R: One thing I did mention, in my opinion, we're going to end up asking some stupid questions. I hope that won't be too disturbing to you, but it's stuff we don't know that may be obvious to you. We may also ask questions that, I don't want you to be concerned about the direction the film's going to go in just because we ask wacky questions.

L: No, like I said, I'm not going to really concern myself with that. Not till later.

R: Good... that's exactly right. There'll be a point where that is the main issue. Right now we've got to get something on paper. I'm interested in the fun idea of this threatening panel of people... you're being told at that point that you're working on... what did you call it?

L: I wasn't told what I was working on...

R: At that point...

L: At that point... no.

C: Bob, this is 1988... fall of 1988?

L: Yeah.

C: I'm going to ask dates sometimes because... because I have to create a time line here. As close to the date -- month and year as...

L: The best thing for me to do is to pull out...

R: We could do homework like that later, too.

L: I have these calendars... they're big wall calendars where I write what happened every day on it... and I've had them since like 1980... so I have exact dates. And I photocopied some of those calendars... so... I can't remember dates to save my life... not even within a year.

C: This is your second meeting at EE&G?

L: EG&G.

C: EG&G, sorry.

L: Yeah, this would be my second one.

J: Oh, you had two meetings there?

L: But the first one was for a different job.

R: Oh... I didn't realize that... interesting. How many people were on the panel? Roughly?

L: Five?

R: Any uniforms?

L: No.

R: They were scientists?

L: Yeah... I hesitate because... I hesitate because I don't know.

R: Okay... that's fair.

C: Were you searched?

L: One of them did... one was Dennis, who wound up being my supervisor... who I still don't know what he was... so, he looked military... he was always involved with security and he was non-scientific for the most part... so, I don't know what he was... but he was the only pseudo-military involvement.

R: Ultimately this Dennis guy was someone you worked pretty closely with and...

L: No... he was just around... I worked very closely with a guy named Barry.

F: Castillo?

L: Castillio... however that's pronounced.

R: Castillo. Give me a flavor for what happened when you were shown into the room where these five gentlemen were sitting at the table. You said they asked you what you did in your free time?

L: Yeah... after we got over all the amenities and what not, they asked me basically what I'd done since I left Los Alamos... since I wasn't involved in anything... was I just sitting around developing photos... that business... and I said no essentially I was working on these other things I was striving to get patents on and still maintaining a scientific profile, I guess you could call it... that I was still working on some other projects... I had built a small particle accelerator that I still have and they were interested in that... I had built a little jet car, not like the one out front, but a little one that was in a Honda that you could drive around on the street... and they were interested in that... they were really interested in where my interests lay... I guess where my true interests lay... what I would do in my recreation. It all related basically to that project...

R: Was there any sense that they knew anything about... you were interested in getting involved with this... purchase of this brothel (?) before this.

L: No... that had already happened. That had been done and over with.

R: Did you have any sense that they were aware of that?

L: Oh, yeah. In order to buy a brothel, you have to... the only reason I got to buy that one was because it was already being purchased by a Japanese couple and it's kind of like a civilian Q clearance... you need to be cleared in order to make sure you don't have ties to organized crime before you can buy a brothel because it's a specialized license...

R: You did actually buy this?

L: Yeah. And I cut into their deal because I had just... after leaving Los Alamos I didn't need the nine months to be cleared to see if I was attached to organize crime... I came in... dah-dah... it's mine and I bought into it and started paying off the loan... essentially paying my dad back... for the loan... and, you know, I made money with it and left, essentially....

R: Did they bring this up?

L: Well, they knew it. They really didn't bring it up...

R: I'm just surprised it's not something that they would frown on.... I guess I'm just used to politics, as opposed to military, you know...

L: It's not... I don't know... it's not that wierd, you know... I guess it is from an external viewpoint...

R: It's a legal business, but it's obviously a controversial business... so maybe if you were working for a politician this would have been a bigger issue, but perhaps just as a scientist they couldn't have cared less...
L: Well, yeah... owning a business like that isn't controversial... I guess working in it is... but basically the business runs itself because the employees just run it the way they want to and you really have nothing to do with it.

R: Bob, was there anything in the interview with the five gentlemen that...

C: That's an ashtray full of cherry bombs...

(LAUGHTER)

R: Bob, was there anything in this interview that indicated or suggested to you that you were about to get involved with something unusual?

L: Yes... towards the end of the interview we started talking about what I was specifically interested in and, as people have joked about before, even the psychiatrist that I knew claims that I'm on some infinite power trip, because I'm always attracted to things that channel or use tremendous amounts of power, so I love being involved in weapons, or I like the jet cars, or I like explosives... everthing that yields an unwielding amount of energy and being able to control it... I really like being involved in something like that and they had kind of picked up on that and said, I think you'd be interested in what we're doing... we're working on a new sort of propulsion system and I said... great. And they said, that's all we can really tell you about it now. And to me that immediately rang... this is a secret propulsion system... and it has to be something really advanced... it's either the SNAP Projects they're working on with the Space Nuclear Propulsion, which would have been neat also, and I knew they were working also... there were mutterings about some hypersonic ram-jet engines that would eventually propel winged aircraft into space and there was also a chance of working on a field propulsion system, which I would have really liked. So I did have an idea that it was some advanced propulsion system and I was really excited about it.

R: And then the interview was over?

L: Yeah, the interview was over. They briefly had asked me some quick little questions, as almost to surprise me. A little science quiz type thing.

(LAUGHTER)

L: And usually the... typically in the pressure of an interview... even a simple question they'll get you on. But for some reason they just happened to ask me about a lot of the information was about lasers.... and why, I don't know, 'cause it had nothing to do with what I had been working on, but I had, coincidentally, been working on, had recently filed a patent, on a new type of laser. And all the questions were in that area and I answered them instantaneously, as fast as they came out of their mouths... so I surprised myself, I think, more than I did them. And I think I left with a really good impression. When I came home, I was positive that I had the job.

R: Now they interviewed you here?

L: No, I was interviewed at EG&G and then... but I was waiting to hear...

R: Here in...

L: Yeah, here in Las Vegas. And, as I was waiting to hear, that's when they started dropping by for the...

R: Backcheck...

L: Yeah, the background check. They stopped by here, which had never happened in Los Alamos.

R: Tell me about that.

L: That happened in this house and it was... what they were really concerned with is the chemicals that I had and glassware... and I had a feeling that maybe in the back of their minds they thought I was making drugs, or something along those lines. So, they came in...

R: Two?

L: Three, initially.

R: Business suits?

L: No, I think it was... two was... 'cause they came twice or three times and the first... yeah, business suits. No I think it was three guys the first time, 'cause one came to talk to me...

R: Did you have the pirate flag and all this stuff then?

L: No, no, no, no...

(LAUGHTER)

R: Life has changed since then.

L: Yeah... and he came and we sat down on the couch and started talking and they introduced themselves and the other guys left. And I think I even said... it's the second door on the right, meaning the bathroom and that's not where they went. They went all the way down there and started looking in the other room... and I'm thinking what's going on?

R: They showed identification of some sort?

L: Yeah, they did.

R: FBI?

L: I honestly don't remember what it was, but it was a badge and...

R: A disc?

L: I really don't remember. Now one of the guys' names I did remember was Thigpen... Officer Thigpen... and George Knapp, the reporter, did track him down and he worked for the Office of...

R: Of Special Investigation.

L: Right. He worked for the O.S.I. , which I had never heard of... and that might've sounded like the F.B.I. when someone flashed you a badge so... I really can't say for sure.

R: Office of Special Investigation... that alone sounds scary.

F: Thigpen?

R: Thigpen... T-H-I-G-P-E-N... yes.

L: And right after he worked here and has worked here for I don't know how many countless years here in Las Vegas Boulevard in this unlabelled office that no one knew what it was and after George said his name on TV... him and his family all moved to Washington, D.C.

(LAUGHTER)

L: They completely relocated.

R: So anyway, Thigpen came with two others...

L: With two others... they looked around. They wrote down all kinds of things and they simply left. It was not a very long...

R: You thought this was just a normal...

L: But a little more extensive, I think, because I had gone on about what I was doing at home, I think they wanted to see what the environment was... so they came in and looked around and then they left. They kind of took a tour of the house more or less.

R: This was '88.

L: No.

C: Can I ask a stupid question?

L: Sure.

C: Were you married then?

L: Yes.

C: Did they talk with your ex-wife?

L: They spoke with her one time. I don't think it was the first time... she wasn't home the first time.

C: Apart from you? They spoke with her alone?

L: No, I think she was with me. I don't think they separated her.

C: What was that like? Did they ask anything...

L: No, it was not a typical clearance interview. They just asked what the neighborhood was like, very odd questions.

R: The fun of that in the movies is the odder those moments are... the more obscure those kinds of questions are... that strikes me as the reality we're going for on something like this. Well, I can think of a million things to ask you. In retrospect, do you believe that these felllows had any idea what they were interviewing you for?

L: No. Absolutely not.

C: Check him out and make sure he's not doing drugs, I guess. Did they ask you about drugs or alcohol?

L: Yeah, they did.

C: They always do.

R: What type of (UNCLEAR)?

L: Photo-developers, yeah, least diabolical.

(LAUGHTER)

R: So Thigpen and two others came and talked with you and then left and then what happened?

L: Life was back to normal.

R: They came back again?

L: Yeah, they came back again. This would be a lot easier if I was looking at the calendar.

R: It's okay 'cause we're going to go back and do that... this is allowing us all to generate more...

C: Can I take an overview of today just in terms of goals? I'm going right back to a maelstrom of technical things finishing the picture and I obviously wanted to be here for the start of this... what I imagine is that you guys in your subsequent meetings will go over more of the details, if you have access to your calendars... if you have the dates that Roy seems to be interested in great... but if we can get through key events this afternoon and, obviously, the more compelling events, we'll do as much as... write down even any key dialogue... but maybe we can get through the chronology in broadstrokes... we're all familiar with the story, but there's just an entirely different thing that happens when you tell it... that's the unfortunate truth.

L: I tend to leave out, when I tell the story, big, important pieces.

C: Well, that's not very nice.

(LAUGHTER)

R: Why is that?

L: I don't know. I just do... I don't know if I'm trying to block it out of my mind or what but...

R: Well, that's actually fascinating and those are the things that we don't want to miss when we run on... because these things have a pattern. There actually is an arc that comes into this kind of storytelling... something that may seem boring to you will be tremendously exciting to us because it's another opportunity to make the story resonant or real or whatever it is... it's the honest details. What was the next significant thing that happened?

L: They returned. The second time it was more overt. I was in the little photo room here and I think this was when two people came. They came in and I was in the middle of developing film, so I went back in there and the other guy came in and stood at the door and then, again, the other person disappeared. As he was standing in the door, he put his arm across as if I couldn't leave and I said, well, what's this about? And he didn't ask but five or ten questions, just normal things and I heard all kinds of noise going on...

(LAUGHTER)

L: ... and I had no idea what the other guy was up to and then they left. So, for then on I wondered, now exactly what is going on. And then shortly after that was when I got called.

R: Was the house in disarray after they left?

L: No. I couldn't find anything. But I heard drawers opening and closing and I thought what... what is there to see because the people were here before... but they were in the bedroom...

R: Could they have been looking for bugging devices?

L: No... they wouldn't physically look for them.

R: Were they in the lab.

L: Yeah.

R: Did they turn anything on anywhere?

L: Yeah.

R: Did they turn on the cyclotron(?)

L: That was connected to the...

R: Light switch.

L: The light switch.

R: So they turned it on... they flipped the light switch and you could hear WHRRRRR....

L: Yeah, it makes a lot of noise.

J: That's the light and the cyclotron.

R: Is it safe to say that it was a little tenser atmosphere that time or...

L: Well, not just tense... I would say that the excitement was diminishing rapidly. Now it was more like... you've stepped over the line and now you're invading my privacy instead of just investigating it and, but it happened so fast, I was left kind of with my jaw on the ground. I didn't... they must have had a reason or one specific thing they wanted to check on whatever it was and...

R: Was your wife home?

L: I don't remember. No, I don't think she was. She was out delivering film... oh, no, she was working at the airport at that time.

R: So they left?

C: Did you cop any type of attitude at all with them?

L: They came three times. 'Cause the time after that, Thigpen alone showed up and Wayne and his wife were in the photo room working and, at that time, my wife's sister was here, Kristen, and so everyone got to see him. And Thigpen and I went into the lab just to talk.

R: What was the nature of that talk?

L: He wanted to know about the house that I had just moved out of on Engretta, up here, and he said, the neighbors said you had someone living with you and we haven't been able to find him... that was Jim... crazy Jim... and so they wanted to know about him, what was the (UNCLEAR), why was he living in the house... he always seems to follow me wherever I move... he's just one of those friends and they had asked the neighbors... the neighbors said well, there were always wierd things going on at your house and I kind of explained, well, we had rockets in our backyard and they were just wierd neighbors and then he left.

R: Some people would say it wasn't the neighbors, that you should have rockets in your backyard. As an adult there will always be some sense of eccentricity. So that wasn't an antagonistic meeting... was it actually more relaxed than the one prior to it?

L: Oh, yeah. Much more so, much more so.

R: So what's next... you found out about the job?

L: Right.

R: A phone call... how'd that happen?

L: That's very strange, because I told them I could not give up this job until I go on full time, 'cause they had mentioned before you can go on full time we need to get you up to speed. So we're going to have to take you a couple times a week and brief you on some stuff. This is when I learned that the job was going to be in what they called a remote area. And at first I thought I'd have to drive somewhere to the test site... which I was never thrilled about doing. But then they said that we were going to be flying out of EG&G and I said that's a remote place... we got to fly somewhere. So then I almost thought that it was going to be up in northern Nevada or something. And the way they would call was really strange. There would be a lady calling and she would say, is this Mr. Lazar, and I'd say yes and she would say... for instance, it is now 3:15 you need to be... I can't remember the exact syntex of it, but she said you need to be at the EG&G terminal at 4:17 and they were always these odd numbers and I got a kick out of that. And that was it. And I would leave and I would go to the lady up front at EG&G who had this round...

R: This was without your even knowing...

L: No, they called and said I had the job and they'd be contacting me for the flight information and that was the flight information... it is now 3:15... that was my notice. But they did tell me, be prepared, because they're going to tell you when your plane's leaving and it could be in an hour and every time they called me after that it was... the first words out of her mouth... Is this Mr. Lazar? Yes. It is now 2:17, you have to be at so and so...

R: Why do you think they did that?

L: I have no idea.

R: I can guess... because they didn't want your travel to be known... your plane was always leaving a couple of hours after they call you, right?

L: Sometimes about an hour, yeah.

R: So obviously, they don't want to tell you, although they may know a week ahead of time, they want you to know only a brief period of time ahead of time so you can't tell anybody where you're going.

L: Why tell me what time it is now? Well, I guess so there can be no error.

R: Yeah.

L: You do not have three hours to leave... it's now two o'clock your plane leaves at...

J: Get your shoes on.

R: I find it interesting because it's such a stilted thing... it's wierd and obviously since you always have to like, now, oh shit, I have an hour to go... you're never able to let anyone know where you're going or, I would assume as few people as possible on these sort of surprise trips.

L: Well, I had the number there, in fact, the first time I said, boy, that's wierd and I thought I'd call Dennis. And I had the number and I called down there and they said, There's no one by that name that works here.

R: That's great.

L: And I said, well, that's wonderful. And I said, is there another extension... and they said no, we have the list and there's no one here that works there and so I said fine and I went down there at 4:15 and where I called Dennis is there. And that was the lady I had spoken to... so I already knew that this was a fantasy land job.

C: You probably were getting more and more excited with this level of security or were you getting frustrated already?

L: No, I... maybe so...

R: You had not previously been involved with this level of security, right?

L: Right.

R: You packed your bags and went.

L: Well, I really didn't take anything just my...

R: Was it at 4:17 in the afternoon?

L: Yeah. Well, it was always after 3:30, usually around 4 something.

R: Did you spend the night?

L: No, I never spent the night. The latest flight I ever had was like 11:30 back.

R: I'm sorry. You were flying from where to where?

L: McCarren to Area 51.

R: Where's McCarren exactly?

J: Las Vegas Airport, where we landed.

R: And how far... how long a flight is that?

L: Oh... I don't know... it's maybe a half an hour.

R: Is that what... north of here or something?

L: A hundred fifty... a hundred and fifteen miles, something like that. It's nothing.

C: Bob, what happened on the first day?

L: The first day was all paperwork, nothing, never even got to go out to S4... landed at Groom Lake and just was taken off the bus in a little tour bus kind of thing.

C: There were other people there?

L: Yeah... other people on the plane. It was by no means full. It was like a 727.

R: These were all people who worked at Groom Lake... S4?

L: I don't know where they went. Only once did other people come with me down to S4... most people just went to Groom, which does all kinds of secret stuff, but nothing... no alien technology.

R: But stuff with high security.

L: Oh, absolutely.

R: If nothing else, they'd be working on an airplane or something?

L: Almost always.

R: Did they have a casual attitude? It's a very specific question... but what are the attitudes of these people on this commuter flight to a security base?

L: Nothing.

R: Normal... usual? They don't talk to each other.

L: You really can't hear people talking on a plane. And we landed and I went inside and the first thing was processing... signing papers... that's where I originally got my badge and...

C: Is this where they pretty much took you into the medical facility?

L: No, no, no... that was the next trip.

R: Did they tell you to sign the paper to tap your phone?

L: Yeah, this was authorization for... what did they call it...

C: Extreme snoopery...

L: Yeah...

J: Did it actually say phone tap on the form?

L: Yeah, I'm trying to think again of the exact... for monitoring of telecommunications, I think was what it was...

R: Phone, Fax and Modem... there is a term for that...

L: Yeah, I think it was telecommunications... but briefly it was permission to phone tap.

R: Was it all paperwork the first time or was there a briefing?

L: Yeah, there was a security related... they did something like that just was Q clearance, but it was a little more robust I guess. That was the first time I was a guard... or pseudo military persons.

R: At the same time?

L: This was separate... it was after a lot of paperwork had been done and then I was lead into another room which was small. One little desk in there and there was another paramilitary guy sitting there and a guard, a typical guard, desert camouflage and his gun and all that stuff. And I sit down in the chair, which is against the wall, and he said, we just wanted to not remind you, but I guess impress upon you the security that you're dealing with here and he went into everything. He was kind of friendly the first time... I had I guess not conflicts, but I had contact with these guys later on and he's the one that really laid it out for me and said these guys do nothing. All they do is wait. That's there job is to wait for a conflict to arise or for something to go wrong. So we expect to see your badge in plain view, we expect to see it here, we don't expect you to put it in your pocket or leave it in your desk, because frankly you're going to have to... he went into the whole nine yards as far as what their job was here. And what it was going to be like in the area I was working on. He said, it's going to feel oppressive at times, but that's just in the interest of security and blah blah blah. And then his buddy there...

R: So that ends up sending you back home and what's your next time?

L: I don't remember how many days away that was, but shortly after there was the same type of phone call... It's 4:15 now, be there at such and such a time?

R: How did you feel about the second time you got this call?

L: Well, now I was excited because I know the preliminary stuff was out of the way, because, in fact, if I remember, the first day was kind of a blur because nothing really happened that day. Towards the end of the day, they said okay now we're going to go down to the area you're going to work at. And Dennis never came back. At that time they put me in the cafeteria and I was just hanging out there, eating candy bars and they had a TV and I was just watching something stupid and by the time he came back he said we're not going to have time so we're just going to catch the flight out. So we left. So, I knew that we were at least at that point so when I was going back the second time, I knew I would at least be going to where I was going to work and hopefully see what I was going to be working on. And that's exactly what happened. We went down to EG&G terminal, flew out of McCarren... same scenario all over again... landed there... but this time almost immediately we went from there to a school bus... a Bluebird school bus that was painted dark navy blue and it had no... the windows were painted along with the bus. The only windows were in the front. Which I thought was really odd.

R: How many people were in the bus?

L: I'd say me and Dennis, the driver, a guard and one other guy, who sat all the way up front and we sat all the way in back. And the guard stood holding one of the rails, though there were four hundred seats open... he stood at one of the rails looking at us while we were driving.

C: Like in case you pulled a fast move or something?

L: No, most specifically so I couldn't look out front. Which is ridiculous. I mean you can still see around him, but so we got on a dirt road.

J: Can I ask. What was Dennis' attitude during all this?

L: It was like an every day...

J: He's making small talk and he's not telling you anymore about what you're going to see.

L: Yeah, he was basically making small talk. Exactly, not saying anything about what was coming up, but...

J: Did you ask? Or was it an unspoken agreement not to?

L: It's not that it was an unspoken agreement it's just that I really don't do that anyway. I assume it's coming... so... I'm really not that talkative when put alone with people I don't know.

J: You're still at the point where you could be working on SNAP, you could be working on some other kind of propulsion system, you still have no clue, right?

L: I was convinced that it was going to be something like that. Especially now that we're out at the nuclear test site going through a remote area, now I was becoming convinced that it was nuclear space propulsion.

R: So this is exciting. This is what you live for... the big league, right?

L: Oh, yeah. But for some reason I thought this also explains some of the military intervention here, obviously, this is weapons related so that made it that much better. But that has nothing to do with anything. So, we were headed out to the area and it was about a fifteen or twenty minute drive...

R: SR now?

L: Yeah, because it was a real bumpy, slow dirt road and...

R: Is this a real desolate area?

L: Oh, yeah. This is exactly like the dry lake. Exactly. It's on a dry lake.

J: The dry lake you went to.

R: There wasn't a road there. If there was a lot of that I would have gotten lost instantly.

L: That was the road that we drove on... a road like that.

R: Very surreal... like a car commercial with the cracked earth... very end of the world... The guards live out there?

L: I guess, I don't really know. It's a giant installation. I went into like one tenth of one percent of it...

R: Is S4 part of Area 51?

L: No.

R: What are they?

L: They're fifteen miles apart... it's just a separate installation. But Area 51 has the landing strip on it, so that's where you have to... if you fly in you must fly in there and go to one of the two. The nuclear test site has its own landing strip and that's way far away from either one of those.

C: I was wondering about radiation... working in a nuclear test site. Did that ever cross your mind in general?

L: No, no.

J: He's got enriched uranium in his bedroom.

F: Remember the paper that we wrapped the uranium in?

L: That wasn't... that wasn't uranium.

F: But it had uranium in it.

L: Yeah.

F: And we wrapped it in newspaper and brought it home and there was a whole in the newspaper.

L: And it started burning it. We bought it in a rock shop and the guy didn't know he had radioactive material in some rock shop. Let me just back off on that for a second... I went into this rock shop... this was this time in New Mexico, because I need sources to test the detectors that I make, but you need strong ones and inevitably you can find, in good rock shops, the guys have really high grade uranium ore because they make... they'll have this big, black, square crystals and they are really dangerous to handle, because they're uusually hot.

R: Are they ignorant, these rock guys?

L: Oh, I came in with a Geiger counter 'cause that's how I find them. And they have all their good specimens and I just run it by the counter. If it ticks, I stop and if it ticks real loud... I'll buy it. Give me that thing. And, as I went by the counter, this thing went ... ZZZZZZ... and I backed up and got close to it and when I put the Geiger counter too close to it, the guy would back up, thinking I was doing something to his rock. And I'd say, I'll take it. So, he got it out and put it on the counter and, as I put that to it, he'd back up across the room. I mean they're completely ignorant as to what's going on. Anyway,. that's just a sideline... so, as we reached the installation, we went past it, because I kind of saw past the guard the big sloping walls to this thing....

R: Hangar walls?

L: Yeah, which looks a lot like the Nevada power building up here.

R: That was like a "Close Encounter" set...

J: Well, except that these walls are built into the side of the mountain so that the door's actually textured to look like the side of the mountain so when that opens up...

L: No it rolls out...

R: Is it good camouflage on ground level or not?

L: Oh, no. But you can tell they did go to an extent to... I mean, they put drylake dirt on the door. I mean it was obviously an attempt to... I was just surprised they didn't glue bushes on it, you know.

(LAUGHTER)

L: They probably would, if they could keep them green. But we went past it and there was a notch... there were hangar doors, which I didn't know were hangar doors at that time, and around the corner there was an entrance where you would go into the office area. That's where I was let off the bus and then taken into a small room and it was a very boring looking building, very plain. It looked like an old school building inside. The walls were concrete and they were painted with this light green for fifty percent of it all the way down the corridor and then a dark green on the bottom.

C: An institution paint job.

L: Yeah, it was like an old government... how they used to do stuff in the '50's, 'cause I think I had an old kindergarten... or some building I was in looked like that. And everything was all concrete and metal doors... there was nothing fashionable in it anywhere. And I was taken into one of the small rooms and that's where I was first given a briefing.

C: On the second time?

R: Yes, this was the second time.

C: What did you think when you started to read some of these files... what did you feel? Just info?

L: No. Because what they had given me initially to read was overviews... not really overviews, it was as if the other projects that were going on there all had their own reports or briefings or notes of progress that were going on and they essentially gave me two or three page excerpts from those. Why I don't know. If things were compartmentalized it may be specifically just to relieve any potential curiosity or problems, by the way this is what's going on here, should it have any connection to your project... but any other information about it is restricted at this point or on a "need to know" basis. So... I was... reports on top were the thin ones and that's what I was thumbing through, essentially seeing what was going on and what the project names were... One of them I remember being "Sidekick" which, I think was the first one I opened, and that dealt with the weapon or potential weapon technology of the craft -- is how it was stated.

R: This was the first time you read...

L: Yeah, "of the craft" and everything that was subsequent it that was in an unusual context... not like, well, we're working on this and trying to do that... it was from a back engineering stance... it was, well, we've seen this and we're trying to figure out what this does. And obviously they were working on a piece of hardware that was already...

C: Did you immediately know that you were dealing with a UFO?

L: No, for some reason, this went completely over my head, because at the time I was a horrendous UFO skeptic... I thought that that was just a lunatic topic...

R: Which, by the way, is something to note for the story that I think is important to work in... and you remained to a great extent, in my mind, a skeptic... I'm talking about abductees and some of the other farther-out concepts...

L: Well, that's because I was exposed to this stuff. It kind of takes you past a second point, once you've had the privilege of... you wonder about many things... but if something is presented to you... this is now a reality... you can see it, you can touch it, you can work with it... then immediately you say, okay, now unless these other topics are accelerated to that level, they do not go into my belief system.

R: Abductees?

L: I haven't seen them abducted so... forget it... so, if anything, that bolstered that line of thought. So...

R: Demystifying the craft itself it makes you even more skeptical about these magical abudction experiences.

L: Much more. I said, after some time, well, here's the craft. This is an alien craft made by a different civilization somewhere else... not even in this solar system... fine, we can accept that...

(LAUGHTER)

L: ... where are the cages and the big vats to put the cattle in and stuff. So, if anything, you become very skeptical of the stories.

R: (UNCLEAR)... operation "Domelike", operation...

L: Maybe there are vast flying alien laboraties that do things like this... but who knows... from what I've seen this is exactly what I named it... the Sport Model... it's truly a sports car, there is nothing in there other than equipment to make it fly. There is nothing else. It can have no other purpose other than getting from point A to B quickly.

J: I always surmised, before I met you or read about any of this, that the size of these UFO's meant... when I saw the one I saw fifteen years ago... that they were either jumpships from a large craft or they could fold space and you don't have to have a big ship to travel long distance, but those were the two, my two, conclusions...

L: Anything, anything is possible. I find myself stopping at certain points, I don't know if it's to preserve my sanity or not, but once you accept what you see and what you know to a certain point... I mean questions start popping into my mind, too. Obviously, there's not one of these. They must have been produced in a factory. And then you begin to conjure up ideas of a factory on another planet somewhere... so then you wonder about the social system, do these people go and build these things at a General Motors type plant and what do they do after five?

J: Are they new models every year?

L: Right... but it begins to sound science fiction after that point. You grasp back to what you know and say this is here. Well, did aliens bring it? I don't know. It's here. That's it. And you stop and it's satisfied. It fell from the sky and it's here... that's it.

J: Is that everyone else's attitude that you were working closely with?

L: Oh, they were much more at ease with it... but then they might have been there for years.

J: Were they more at ease with their speculations or were they as scientific about it as you were?

L: I don't know. They might have known a lot more than I did, so they may have been at ease because they knew exactly what was going on.

R: I would think in the bigger scope of things, most people, if they knew a lot more, wouldn't be at ease. That it would be such a large, almost tramatic issue... if you really got to know things such as their social system...

L: Maybe... and what would be the reason for them knowing it? So chances are that's not the way...

R: I always felt it was secret because there's stuff going on that the government can't stop or control so they'd rather not comment on it publicly. Because if they comment on it they have to say, there are flying saucers and there have been a few incidents... people are gone and we can't control it. I can never picture any government on this planet wanting to cop to that to the people they govern.

L: That's not the way it would ever be released.

R: That's just what I'm saying... that's just my point.

L: They'd take one of the ones they don't want, put it in the back of a C130, go over the middle of a populated town and push it out the back, and it would slam into the ground and they would say... oh, the first flying saucer is here. That's how they'd do that.

J: Didn't they actually joke about that?

L: That's exactly what they joked about.

J: If it got too hot...

L: Just boom... there it is...

R: That's vital to the story... that issue and that dialogue.

L: They at no time talked about coming clean with everything, saying, oh, by the way, we've been lying for forty years. That wasn't even a consideration.

J: Just let the local news pick up on it and they'll come out like you never saw them before and slowly release...

L: It falls in perfect track with everything the government does. I mean, they probably have people that specialize in that already.

C: Can we go back for one second to...

L: I didn't mean to...

R: I got him off... questions I couldn't resist asking.

C: But it's okay to fly all over the place, but there's... I'm still hanging on a couple of important things in your second time at S4... you were going through the files... you were in the room with the guard, who's watching you read the files...

L: He didn't stay in there the whole time. He left and went outside.

C: They took the files away. They didn't watch you? Did anybody... did Dennis come in and say, what do you think about this... was there any feedback? Was anyone watching you when you came back... or when you came home were you aware...

L: Well, you're asking many questions at one time.

C: Right... sorry. It's all the same question.

L: Yeah, there was some feedback, but not at that time. It was almost intentional isolation.

R: Was that an armed guard?

L: Oh yeah, there was no such thing as an unarmed guard. They... I find it very difficult to believe that they weren't monitoring me in some way. It would be impossible for me to belief that that wasn't going on. That they were sitting somewhere, in some room, looking at some TV monitor, watching Bob's expression. They must have. But that's just conjecture. After that is when they took me out and, I belief, if I have the chain of events right, that's when I went down to the medical facility they had there.

R: Can I back up a bit. The other files... you still didn't totally register that they were talking about a UFO disc as you went through all these briefings?

L: Uhh... yeah... I began to realize that that's what they were talking about, but I still was resisting the idea that it wasn't what... well, see my problem is... this has been so long ago it's melted all in to one long day. And I'm trying to separate the events.

J: By the way, any one of these sessions is subject to additions, corrections... second thoughts... I mean we're not a jury and we aren't shooting the movie... this is the first of a few sessions.

L: Yeah, I don't think... I know at that time I did not think it was an alien space craft that I would be working on. Period. That I knew.

R: You might have been in denial...

L: No, I don't even think I read anything that said "alien spacecraft" yet. I saw the word disc, disc, disc... but so what?

J: Did you ever guess?

R: You certainly must have been curious, I mean this was the whole center of what you were about to investigate...

L: No... it wasn't even in my mind. It wasn't even a possibility.

R: No, but as you read disc...

L: No, I mean it was a disc craft...

R: Something they had built...

L: It was even... up until the day I first saw it, when I walked in through the hangar, I said, to myself, this is the disc and when I saw the American flag on it... I was positive... and instantaneously answered all of the UFO questions in my mind. This is what everyone's been seeing. This is our secret craft and all those flying saucers from another planet.... they're so stupid. The answers were all there. And then it was after that...

R: You were told that it wasn't the government's...

L: Well, that's when we actually started working on the hardware.

R: So, that's interesting, it's two levels. It's one saying, oh, it's what everyone's been talking about -- UFOs is a government device... something we make.

L: See, that's just one of those things... in my mind, I know I'm not suppose to think about the movie, but I can never see that being portrayed. They're just feelings. There's no one to say anything to... but I'm just telling you what I felt... the way it was.

C: Well, basically, we won't digress, but I'm not going to do voiceover... it does work in (UNCLEAR), but it's the cheesy way out and, ultimately, we end up inventing a confidant or something, if you really feel something like that's important.

R: When this is all done, that may not be the most important detail to reach for... is that you assumed this, but later found out that... that's just the kind of thing that can be collapsed (?), anyway, it's not vital... we may or may not choose to make it an issue that you thought it was government craft... we may jump information... and the audience is going to come in assuming it... why work against the audience's assumptions, unless it's a valid and important event. We may just... I'm just pontificating on one specific point, I may decide, yeah, that's too much trouble to dramatize, and I may not deal with the fact that you thought it was a government craft and had to later be told that it's an alien craft... I happen to find it interesting, though.

R: Oh, it's great. And it can be done with something as simple as a smile on your face looking at the American flag and a "yes", this is one of ours. It's all about set-ups and payoffs.

J: If you can live through his skepticism first... then you sort of waterdown the skepticism of the people in the audience. If you can buy into that... you want to be skeptical.

R: There's a real excitement I have about these details anyway, because that's the way it would go down... that's the way I felt the first time I heard your story.

R: I have a question about the briefings... there were a collection of thirty or so briefings and since...

L: A hundred and twenty-one...

R: And since you read the briefings and it was a progression of getting more and more information, were there briefings laid out for you. In other words, read these, or were you allowed to go through this and the reason you didn't get to more of the juicy briefings is you just hadn't picked those up yet.

L: That's right.

R: But they were there. No one said I want you to read these...

J: The first time they all weren't there.

R: They all weren't even there?

L: No.

R: So it was controlled. You were only allowed to read certain ones at certain periods of time.

L: Right.

R: That's interesting.

C: Wasn't there something about "Looking Glass" project "Looking Glass"?

L: Yeah, that was later on... when we started getting into the heavy physics of it because gravity distorts space and time and what they were trying to do, and I say look back in time and some people conjure up images of a time tunnel... they're looking at distorting time in microseconds to see whatever event they were trying to observe through a gravitional lense... so that was a different project they were dealing with that... but that was essentially playing with gravity distorting time.

R: Did that seem logical to you?

L: Oh, sure. Well, I mean, we know that happens. That's not a theory.

C: That is wild. So right now you can look back microseconds?
L: Not look back... it just has to do with gravity... even in small amounts it's like... I even said that on the tape that I made... there have been experiments taken where you take an atomic clock... two atomic clocks and synchronize them. You put one on earth and one on a tall mountain and when you put them back together they read different times. Because gravity slows time.

C: I won't digress anymore. So where are we?

R: After the second briefing...

L: After the second briefing, they took me to the medical...

C: You surmised that there was some sort of monitoring, but you were not... there was nothing obvious.

L: No, nothing obvious... but I was convinced.

C: Your phones... you were never aware of anything going on with your phones?

L: After I left there, the first time, I was positive the phones were being monitored, because after signing the...

C: Consentment...

L: So, I always knew that, but I was more anxious to be part of the project than anything. I really didn't speak to anyone... not even to my wife about anything. Which later caused a lot of friction. Where you going? I'm leaving at four o'clock and I'm coming home at one in the morning.

C: That's probably a commonly held problem for anybody working in a secret... on a secret project? Is that correct?

L: It's impossible to play the game the way they want you to. It's impossible.

R: Which is also fascinating, by the way, just in terms of depicting a personal life in a situation like this. 'Cause it's human nature. How can you not talk about...

F: How can your wife trust you if she doesn't know where you're going and you won't tell her?

L: Unless she knows you're going to be working on secret projects. She knew I did at Los Alamos... but this is specifically why they told me that they work on the buddy system in there. You have one guy who is your confidant, who you can talk to, who you can bounce anything off of, who you can speak to, if necessary, after work, but you have to get in contact with someone else and, you don't just have each other's phone numbers... is what I'm saying.

C: There's a middle man.

L: But that was specifically for that, so that you don't just sit at home and explode.

C: That sounds wise and logical.

R: You were at least allowed to tell your wife you were working on a secret project so you can't talk about it.

L: Right.

R: So at least there's that understanding. But, it's like in the film business, no one understands that shit. When I work on a film, I can explain to my girlfriend all I want that I'm night shooting and that I have to day sleep before I night shoot again, therefore I can't call her... it just doesn't work... I need to try and get my five hours... there's things people don't understand, not doing it... particularly significant others. So there's got to be a common problem that can potentially be dramatized... because to me, there's a subtext of rejection, that would exist in any relationship... no matter how much the government's told you not to say something, if you're there alone in bed with your wife and to not tell her what you did that day...

L: Right... it doesn't work is the bottom line.

C: It's astounding the numbers of divorce...

R: Not to put words in your mouth, but this is an idea that's always seemed obvious to me in situations like this.

L: Well, let me confirm.

R: So, it's safe to say that, as you got deeper into this, there was already distance growing in your relationship at home. Based on that you couldn't tell her what you were doing.

L: Right.

R: Primarily. So you went to medical...

L: Went to medical... the only woman I ever saw there.

R: Interesting.

L: Also interesting, there were no minorities, from what I could see.

C: Is that a fact?

L: Yeah, everyone, even the guards were all white Catholic boys, from what I could see.

C: Can I say something. I love that... because it's got WASPY, militaristic, jock mentality that... I'm going to use the bathroom.

R: What happened in medical?

L: They took blood. Three tubes of blood. And after that, they gave me a skin prick test... they said, you're going to be working with a lot of extremely unusual materials, and we have to see if you develop any allergies to them. And they did a little grid on my arm... a bunch of little pricks with different chemicals in them. And then I wasn't allowed back for two weeks. And I had to keep watch on that part of my arm. And I didn't develop a rash, or bumps anywhere on it. When I finally did go back, I think it was the third time, is when I got to see the craft.

R: The third time you went back?

L: Yeah, still after that medical examination, I believe that's when I first met Barry. We went into the lab and I was shown around and briefly met Barry. This is who you're going to be working with and it was a brief tour.

R: You were asked to drink something?

L: Oh, yeah, before I left I was asked to drink something and it smelled like Pine Sol and I was lead to believe that it had something to do with the allergy test.

J: What happened when you drank that?

L: When I got home, it was still daylight and there was something wrong with my car. And I called Gene, a friend of mine...