Bob Lazar and the Area 51 Alien Conspiracy

I recently watched the documentary Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers and listened to his podcast with Joe Rogan, in which Lazar claims to have worked at a secret government site called S-4 near Area 51 where he attempted to reverse-engineer highly advanced alien aircraft. As a science fiction fan, I would love for his story to be true, but my impression is that he’s lying—his story is nothing more than science fiction in itself.

There are so many holes in Lazar’s tale that you’d have to ignore in order to believe him. First off, if Lazar’s story was actually true, the government would have taken him out long ago. If they truly wanted to keep the alien technology secret, they never would have let Lazar go public with his information. The only explanation (if Lazar is telling the truth) is that the government wanted him to go public, perhaps to beta test how people would react to the existence of aliens. Though that seems highly unlikely.

While working at S-4, Lazar claims to have walked by a door in a hallway and, through the window, seen an alien body (but just for a brief second, so don’t press him for details). If the government actually had an alien body in this highly classified facility, why would they have windows on the doors for anyone to randomly walk by and see inside? Beyond that, how could they have alien bodies when he said the alien ships were extremely old and were dug up at archeological sites?

Lazar is clearly a smart guy who knows about science, but he seems to only know just enough to sound smart to non-scientists. An actual physicist could question him for details and easily call him on his bullshit. Notice there are no scientists in the documentary, nor would Lazar ever agree to appear on Joe Rogan’s podcast with one. (Then again, if he was caught in a lie or inaccuracy, he could just blame it on his “migraines” preventing him from thinking and remembering properly.)

Another discrepancy in Lazar’s story are the college transcripts (or lack thereof). He claims to have gone to MIT and Cal Tech, but those universities say he never did. This should serve as definitive proof that Lazar is a liar, but of course he spins that to use as further evidence for a grand conspiracy: The government erased his transcripts to try to discredit him. To lend credence to this, he repeatedly says, “Do you really think the government would have hired an engineer with no college degrees?”

The most plausible explanation is Lazar simply lied on his resume about where he went to college. In the 1980s, it was easier to get away with stuff like that, especially if you looked and sounded smart and convincing in your interview (which con men are expert at). His employers wouldn’t run a full background check if the job wasn’t actually highly classified and important, which it probably wasn't. Lazar most likely worked a menial boring job as a government contractor in Los Alamos—nothing to do with alien technology or anything interesting. He made all of that stuff up. The question is why?

Bob Lazar strikes me as someone desperate for meaning in life. Not that he wants publicity or even money—he repeatedly says he doesn’t want those things—but what he does want is to go down in history as someone important. He wants to be respected, to be remembered.

Something that struck me in the Joe Rogan podcast was when Lazar mentioned that his wife cheated on him while he was working at S-4. Think about it. How crushing would that feel? To be working some boring meaningless government job and finding out your wife is having an affair. That must have crushed his self-esteem and made him feel like a complete loser. It was after that that he first started telling the alien technology stories. That explains why: to boost his social status and self-esteem. To have people respect him and think he’s some genius scientist working on a top-secret alien project. Even if he was lying, he suddenly became a lot more interesting to his wife and friends.

Lazar plays the role of being a “humble” whistleblower by saying he doesn’t want money or fans or media attention, but there are ulterior motives for that. The government could send the IRS after him if he tries to profit off a hoax that they know is false. And the more media attention and interviews he receives, the easier it will be to catch him in lies and disprove his story. He needs to maintain control over the narrative. That's why he was hesitant to go on Rogan’s podcast and only agreed to it with the director of the documentary (who is a true believer) by his side. Rogan admitted it took a lot of effort to convince Lazar he wouldn’t attack him and would simply let him tell his story. I don’t blame Rogan for that. It was a fun and entertaining podcast (and documentary), as long as you take it for entertainment and not education—a sort of meta science fiction story.

More proof that Lazar is a con artist is his arrest in 1990 for involvement in a prostitution ring—not exactly the kind of work a genius physicist would be resigned to. The charges were reduced, which further goes against his case. If he was telling the truth, the government easily could have used that incident to bury him with charges to lock him up and silence him for good. Instead, Lazar got community service and psychotherapy (perhaps for his pathological lying and delusions of grandeur?)

He uses the fact that the IRS audits him as proof that he’s telling the truth, but that’s also proof to the contrary. The government knows he’s a con artist and are checking his finances to make sure he’s not illegally profiting of his hoax. Obviously, the government can’t come out and prove he’s lying because: 1) They have no reason to disprove every conspiracy theorist—there are too many. 2) To provide proof of a negative would be impossible anyway. Lazar has no physical proof of his story (because none exists), therefore the government has no physical proof to disprove his story (because none exists). What would constitute proof that there is no alien aircraft at S-4 or Area 51? They’d have to let people inside S-4 (if it even exists) and Area 51 to check every room. They would never do that because it's a classified government facility—not because of alien technology, but military and espionage technology. They can’t let the public (and other countries) see their cutting edge weapons and spy technology.

Even if the government gave in and let some journalists into Area 51 to prove there were no aliens, conspiracy theorists would claim the journalists were in on it. And if the government let the conspiracy theorists themselves in to Area 51 to look around and see there are no aliens or flying saucers, the conspiracy theorists would claim the government moved the evidence to another site before letting them in. The conspiracy theorist’s burden of proof is a rabbit hole that never ends.

Lazar has just enough half-truths and details to make his story sound somewhat convincing to the scientifically illiterate and those who want to believe. He did work near Area 51, and he does have some scientific knowledge—but that’s about it. The fact that he’s gotten so many people to believe his story is somewhat impressive in itself. Lazar was a child who grew up during the 1950s Roswell aliens stories, so as an adult in the 80s, he was probably still inspired by those stories—he wanted the conspiracy to be true. Lazar may have even applied for the government contractor job in Los Alamos for that very reason—to try to get close to Area 51—and he did, but only peripherally and saw nothing.

Of course my speculations about Lazar and his motives are just that—speculation. I don't have any hard evidence to disprove his story, but nor does he have any to prove it. The burden of proof is on him, and he has not provided anywhere near enough evidence to corroborate his story. I am not an expert in physics, but I am a pretty good judge of character, and whenever I heard Lazar talking, my bullshit detector went off. I am skeptical but open-minded. I would be ecstatic to discover aliens have visited us in flying saucers, but I’m not so wedded to that idea that I lose my sense of objective rationality.

Lazar may be a con man and liar, but as long as he’s not profiting off his lies or taking advantage of people then it’s mostly a harmless crime. Lazar is not necessarily a bad person—actually, I feel sorry for him. You can see the weariness behind his eyes and hear it in his voice—the toll the lies have had on him over the years. He admits he regrets going public in the first place and wishes he said nothing about aliens and Area 51, which may be the most truthful thing he said of all. Deep down, Lazar wishes he never started the lies, but it’s too late to come clean now. He couldn’t bear that humiliation. At this point, he has no choice but to keep up the facade. Whether fact or fiction, Lazar has already achieved his ultimate wish—a wish almost every human shares: His name is known by many today and will be remembered long after he’s gone.