In U.F.O. arcana, one of the figures claiming a whistle-blower’s knowledge of a secret U.S. program to reverse-engineer recovered alien technology is a man named Bob Lazar.
Here’s how Lazar has told the story: As a physicist educated at M.I.T. and Caltech, he was hired by the U.S. Navy in the 1980s to work as a technician at “S-4,” a subsidiary of Area 51. By his account, the facility contains nine recovered flying saucers; in addition, Lazar has claimed glimpses of alien cadavers and briefings on human contact with the Zeta Reticuli star system.
Heady stuff, this — except that Lazar isn’t actually a physicist, he was never hired by the Navy, he didn’t graduate from M.I.T. or Caltech, and his only possible connection to military installations is a brief stint at a contractor firm associated with Los Alamos.
So to believe his story, you have to believe that once he turned whistle-blower, the Men in Black magically erased all evidence of his résumé. Alternatively, you can just assume that Lazar is an All-American bunkum artist — an impression that his later career as a chemical salesman frequently in trouble with the law does little to dispel.
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