control cause there was so much happening behind the scenes that I wasn't aware of, I wanted to initiate something... so I felt compelled to do something.
Q: When you went to talk with George Knapp was part of that due to the fact that you were afraid for your own safety?
L: Oh, yeah. Sure.
Q: How did George Knapp handle this?
L: Well, George Knapp was on the air in the middle of the news and he just, essentially, cut in and said this is... we have someone from the test site... blah, blah... says the government is hiding certain things and that his life may be in jeopardy, or something like that. So he just cut in and out and, as far as how did he handle it... later on in the broadcast, him and the other anchor person were talking and George was very interested and he kept bringing it up... bringing it up throughout the newcast... but George Knapp had no idea who I was... so...
Q: And he did that based on the conversation he had with John Lear...
L: Right. You've got to ask Gene about that, I guess. Because I don't know if Gene or John spoke to George Knapp and who really updated him on everything, I really don't know.
Q: What happened then... how long was it on the air? Sixty seconds... a couple minutes... do you remember?
L: Ahhh... I do have the tape somewhere...
Q: I've seen a copy of it...
L: It's... they ask a few questions... I'd say a couple minutes... maybe four minutes or so?
Q: How did you feel when it was over?
L: Relieved...
Q: You were at John Lear's house and the remote drove away and you went on home?
L: Yeah, that was it.
Q: Then what happened?
L: Then was the call from Dennis... it was as soon as I got home... and he said the only thing that he said was... do you have any idea what we're going to do to you now? And I said, no. And that was the end of the conversation.
Q: (UNCLEAR -- too soft to make out)
L: Yeah, after that, yeah.
Q: (UNCLEAR -- again, too soft)
L: That was sometime afterwards... and he wanted to meet at the Union Plaza Hotel.
Q: How many weeks or months, roughly, after that?
L: I can't even remember... that's a calendar question.
Q: But things had been pretty quiet... when he called up that time, or was there a reason that he may have called up? You said yesterday that things quieted down?
L: Yeah, things quieted down after that... and some time had gone by... maybe a month and he called and I had the impression that he wanted... it was just a one on one thing... he wanted to talk about something... obviously about the situation or something... but disconnected from everyone else. And that meeting went sour and that was the last I ever heard of him.
Q: What kind of contact did you have with George Knapp after that first remote interview?
L: After that, some time after that, I don't remember how long, George wanted to meet me and I finally agreed and he came down with himself and the head of the network... or TV station and we talked about it... and he wanted to do a more indepth report of what was going on out there, 'cause from what I understand he had been working on some story or investigating strange things out there... and that's when I met him and talked to him for a little while and shortly after that he had been compiling all this data to do an expose on TV.
Q: Did he ever show it on TV? Was it on TV?
L: Yes.
Q: So what happened to him at the station where he worked? Did he leave or was he... I know that he's not there anymore... do you know anything about it?
L: No... his thing was kind of a big hit... he did it over a week period and he got a lot of responses and that's where he got a lot of the contacts 'cause he kind of made a plea to people... anyone else that has any information about this, contact him... and that's where he got some people who would only talk to him off the record... so on and so forth...
Q: Did he ever share any of that with you?
L: Yeah.
Q: What did you think of it... what did you think of what you saw?
L: Oh, a lot of it was interesting, but...
Q: Did it have anything to do with S4?
L: Yeah... some people did.
Q: So he actually knows some people that... or he spoke with people who...
L: He's spoken with people that have been... most have worked at Area 51 and knew of the existence of the place... and knew of alien craft there... people who had shuttled people back and forth... mostly retired people... purposely not... speaking off the record, essentially, to protect their pensions and what not... he also later met some other people... Senate investigators, and things like that, who also were very suspicious about what was going on down there and back budget investigators... a guy named DiAmatto, for one, who later became assets in tracking stuff down... actually, because that interview kind of got all over the place... attracted the attention of a lot of people that... investigative committees headed by... what's his name, yeah, John Glenn became interested... I mean, it attracted a lot of people that were kind of in to that more or less. Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man on the moon, came down and spoke to me at length and said, I guess the astronauts have their own little clique... group... apart from NASA, and again they said, off the record, we kind of know something's going on, but...
Q: Mitchell said that?
L: Yes. And he came down here with his wife and was interested in all of the particulars... because they were just collecting information about what was going on behind closed doors. And he had lots of good contacts... in addition to people that managed to contact me directly, but most people didn't know how... so they came through George.
Q: In this time period, after you'd talked to George Knapp for the first time, and after that story went out... can you tell me a little bit about the contacts that you may have been exposed to... people phoning you up... were there any strange phone calls... were there people trying to meet you?
L: Oh, yeah.
Q: Were any of those things particularly memorable because they struck you as being odd or burdensome or something that you didn't. want to talk... how did you feel about all that?
L: Well, unfortunately, a good portion of them were kooks, or at least that's what I labelled them as...
Q: What'd they say....?
L: Oh, some were absolutely insane... they called themselves... The Mercury Workers... the nuclear test site is in Mercury, Nevada, and they said, well they think a bunch of their co-workers are being held down at S4 and would I get together with this group and plan a break-out and... I mean, these guys were kooks... I mean, ridiculous things... a couple silly things like that stuck out... most of it was other news agencies... or Oprah and Geraldo and CNN... I mean everyone in the entire world lit up...
Q: Did you see any of those people?
L: No, I turned down interviews with everybody... and it went over the UPI and...
Q: Now... help me understand your motivation... even though I personally applaud that... they were probably willing to pay you good money...
L: Yeah, they were. But that was not my intention to do the interview... to do an interview to... it's hard to describe... that is not... it's not the way I wanted it presented and I was doing it actually for more of a selfish reason... I know it's unfair not to release all of the information to the scientific community and so on and so forth, but really the main reason was I was afraid for what was happening to me... and I felt that the best way was if this is in the public eye, if... certainly if anything suddenly happened to me, the light is now cast on the test site and what's going on... how come this guy just went on TV and said there's all this strange stuff happening and he disappears or he's being harrassed or something... that was the main reason for doing it... and with that being taken care of... there was no reason to go completely national and Hollywood and, if anything, that was going to discredit the message I was trying to get across, because... well, you know what happens when you go on those shows and what they do to stories... they turn them around and sensationalize everything and that would... that was just not my intention.
Q: I read something about you going to a... was it a UFO conference here in Las Vegas? Tell me about that. How did you feel about that?
L: Well, I guess it was curiosity... I wanted to see what... well, which UFO conference?
Q: Tell me about as many as you can remember...
L: Well, one was pretty dated... all this other... this was shortly after I had started telling Gene, before the shit hit the fan, more or less... and became interested in what all these people knew. And we went to a UFO conference here in town and it was, essentially, what I thought it would be like.
Q: In one of the hotels?
L: Yeah, I mean, crazy people.
Q: Were they wearing costumes and stuff?
L: Some lady said she was from Venus and she typically comes down here and... because she wants her kids to be educated here and, I mean, it was truly ridiculous...
Q: What else sticks in your mind? People are wierd and that's great... if I can just take a snapshot and write about them... because I can't think of this stuff...
L: Well, these people were absolutely dead serious and they'd have speaker after speaker... one guy, Bill Cooper, was talking about how there were bases on the moon and Mars... we'd been there since the '50's... shuttling back and forth... these big mining operations going on...
Q: Now this is after you've seen the spacecraft...
L: Right. So this was particularly entertaining for me.
Q: And you're now... does Gene know that you've seen this spacecraft?
L: Yeah.
(PHONE RINGS -- MACHINE TURNED OFF AND ON)
Q: So this is in one of the hotels... you're walking through there with Gene... has Gene seen... have you gone out to the desert with Gene yet?
L: Yeah... yeah. Gene has seen some of the test flights... heard really all I had to say...
Q: Now, this is the first UFO conference...
L: Yeah.
Q: Did you talk with anyone there? Did you look for anyone?
L: No, I just looked around and... kind of with a superior attitude... really knowing what was going on and just glancing at the material... they were selling books and all kinds of things...
Q: This was all stuff that you had been exposed to... and just didn't want to have anything to do with the stuff anyway.
L: Right.
Q: Was there anything there... at this first UFO conference that struck you as close to the mark?
L: Ahh... one was... well, one was... the drawings they had of the aliens themselves... which was the only thing that ever made me think, well maybe someone really was abducted at one time... because were would they have come up with an accurate representation?
Q: They corresponded to the pictures in the autopsy report?
L: Yes... reasonably well. As far as all these other scenarios and stories that were made up... everything was beyond ridiculous... they were showing tapes of the Kennedy assassination and the person commenting on it, he said... his whole point was the driver shot Kennedy... and the driver turns around and you can see that... and the driver does turn around, but they're saying... look at the gun in his hand, he's shooting him and it was because Kennedy was going to reveal the UFO secret as soon as he left Dallas... and it was really funny... it was a really entertaining day... and the lady from Venus... who I just had to talk to... and it was just a taunt... essentially... I said, well, how did you get back from Venus... oh, my spacecraft was parked over here... I said, did you wear these clothes... oh, yeah... this is how we dress... you know, it's 800 degrees on Venus and it's a sulphuric acid atmosphere... well, this is special acid-resistant and it's high temperature material... I said, can I light some of it... no, no, it's not resistant to earth flames... so, anything you could come up with, they made it sillier... but she was dead serious and I actually think she's believes it, so it was kind of entertaining... oh, the other thing was, the Billy Meier stuff... supposedly there was a Swedish farmer in the '70's, who had made contact with spacecraft or aliens or something like that and had taken some really good pictures and one of the pictures they had was... looked exactly like the Sport Model that I had worked on... which was amazing to me...
Q: What did you think when you saw that?
L: I thought, number one, that he didn't meet any aliens... I thought what was going on was this disc, at that time, was still being tinkered with... and what he was seeing was some of our guys on a test flight somewhere...
Q: But in Sweden?
L: Yeah, he's Swedish.
Q: What did Gene say when...
Q: Gene had seen one... he'd just seen the lights...
L: Right... of course, he didn't see it in the detail I did, a glowing disc that shape, but... I said, that is it... actually, it was slightly different, but I said, that is absolutely the craft and most of the UFO people... like I said before, they all have their own little scenarios and stories and they all hate each other and try to discredit each other and make up stories about one another and a lot of them hated the Billy Meier's story, I guess, because after he had these photographs out and supposedly they'd been analyzed and they weren't fake, about a year later some government officials came into his barn and broke in and, all of a sudden, found models of the craft and they said, oh, well, he made everything up... and, of course, Billy Meier contends they brought the models and put them there... there was nothing there... I wouldn't have just left them out on the floor, even if I was faking it... so it was a very controversial story, but to me, that was the only thing that rang true, ironically, the one that everyone believes in the least had a essentially the same craft that I was working on... at least the same design...
Q: There was no one there though that... you didn't say, look, I have seen something...
L: Oh, no, I would never have said anything to those people.
Q: Time has gone by now, and you actually went back to one where people knew of you, or knew you, or...
L: Well, this is years and years and years later... this was recently...
Q: Tell me about that one.
L: Well, what had happened was... the place that I used to watch from, where we got caught, had kind of become famous... because after I had mentioned in a later interview exactly where it was... there's a very small town next to it called Rachel, Nevada that probably has like a hundred people living there...
Q: What's the name of the town again?
L: Rachel.
Q: Okay.
L: And there was a little building called the Rachel Bar and Grill, which is like a little double-wide trailer...
Q: Yeah, I've read about that...
L: After that, it became... they have bus tours that go out there now... from California... people fly in and drive up to this place and they've built a giant restaurant now to like a hotel and they call it the Ale-Inn... all essentially because of that... so I became friends with the people there because they attributed all their new success and what not... unfortunately, it was also the only place someone could stay over night and watch from that area, so what had happened recently was... the power company for some reason, and I don't understand how they can do that, it's some sort of co-op deal because it's out in the middle of nowhere... they just increased the power rates up there... essentially, to make the town of Rachel go away... five fold what they originally were... and, from what I understand, they're going to fight a legal battle against them... and the little town and the Rachel Bar and Grill, which was the main thing in the town, couldn't afford to do it, so they were putting on a UFO conference more or less, to get people to come in and they were going to charge thirty or forty dollars a person to show up and hear various speakers speak so they could raise money to save their town...
Q: And this was in 1992... '91...
L: '93... maybe '92... nah, it was '93... I had not planned on speaking. George Knapp was going to... Gene was going to... because Gene actually relays my story better than I do, because, unlike me, he has a memory... but they did write on the poster, the little flyer that they sent around, that Bob Lazar will be in attendance... and that caused... it was a circus... I really couldn't believe it... there were droves of people deep...
Q: This is outside... during the day...
L: Yeah, when I drove up...
Q: RV's...
L: Yeah, they just swarmed me... it was unbelievable...
Q: What was that like?
L: It was a terrible feeling... I really knew what some famous people must feel like now... it was... I had a friend that had come up to see me and he was no more than twenty feet away and it honestly took me about four hours to get to him.
Q: Did you give any interviews up there?
L: Well, I had never intended to, but that day Gene's father died, so he couldn't come. George Knapp decided to go fly to Kansas... I had originally come up there just to watch and hang out and then leave... just to kind of put my two cents in there by showing up to help them out... not for any money or anything... so I got up there not knowing anything about this... and all the speakers had cancelled and I was left there and I'm listening to some of these people... well, we drove from South Carolina just to ask you a question or talk to you... and I felt so absolutely obligated to stay there and talk, so I just answered questions on a podium for about an hour and a half and left.
Q: How many people were there? Couple a hundred?
L: Yeah, I'd say a few hundred... maybe two or three hundred... but it was never my intention to do that and I left.
Q: Did you feel uneasy doing that? I mean uneasy from a personal security...
L: Oh, yeah... I had no idea who was there... there were way too many people. It just surprised me. I didn't think there would be that kind of a turnout or that kind of interest... or anything like that... so I was really anxious to leave.
Q: And you told them essentially...
L: No, I was so sick of telling my story, which I'd repeated so many times... I just said, I'll just answer some questions.
Q: Any interesting questions that stick in your mind?
L: Only the stupid questions stick in my mind.
Q: Tell me some of the stupid ones... do you remember any?
L: What kind of gas do the flying saucers use?
Q: What did you say?
L: Gas... as in gasoline... and he said, yeah. And to me it was a scream. And I said I think I came back with a snappy remark at first and then told him, well, they don't operate like that... and he didn't understand me... I guess he was just some miner or farmer or something along those lines and just couldn't compute what I was talking about. And I said it's that new Arco EC1 -- that unleaded gasoline... and everyone kind of got a laugh at that and then I talked to him directly and said, well, they don't use gas like that... it uses like a reactor... like a nuclear reactor and tried to explain it simply to him, but I don't think he really grasped what was going on.
Q: Any other stupid questions? This is all great stuff by the way.
L: There were some good ones... specifically everyone always asks the same question... how the disc travels in a Delta confirguration... they always want me to re-explain that... I don't know why... how space is bent and things like that... and questions like why doesn't it show up on radar.
(MACHINE BEING ADJUSTED)
Q: That was in '93... has anything happened since then that you would consider significant that we should know about?
L: From the end of all the events up there to today?
Q: Umm hmm.
L: I'd say the only significant thing would have been the brothel thing...
Q: The brothel hearing?
L: Yeah.
Q: When was that?
L: Oh, boy... '92... probably '91... then again... that's a calendar thing. But the reason that was significant was for various reasons.
Q: What was that all about?
L: After leaving... and it still has me very suspicious... after leaving the project or not being into it any more... I went back to doing my photo business, other little things that have always worked for me and they were going good and I ran into a girl that had claimed she worked at the legal brothel that I had owned years ago and what I had done there was something unusual is that I computerized everything and it made everything run relatively smooth. What specifically... sounds ridiculous... so the girls can pretend that they know the guys, they can set up a data base and they can come in and say how's your wife, Jean, and things like that... anyway, as far as accounting and other things along those lines... and this person said they had been operating a place in town here illegally for quite some time and could I set up the same system that we had there along with some security stuff. I said, sure, that's no sweat. So for about seventy-five hundred dollars I set up and installed the computers and wrote the software for it and put up cameras down their staircase so they could see who was coming up to the door and, essentially, did that. But most of the time was spent, a couple months, just writing the software and getting into it. Now, as it turned out, and I still don't know how this chain of events happened... but, she was listed with the FBI as being an informant for the DEA for the FBI and for Metro Police. Now why was she allowed to operate and do this and where is she coming out of the clear blue sky to ask me... and I never remembered her... that's just something she claims... anyway, after I was done that was it and I left and some... about... and I kind of left abruptly cause I finished earlier than I thought I would... and I said, okay, it's done... I'll see you later... and, oh, what had happened was, this was after George had aired his expose and everything. Then someone had told us that they had hired a private investigator that was following me around at that time.
Q: Who had hired?
L: The rival network... channel 13... they had hired a private investigator that was following me around and was going to air, because they had... I guess channel 8 aired this thing during Sweeps Week, which is where they get their ratings evalutated, and obliterated all of the TV stations and they really disliked it... because they, too, had asked me for interviews, but I turned it down, just like everyone else. I said, what I know has been aired and there's no reason to go on with it. So there was kind of some hard feelings there. They found this stuff out... that I was doing this work on the side for them and were planning on airing a little thing, well, this UFO informant here... this is what he does in his spare time. So George decided to... he contacted me and said, what we need to do is go on the air and say it first before these people do... because it's just something stupid you've been involved in, but it's just better to say it yourself. And I said, well, that makes sense. If there're going to do it... and plus, it's another smack in the face to them. So we went ahead and did a little thing and just kind of rolled over it... like, so what have you been up to since all this stuff had happened... and I had dah-dah-dah and I've done this for a place in town among other things... and that night I guess the police were put in kind of a wierd position... so they busted the place and shortly after that they wanted to charge me with pandering... which is... essentially, pimping... so after I sat down with the police, it was just an unprecedented push to dump everything on me... this thing had records and stuff that they seized from years back and they wanted to say that I had come up with this and built the whole business up and created everything and it made no sense... they were actually pushing everything on me when they knew fine and well that this woman had this running for a long time and it doesn't matter, they said, you aided and abetted in this crime by setting up this equipment and they really triumphed it up to much more than it was and they said, well, you either admit to that or we're going to file all these charges and many more felony counts and so I was really... there was really nothing I could do... and I really was not in a mood to fight however long that was going to take and however expensive that was going to be. So I admitted to being involved and had to plead guilty to that charge and it was more or less of a plea bargain thing and they said, well, you know, you're going to have to perform community service was the only thing... ironically... well, I'll get back to that in a minute. But in all the hearings, who was in the back of the room but Thigpen... this is the guy who originally came to investigate me... who... now what...
Q: Now wasn't he living in Washington at the time?
L: Yeah... now what is he doing at these hearings and only the last time did I realize what was going on... has he been here... yeah... that was the guy I was telling you about... because, again, at the time there were so many things going through my mind... that's that wierd guy that was sent here everytime... that's Thigpen and what on earth is he doing here and now maybe this explains the great push to get... and maybe in there eyes it was perfect... it was on a silver platter... here's the guy that was screwing up everything for them, essentially, and now I gave it to him on a silver platter, something to discredit myself and it did work out that way perfectly. So maybe that's why everything truly came to an end. Ironically... the community service I had to perform was setting up the exact same data base for Clark County... for their Discovery Museum in town.
Q: That's great.
L: I guess it's okay to do it for them, but not for them.
Q: Now, did you say... when you saw Thigpen there... did you say anything to him?
L: No, that was impossible. It was a fairly quiet place. He's standing in the back and I couldn't, you know...
Q: If he were...
L: I acknowledged his existence there and he acknowledge me and that was it...
Q: That's interesting.
L: But every time I was done... 'cause you sit up front with your lawyer and you really can't get up and leave... much less go talk with someone, but every time we were done and I went to leave, he was always gone. So, it was extremely suspicious.
Q: Well, he was probably there because people wanted to know the proceedings of the court without actually asking for or attempting to acquire a transcript. So no contact ever again with Thigpen? No contact with any of those people. You performed your community service...
L: Right... that was over and done with and...
Q: And it's all over...
L: Right.
Q: Any strange phone calls?
L: No, it pretty much all... I'm wondering if I'm leaving out something, but... I don't think there was... that was the last UFO related event that had anything to do with those people and it all... that was really the end of everything. Nothing ever came of it after that.
Q: I was going to say, would you surmise that Thigpen knew about the spacecraft... Or was he simply performing a...
L: I don't know.
Q: That's a hard one.
L: I don't know. Originally, I wouldn't think that the people that originally came to my house knew what was going on... I don't know if Thigpen was a special person, but certainly by that time he had heard all of the stories and whatnot and I don't know.
Q: When was the last time you saw Barry? We're just about out...
L: That little light blinks...
(MACHINE ADJUSTMENT)
Q: I'm going to change the batteries when we're done with...
L: The last time I saw Barry was the last time I was out at S4, before I went to Indian Springs and all that... I never saw him out. The only person I ever saw out of the base was Dennis.
Q: Was there anybody involved with EG&G or S4 that you knew or had words with besides Dennis and Barry.
L: Other than that guy Rene I had met.
Q: Tell me about Rene again.
L: I only spoke to him once... he was working on Project Galileo, but on some other aspect of it and was working in a lab near us and I was just introduced once and we talked for awhile... small talk nothing...
Q: Did you get the impression that he stayed out there or went back and forth?
L: I got the impression that he stayed out there, but I had no prove that anyone stayed out there... I never saw any sleeping quarters... though I knew there were extensive ones up at Area 51... so I don't know.
Q: When you flew back or up there, the people you flew up there with were all going to some other...
L: Mostly into Area 51 up there...
Q: Did you ever see any of those people again or have any contact with any of those people again?
L: That were on the plane with me?
Q: Umm hmm.
L: I don't think I ever had contact with them long enough to even recognize them if I did see them again.
Q: What about any of the people... I just don't want to leave anybody out. What about any of the people that you worked with at Los Alamos? Did you ever have contact with... do you still have contact with...
L: Oh, yeah... hmm hmm.
Q: Now how do they relate to what's happened to you. Let me see if I can change the question a little bit. Is your friendship with them still what it was when you worked at Los Alamos or because of this series of incidents has the friendship been changed?
L: It was probably strengthened. I would say.
Q: Now are some of these people the same group...
L: I was thinking of one in particular... Joe... that I worked with closely, who was a good friend at Los Alamos and had helped out a lot and even moved out here and started working up at the nuclear test site... we've always been close and he's always been really supportive of everything.
Q: Did you work in the same area at Los Alamos with Joe?
L: Yeah.
Q: Can you recall... see there's a purpose for all of this... and that is... going in this picture that you have relationships... normal relationships with all kinds of different people and you're telling them about what's going on... it makes your story... even though it's credible... it makes it yet more credible... we're making it undeniable...
L: It was difficult... initially Joe was still at Los Alamos and I had to do mail communication with him and countless times that Joe sent me stuff it never got here. And that's when I started sending things to Joe and I still have the little plastic bags that I saved from them... it says, received at the Post Office opened... I mean, I have several of those... from back then... it seemed like someone had gone through everything of mine.
Q: When the Post Office began to give you the plastic bags with material open, that was after you left S4? That was after you were not called back?
L: Yeah. Then I began sending things through Gene's office... that's the only way I communicated via mail.
Q: Did you talk to him on the phone at all?
L: Joe?
Q: Yeah.
L: Yeah. In a... even before I had actually left S4 I spoke to him a little and really couldn't say much on the phone. All we'd say was, hey, well, next time you come out, I've got a lot to tell you... and how's work going... he knew full well what was going on from my letters and then eventually he moved out here and started working up at the nuclear test site and he'd smuggle maps out of there of exactly how it's laid out so we could find the back roads... he could take and get a good vantage point from the opposite side... 'cause he'd be on the opposite side of S4 and he purposely said up there at nights and rented a room they have up at the test site... you know, government sponsored, right on the site, so he could go out at night and try and see things from the other side. And he did see (UNCLEAR) test flights, but unfortunately he was a little far away and could see nothing other than lights flashing around in the sky.
Q: What happened to him when you started to get into trouble?
L: Nothing. Coincidentally, right around that time, Joe moved. And disappeared. He decided to go back to school for some reason... just kind of tried of working for the government... probably partially out of frustration seeing all the stuff that was happening to me and just he had been in his job for a long time... so nothing really happened to him.
Q: Left the area?
L: Yeah. Moved up to Utah.
Q: Did you continue to communicate with him?
L: Ah... not very much... now once or twice a month. However, Jim, another friend, who was working up at another test site, where they were working on the Stealth plane up in Tonapa (sp?), now he was contacted instantaneously. Right before George Knapp's thing went on the air.
Q: Tell me about that.
L: Umm... Jim was there the first night where we saw the disc jump around and in fact it's his voice on the video tape... and someone at work... because there was a lot of talk about that... up in the area he was working in... and someone had recognized his voice and reported it to his superior. Now Jim was in the process of getting his Q clearance... so he had been there... for, I don't know, for how many months... I'd say about ten months... which is about how long it takes... ten... twelve months... once you start passing there... then it's am I getting my clearance or not... so, the George Knapp thing was going to air the next day and they came... Jim, being a civilian, he's working up there on the fire control systems... fire alarms... and they came and pulled him out of work... the UFI... and sat him down and interrogated him. And I hadn't really updated Jim on everything... I just gave him a kind of brief overview of what I was working on and he saw the disc tested and Jim is kind of a crazy guy... he's happy-go-lucky type of guy that will just do anything and kind of responds to authority like I do. And they essentially sat him down and said... hey, tell us about your friend Lazar, what's going on. Now do you believe all this ridiculous stuff he's been telling you... well, you'd better not and so on and so forth... and all that did was completely cement it in Jim's mind that what was going on was exactly what I was saying and I think they told him... I don't remember, you'll probably have to ask Jim, but I think they told him not to contact me anymore or something along those lines. And Jim called me from a secure phone intentionally right after the meeting and said, hey, these guys... I mean purposely... these guys just interrogated me and said blah-blah-blah... the whole nine yards and I didn't tell him I knew where you were and I know right where you're at... and all that stuff... and then Jim and I had a long talk that night and...
Q: And this was before Knapp aired his...
L: His long expose... yeah... the day before. And they... I really don't know... yeah, I'm sure it was the day before...
Q: And Jim lives up in Utah now.
L: No, that's Joe. Jim still lives here.
Q: Okay, sorry. Anybody else? Am I forgetting anybody here?
L: Jim, Joe, Gene...
END OF TAPE 5 -- SIDE A
TAPE 5 -- SIDE B
Q: ... shoot the fireworks off in the desert at night...
L: That's the only thing that takes precedence over everything...
Q: When do you do that?
L: We used to do it the weekend before the 4th of July, until Omni printed that in its article. But that is something that Jim and I started years ago... when I was twelve, when I lived in New York, they put on these big fireworks displays in the park and they let you come in and help set things up... not actually making of the fireworks, but tying the knots and setting up the framework for the ground displays and I really got a kick out of that... already being scientifically inclined... I was really fascinated with how the fireworks worked and subsequent to that I learned more about it and it was more or less of an art and all the formulas and techniques are passed down from family to family...
Q: Until the family blows itself up.
L: Or dies out. And some of them are very complex techniques and formulas that really have been lost and never duplicated and are recorded... it's kind of a wierd branch of chemistry... pyrotechnics, in itself.
Q: It's an Italian family in New York, isn't it?
L: The Grucci's (sp?)... the guy that I know died, Jimmy Grucci (sp?)... yeah, most of the Italians are the best at it. But, as time went on, I learned more about it and then the years went by, I moved around, continued kind of experimenting with stuff and learning the techniques and then joined the Pyrotechnics Guild and began to develop... everyone has their own signature colors and stuff... and some of them being very, very difficult to do and I came up with a color... double neon blue... is what I called it... and, essentially, began just doing things on my own, just for fun, because it's technically illegal to manufacture fireworks... it's kind of a gray area of the law... and so to avoid any possible legal implications and whatnot, we would go out and have a barbecue on this drylake bed... the weekend before the 4th of July, before the cops are out looking for fireworks, and later we found out that the drylake bed is on Indian land so we're safe from everything... technically not being part of the United States... however those laws work... so I began to be very knowledgeable on it and actually helped out in other firework displays and so just finally I taught a couple of friends how to start making some of the larger fireworks... and it began to escalate and we had a group of people... and then more friends... and people got into it and then finally it turned into a big fireworks show and we began putting it on every year... not really a show... but where everyone makes their own fireworks and, instead of just sitting there watching the fireworks go off, people would be like, hey, this one's mine going up and it added a lot more interest and fun to it. And then as more time went on, we started putting money into it and now we spend, on that one day, thousands of dollars...
Q: Who are the guys that do this with you?
L: Really, I do 90 percent of it... and I'd say just the close friends, immediate close friends and family... Jim and his girlfriend...
Q: Jim's last name is...
L: Tageilini... Gene... his wife... and a couple of friends... actually, we've kind of split up all the jobs that have to be done... a lot of it folding paperwork... a lot of it... the biggest time consuming part is taking these woks that you normally cook food in and we put little shotgun... smaller than bb's... shots in there and I take the various chemical compositions and make them into a powder and spray them with water and roll them around until they snowball and get bigger and you add different colors on top... so when the shells blow up you get different colors and different effects... and we spend about two or three months beforehand making all these things... and testing out different things and then the day comes... we come up with different, crazy things to do... last year... Jim's kind of a stuntman that never got to be a stuntman... he'd love to do crazy things... and last year I made him a jetpack... I made a little jet engine that he could wear on his back so he could stand on rollerskates and go across the drylake bed...
Q: Did he?
L: Yeah, he did.
Q: How fast did he go?
L: Ahh... he was moving at a pretty good clip... I don't know...
Q: Guess... thirty, forty...
L: Forty-five... fifty... he was moving pretty good. Just crazy things... A big barbecue and everyone just gets around and drinks and...
Q: Jon was telling us something about a balloon or a camera and a balloon?
L: Oh, that's one of this year's things that we're doing is we've got a bunch of... each year we make a tape of everything that happens...
Q: Do you have any of those tapes?
L: Oh, yeah, sure...
Q: Can I at some point trouble you to see them? Because this is something that's got to be in the picture...
L: ... that particular Desert Blast was an interesting one.
Q: That's what it's called a Desert Blast?
L: Yeah, in that it was right after everything that had happened... and everyone was so afraid... that here are all of Bob's friends in one place at one time... that so few people showed up it was eerie... now normally we're talking an event that years ago... eight years ago started out with six or seven people and a couple of years ago we had three hundred and fifty...
Q: What year did you have three hundred and fifty? '88?
L: It wasn't this year, but the year before... '91. It had gotten to such tremendous proportions... now we keep the date secret, because we had three airplanes land on the drylake... people getting out... it was an event... and what really ended it that year was it got so out of hand there were hundreds of people I didn't know... and that didn't know me... and it was my event and where some drunk guy had come up to me that year and I was in the way of whatever he wanted to do and he had the gall to ask me who invited me... which I thought was great... and I said, well, that's it... and now we've purposely cut it down and try to keep it between fifty and a hundred people and people we know and are friends and we can all sit together and have a barbecue and go crazy and watch...
Q: That's great...
L: In fact, while we're talking, I'll just let a tape run and you can see...
(MACHINE TURNED OFF AND BACK ON)
L: ... something happened with the brothel and all that... of course all the TV hoopla had aired already and the prosecutor thought, this is great, because we're really going to discredit the guy and make him look like a lunatic... he believes in flying saucers and so on and so forth... so they convinced the judge to do a psychiatric report on me that he had intended to use against me... look this guy's a idiot and so on and so forth... so they had an independent group of people give me a psychological analysis and it backfired tremendously on them, because it came back... well, this is the original copy...
Q: Jon mentioned this in the airplane coming up... he said that there'd be an MMPI -- Minnesota (sp?) multi-phasic personality inventory...
L: Yeah... that's right.
Q: It's just amazing what you can tell from a line.
L: It's amazing because there's a lot of stuff that you really don't know about yourself until... like in response to authority... he shows tendency to get people to (UNCLEAR) and then resist them... which I always thought was funny, because when I first read that I thought that was ridiculous... but you know I actually caught myself doing that... getting everyone riled up and until they come back and say... okay, let's do it and... nah... I don't want to. I think that's really strange. It really does reveal some of your interesting quirks.
Q: It does, but then again it doesn't, because some times they draw completely the wrong conclusions. Can I make a copy of this...
L: You can take that with you...
Q: May I... and I'll send it back you.
L: Yeah, that's fine. But don't make copies... I mean, that is kind of personal.
Q: It's good you said that.
(MACHINE TURNED OFF AND BACK ON)
L: ... I hated to sit down and (UNCLEAR)... I wanted to climb around and get dirty and, you know, hook wires together and do everything... from making up the refrigeration to the alignment to everything... so I was frequently just crawling around on top of everything...
Q: Is there a time when they actually give a command to fire them in the accelerator?
L: Well, the accelerator... they don't shut it off. Once they shut it off, things cool down and the alignment all goes to hell... so it's running and they have plugs at each of the exits... they call them beam (sp?) plugs... but before you fire it... you energize the big things like the super conducting magnets and things like that... and you get on the intercom -- Area B is where we were... and you essentially announce, Area B, standby for Hera (sp?)... Hera was the super conducting magnet we used to be energized...
Q: What's the name of the magnet?
L: Hera... they named all of the magnets after women... I have no idea why.
(LAUGHTER)
L: Because there were spectacular accidents that occurred with the magnets...
Q: Any that you saw?
L: I only saw little ones... the great ones I always missed. You know, those big gas cyclinders that weigh a lot... I imagine are a hundred and fifty pounds... they had outside of the area... again, a garage type door, a line marked where the field of the magnet extended and if you had a pocketknife... in your hand... it will pull it through your bones until it comes out the otherside... there's no if, ands, or buts... these were some of the most powerful magnets on earth and a guy... cause I came in one day and the target and everything we had set up... this delicate... months of work... obliterated... there's nothing there anymore... and a guy... the pushcart that carried the... or handtracks... that carried the cyclinders have a chain that goes around them... you lock off so the cyclinder can't fall out. This guy didn't have the chain on... and he walked in through the area and the cyclinder just lept... cause it was an aluminum cart so as to be non-magnetic... and he should have been carrying the cyclinder, but the cyclinder was steel and it lept and flew in the air like a torpedo and the magnet was donut shaped and in the center on the target the beam fired out and this thing just blasted through there and oscillated back and forth destroying everything... just hung up in the center and broke the edge of the magnet... a very spectacular thing... and I didn't get to see that. I saw little things like... from clear across the room... a nut fly near the speed of sound by my head and things like that... but nothing as spectacular as that.
Q: How long did you work there?
L: Ahh... two years... three years...
Q: Now that was out of school that you went to work there... or did you...
L: No... I always went to school as I was working.
Q: Were you in school when you were there?
L: No... not when I went to Los Alamos... I was... I had left California at Fairchild Electronics and I was going to CalTech in Pasadena there and so I left Fairchild... applied at Los Alamos.
Q: Now when you filled out the paperwork...
L: Do you mind if I eat in front of you?
Q: Oh... please eat. When you filled out your paperwork for your clearance...
L: Where?
Q: Los Alamos... which that paperwork, most assuredly, was passed on to the EG&G folks...
L: Sure.
Q: Same paperwork... same government agencies looking at the paperwork... on that were all the information that had to be erased to begin to make you a non-person... tell me about your personal files disappearing... records of you...
L: The reason I found that out... was because of George Knapp... after I told him, that's when he went back and started investigating everything...
Q: Who you were?
L: Umm... hmm... the first thing was that... Los Alamos has no record of you ever being employed there... and I said, well, that's interesting... I went to school, Fairchild... even the previous address... there was nothing anywhere... he said, I can't verify anything... I said, well, that's not possible. He said I can't even verify that you lived in Los Alamos... and I said, now that's ridiculous... so I found an old phone book and said, see, that's me... and some friends that worked there and for Los Alamos...
Q: Some people came forward from Los Alamos and said, yeah, you worked here?
L: Yeah. What else disappeared?
Q: What college records disappeared?
L: All of them... except for Pierce College... and I don't know why... Pierce College I was just at for a short time...
Q: Is Pierce in...
L: Woodland Hills... California...
Q: There's another Pierce, I believe in New Hampshire...
L: Right after I left high school I went into Pierce cause I wasn't sure where I wanted to go...
Q: High school records still around?
L: No... I think the high school records have suddenly reappeared... as have many other ones... Los Alamos, who denied everything continuously, even when George presented them with look at all the stuff, Bob worked here, and they said, well, maybe he worked for a sub-contractor or something... the people that originally denied all of that... have moved on at Los Alamos... and recently... now we're talking five years later... George again re-submitted all that and what I had said about Los Alamos... and my entire story... and George has this in writing from Los Alamos, they said, apparently everything Bob Lazar said is true, from what we can see here... so whatever records... whatever people were involved in that have now moved on and it didn't pass down... so... as far as... the Los Alamos thing is the thing that suprised me the most... because there were so many... that was so recent... there were so many people there.... how can they deny that I even lived in the town... it was ridiculous... it was really ridiculous...
Q: Was it George Knapp that came up with the W2 form from Naval Intelligence?
L: No, that I got... I can't remember exactly how that transpired... someone must have called me... because I didn't call them... I don't remember how that started... Gene will remember.
Q: But that was only a small amount of money on that...
L: Well, it was... however the conversation originally started... whoever was contacted... they were asking me about something and I said, well, I never got my W2 form and they said well, you should have contacted us before... and I didn't want to say, well, I didn't know who you guys were... what was going on... and I said... do you have a copy of it there... now, this is when everything... and he said, yeah, it's right in front of me and I said, well, can you send me a copy? And what that original W2 form was, I was told during the interview that the first check would be retro-active through the investigation period... which is all that first check was for... which was just the time the interviews and any other time I spent... that was not actual for any work time... and that was the only one he had on file in front of him... so, he went ahead...
Q: So that was '88.
L: Yeah, so he went ahead and sent that to me... whoever that guy was.
Q: Now in '89... how did they pay you?
L: Check.
Q: Cash the check and the check's gone... check from EG&G...
L: No... EG&G had nothing to do with them... there were no EG&G personnel in that building... all Naval Intelligence did was use the planes and the building for rendezvous... EG&G personnel were not allowed out at S4...
Q: Who's name was on the check?
L: Department of Naval Intelligence... which started a big controversy, too, because supposedly there is no Department of Naval Intelligence... there's only an Office of Naval Intelligence... but strangely enough the guys on the model company... the Testor company... John Andrews... was real... cause they're military modelers and they have all the military connections... he became very interested in that and began to trace down that and actually found an address and a zip code in Washington that went to a Special Department of Naval Intelligence and that zip code matched the zip code on my W2 form... and that's how the model guys became interested... and there were other people that began to check IRS records. And, at that time, I was giving carte blanche to check everything... before everything got carried away and everyone decided to pry into my life... I gave people written authorizations to go through my IRS records and they would go up to 1986 and everything was blank after that... there was no contributions to anything... there were no deposits... there was no employment... no anything... the guy that did that was Bob Ekler (sp?) and still has the correspondence with the IRS... so on and so forth.
Q: What about now... are there records now?
L: Yeah, actually the records now start with right after I kind of came back to the real world. There's just a big gap there. Also, at the same time, George Knapp was still investigating everything. So he filed countless freedom of information act requests... well, we know I worked at Los Alamos... had Q clearance... let's see some of the investigations... let's see anything... any of the files... so, to this day, they say there are no files on me and never have been, which is impossible... absolutely impossible to believe, so some well known occurrences that George knew of... that have been documented before... he'd seen other things about them... he also filed information requests on and they said they couldn't find any of that stuff either... so... someone was intentionally preventing information from reaching certain people and it was apparrently on a federal level... so... it was a really screwy time trying to track things down. It's not like anything re-appeared all at once, but just, I think the things just moved on... years later, after requesting the same things that had been requested almost literally tens of times prior, they said, here you go, what's the problem...
Q: That's right. Because you've been apparently discredited. The files that you were reading at S4, I can remember a figure of 130...
L: A hundred and twenty-one...
Q: Hundred and twenty-one... the files were thick... thin... fat... wide...?
L: Two or three pages... very few were thick.
Q: Off the top of your head can you, in your first sit-down in that room, can you tell me the names of some of the files that you were reading or that...
L: There were no names...
Q: There were no names...
L: They were all a little darker than that... just navy blue paper folders... with no title and they start in the middle of nowhere... it looked like they were actually extracted from another report. And I even recall the first couple reports I pulled out... I wasn't sure if it was a mistake or not... they left pages out... till I started looking at other ones.
Q: The files that you looked at the first time were about... just generally... I'll tell you why I'm asking... I'm going to look for a progress in the information that they were giving to you.
L: It was basically dealing with the propulsion system... there was a definite progression. Because initially, I don't think initially, I can't remember because all those days, you know, have gone together... but I don't think initially there was even a mention of recovered craft... they just spoke strictly about the reactor or...
Q: And when you were reading about this reactor, this sounded to you like something we were...
L: We were developing... because it was just a very brief overview of what was going on... how gravity could be manipulated and the power levels involved and how the field...
Q: And it all made sense to you?
L: It all made sense to me... of course, in my mind, I thought, boy, have we come far from what... I thought I was on the cutting edge of science here... how could this have possibly gone on?
Q: What did you think when you saw the autopsy report? Let me ask that question a different way... did... were there photographs?
L: Yeah. Actually the autopsy report we're talking about was two photographs with notations on the bottom... this is what I've called the autopsy report.
Q: Do you recall what the notations said?
L: Yeah. They were mostly weights and measures. One was an upper torso... of the creature...
Q: On a slab?
L: Yeah, on a table. And they had cut the chest open in a T fashion and peeled it back... and there was a separate inset on the photograph of... you know how fresh liver looks like it's liquid almost?
Q: Umm hmm...
L: There's one organ that apparently does everything and later... the other photograph... that organ itself was cut open and there were separate chambers... kind of a whole bunch of things were together. But I think they were essentially pulled out of some autopsy report or other report... just to show me what the creatures looked like themselves... so it wasn't a full body picture.
Q: What were you thinking about when you saw that? Now you haven't seen the spacecraft yet, have you?
L: No... that true.
Q: Maybe you had seen the spacecraft, but you thought it was one of ours...
L: Yeah, I had already come in the door that time and looked into the spacecraft... yeah, because that occurred on the second day and there's no way I saw those reports on the second day.
Q: Okay.
L: I know when I saw those photographs there was no doubt in my mind that we were dealing with alien technology... by that time I had already begun to realize what was going on...
Q: Black and white pictures...
L: Yeah... 8x10 glossies with a white border around them...
Q: Nothing else... just two photographs and... you got the impression it was done there or somewhere else?
L: I didn't get an impression.
Q: (UNCLEAR) said, when we were coming up at one point, you felt like crying... either when you were near the craft or when you came... began to become aware of what all of this meant.
L: Ahh... maybe he's talking about when I went into the craft for the first time.
Q: Tell me about that.
L: It was like... I don't know... I know I didn't say I felt like crying...
Q: This was the second time, right...
L: Yeah, when I actually walked inside... like I said before, it's an ominous feeling, but I don't know how to describe it... there are no words in my vocabulary that I can explain this with...
Q: You were all alone?
L: No... no... and there were other people in the craft, but I just blotted them out of my mind... it was such an eerie feeling... the feeling was that... it sounds stupid... the feeling was that I shouldn't be in there... that we shouldn't be in there... a feeling of trespassing... a feeling... because it felt so unbelievably alien... no pun intended, but there was nothing that seemed familiar at all... and whether... you can walk into a room and anything may seem familiar... where two walls go together... subconsciously... but everything, to the last detail, things that you might subconsciously see, such a tremendous amount of metal with no seams... with no right angles... the color... there is no color in there... everything is one color essentially... a giant stainless steel injection mold... everything seemed so absolutely unusual... kind of what makes hospitals seem so strange... because they're so different... white... empty... it's an unusual place... but a thousand times that... also, of course, in the back of your mind knowing what it is... you didn't fit right in there, because you have to hunch down... so you know it wasn't even made for people... and, in the back of your mind, you're wondering... now how was the thing acquired... and hopefully it was not with force... because somebody's going to come and get us back... all this going through your mind, but there was no excitement or exhilaration... because that's what everyone asked and everyone automatically assumed, but that feeling was absolutely not there whatsoever... it was when the craft lifted off the ground. And maybe I was more at ease about it... or the fact that I was just separated from it, but it was very disturbing and, I don't know, I was depressed... I can't... do you kind of see what I'm saying?
Q: Exactly.
L: Boy, I really wish I could relay that, but I can't.
Q: You did a good job. You were in there for a couple of minutes?
L: Actually, a little while... went inside and I looked around...
Q: Who were you with again?
L: Dennis...
Q: Okay.
L: And... I think Barry stayed in the lab.
Q: Dennis said he wanted you to see something.
L: No, that was for the test...
Q: That's right.
L: The flight test. He wanted to show me, because we were going to be dealing with the amplifiers themselves... how they hung in the lower portion of the disc and there's a hexagonal shaped grid on the floor... that's kind of a crawl space... well, for them it's a crawl space... for me you could squeeze in there... and it was a tinsel (?) brilliant hole... you know you can buy a six pack of beer or soda pop... more specifically beer... actually take the bottles out and just the box... even if you push on opposite corners it goes completely flat... but it's strong the other way, obviously cause the cardboard is standing up... this was thin sheet metal... all made in hexagons... so it was a honeycomb and there was a hole cut out in the corner and you could walk on... cause it was incredibly strong that way... but with the slightest pressure, when you put your finger in the hole, it all collapsed flat and you could then enter the hole. And I thought, what a fantastic door... something so simple, but I had never seen or heard of it before... infinitely strong this way... but has no strength that way... and no hinges... nothing... just completely resistant all with some springy metal. Something that we could certainly duplicate, and I've always waited to see that pop up somewhere... that was going to be one of the clues to me that this information was leaking to the private sector... but I never did see that... cause I thought, that's the simplest thing... that'll pop up somewhere... but, anyway, that collapsed in and I was able to stick my head down and hang upside down and see how the amplifiers were positioned and... so however long that took.
Q: And then you got on the airplane that night and went home.
L: Right.
Q: How did you feel when you were on the airplane after that day?
L: Oh, that night... I kept... that's what really stuck in my mind... I kept replaying the event of mainly being in the craft itself, trying to remember... wondering why so much empty space... wondering what was on the upper level... just thinking how absolutely simple everything was and comparing it to systems that I'm familiar with... telephones looked more complicated than what was going on there... no buttons... no anything... tremendous amounts of power being generated, but there's no wiring... it was... it's a first approximation... do you know what that is in engineering?...
Q: First iteration (sp?)....
L: Yeah... it's the simplest cartoon drawing of how everything works and then the first approximation with all the technicalities to it... but it was a functioning first approximation... and it was just so simple... the way everything was laid out... that's really all I thought about... the other reports... I guess the technology had taken me so much because it was such an impression as compared to reading words... actually being there and facing it... that was what left an impression.
Q: You couldn't tell anybody when you left there.
L: No.
Q: And you came back...
L: No... that was one of those nights when I went for the drive... the big drive...
Q: How far did you go?
L: I went up to Tonapa(sp?) and back the other way... so...
Q: Well, roughly what time did you leave... you got back probably what... eleven... one... something like that...
L: Got back from where? From my drive?
Q: No... from up at S4.
L: No... I got back fairly early... I'd say about nine... nine-thirty...
Q: Was your wife home when you came home?
L: I don't remember.
Q: You couldn't talk to anybody... you couldn't call anybody.
L: No... and I did lay down for awhile... but was feeling just kind of too antsy and, just like I talked about in traffic, even though you can't do anything, you just want to progress somewhere... so maybe it was a way of releasing it... so I got in the car and just started driving up that way... I really don't know how far Tonapa is, but it's a long way...
Q: Couple of hours...
L: No... it's more than that... it's like four hours...
Q: You drove four hours...
L: Yeah...
Q: And then you came back another four?
L: Yeah, I came back... well, it was time to go to work... I stayed up all night and I never became tired and I always get tired when I drove... but I guess the adrenalin kept me going...
Q: When you say go to work... that's not going back up...
L: No... no, remember, I still had my other business running and I had told them up front, until I go on full time, I really can't cut that out.
Q: Now... the other business... was that building the monitors... or was that the processing...
L: The processing. I had hired someone... Jim's girlfriend, Shelley, was taking over the business, solely to run it for me as I worked up there... so, I called her on odd days and say, I'm going to work tomorrow... so could you run the photo business... so on and so forth... since I knew I would not be working the next day... in that morning I'd be running photos.
Q: How many days... four days... three days went by before they called you up again and said, it's now 3:21...
L: Yeah, something like that... again, that's on the calendar.
Q: Remember what you felt like when you went back up there after that?
L: When I went back, I was much more at ease with it and I was really excited because I had felt... I had the impression that... well, we went in to look around at that time, so maybe we were going to get to work in the craft. And, not so much in the lab, but we were going to actually be doing things in there and I was positive at one time that I was going to get to be in the thing when it was being flight tested, but that never occurred...
Q: Did you ask anybody that?
L: No... never... no... I didn't want to seem too anxious.
Q: Dennis ask you how you felt or anything... did he ever say... what do you think about this?
L: Ahh... I'm sure he did, though I can't recall specifically... I know Barry did on several occasions and...
Q: Barry ever tell you what he thought about it?
L: No.
Q: These guys are really enigmas as far as what they really think and feel. What did they... they started to pull the hardware off and bring it into your lab?
L: Well... it was off already... one of the amplifiers and the reactor... and from what I understood, the reactors were the same in all of the craft... which leads one to speculate did they all come from the same place... or someone was sub-contracting out reactors...
Q: So now you're in the lab... which is probably what... a couple of tables and ah...
L: It was actually fairly large... there was an area back further in the lab where that equipment was on... one of the amplifiers was laying on a table... the reactor was on a separate plate...
Q: How large were those items?
L: The amplifier form itself was about two feet in diameter and four feet long... the reactor was maybe eighteen inches...
Q: So you went in there and the first assignment was... the identification of the fuel element?
L: Right. That's where Barry showed me how the reactor operated and what it did when you put the field on it...
Q: Barry... did you read at any time briefly files about specifically the technology behind the reactor or was your source largely Barry?
L: Both.
Q: Good... because when I was watching the video tape, where you're talking about the science involved in this... it was a very sophisticated exposition... as to how the hardware worked... so there were files... there was Barry... and it plugged into the science that you came evolved in with...
L: If there hadn't been, I would have put a lot less credit in the other reports that I read. That's my only connection with the reports to reality... so, if that hadn't occurred, I'd have been very skeptical of the rest of the stuff I'd been reading. Other than the fact that it was just so strange... as if you couldn't say that about everything, but you become very comfortable with technology very fast... and, I don't know if people do that with everything, maybe they do, but technology is just the thing that I can think of most off the top of my head... as soon as you... take the FAX for instance... technology might not exist... no one knows what they are... but now they're available to everyone and after you use them for just a short while, they're absolutely indispensable... how can you get along without them. They demystify very fast... no matter what the device is or how big the system is... even the craft, as I started getting into it, it was no longer the ship of a deity... it was this is almost attainable by us... yes, it's advanced, but I can already understand it and I can almost envision duplicating this one day.
Q: Tell me about a couple of the elements... that when you talk about almost attainable... because I'm going to call some of these things out... jet propulsion system... the guidance system...
L: Guidance I know nothing about...
Q: Okay.
L: I only assume that that's what was going on in the top part of the craft and that's what these windows... they aren't really windows... but I always assumed that they were sensor rays of some sort... that wherever the craft was that's how it got its lock on where it was... whether it matched up stars or whatever the thing was looking at, but I think that's where the sensor ray was from here up was everything to do with navigation.
Q: Okay.
L: But I really don't know.
Q: But the propulsion system looked like something to you that...
L: It was fantastically advanced, but, once you basically understand what's going on... especially with the reactor, all these things... even today... you look at science fiction... Star Wars... death rays and laser guns and all that... the technology isn't that far away, the main thing in all of the exotic science fiction technology type weapons and things laid out... is power... it really is... that's the reason there's no hand-held ray guns... and things like that... because you don't have 10 megawatts available in the palm of your hand and there's absolutely no way to get it. It doesn't matter how inefficient the device is... as long as you have the power, you can overcome all of that. So that's why it all came back to the reactor... how you can have that much power there... after we kind of began to get a handle on how the reactor operated... oh, look, it's a cyclotron... in fact, it looks like one of the earlier cyclotrons made, which was a small thirteen inch, we assertained, essentially, what was in the bottom plate of that and here's the path off that comes up and reacts with the element... it's advanced, sure, it's nothing that small, nothing that powerful... but it's understandable... I guess it was kind of comforting that it was possible to... it's as if someone showed you a television set the size of the top of your thumb... no, we can't make it that small... but I understand how it works and eventually parts are going to get that small, so it's not amazing... it's a good job, but... it's not completely amazing... and it began to boil down to that level. Now, of course, I was concentrating on specific parts...
Q: You disassembled it in the lab?
L: Well, it only disassembled so far... there wasn't a whole lot we could take apart... but, yeah, what we could disassemble, we did. And, once you begin to understand the parts, it kind of gives you confidence in that... well, if we can understand this... we can do that... you could eventually see knowing what was going on... so it demystified it... but there was nothing to demystify everything else in the other reports... those were still a mystery and fantastic and there were still pictures of aliens that I'd yet to see... and reports on other aspects of the project that I didn't see... so that was still a mystery... so it began to divide.
Q: So the fuel element... you saw that
for the first time in the lab?
L: Yeah.
Q: Tell me about that.
L: That was when Barry was going to fire up the reactor... he kept it in a container... and took it out with a pair of tongs... it was triangular in shape and took the lid off the reactor and put the element... well, there's another cap that comes off, and put it in the little tower... replaced the cap and put the lid on and the reactor fired up. As soon as you put it (UNCLEAR), it fired up. And that was the first time I saw it. Course, he gave an explanation... this is how the thing runs... this is the fuel, as far as we know, and... they had much more fuel than that... whether it was in one of the craft or what, I don't know, but they had a lot more than was necessary to run the craft. They were very interested in possibly substituting something for that fuel. Not just finding out how that reactor worked... but duplicating it with earthly material. They wanted something simple... made out of stuff they had, essentially.
END OF TAPE 5 -- SIDE B