Area 51_ Bob Lazar, Secret Aircraft, Cover-Ups and the Underground Aspect of the Base _Nick Redfern

This is Nick Redfern. I'll be speaking tomorrow, August the 3rd, at the first UFO Hub event and I'm looking forward to it. It'll be a great event. A lot of people coming along and a lot of variation as well in terms of the lectures and I think more than anything else people like to come to conferences. It's a good way of meeting new friends but also getting a lot of data and information first hand rather than, you know, getting it second hand, third hand from a blog and I think people like that sort of hands-on approach. So that's what we'll be doing tomorrow at Eureka Springs and I'm looking forward to it. I'll be talking on two particular subjects. One of them is my Area 51 book and also the one that's just come out which is Flying Saucers from the Kremlin and both books are actually very different but both of them focus on conspiracy and UFOs and cover-ups but in very different ways which we can get to. As far as the Area 51 book is concerned it's kind of almost eerily timely because there was this big news just recently about how a petition basically was put together to essentially encourage people to storm Area 51 and try and sort of break the fence and reach the base and see what's going on there. And the number of people who actually signed on to do this was an incredible number of people but as far as I'm concerned I think it's dangerous, it's stupid and if anybody tries to do that in my view they deserve to get everything they get which is likely to be a jail sentence, pretty large fine and, you know, just a feeling I should not have done that. And there's several reasons why I say that. Despite the legend and the law that surrounds Area 51, the fact is that it is one of the United States' most powerful, secret, well-protected military installation. Now in that sense, in many respects, it's no different to any military base. So if anybody tries to jump the fence at a military base in their hundreds and thousands, well the government of course they're going to respond and respond quickly and you cannot blame them for doing that because for all we know that some of those UFO researchers who might be thinking about doing that, how do we know they're not from North Korea or China or Russia trying to blend in with UFO researchers? That would be the worst scenario possible. So my view is that it's reckless, dangerous and nobody should be trying to break into any US military base because you're just asking for trouble. So for me I think it's a dangerous thing. I don't think anyone should be doing it. It's getting a lot of publicity however and it will be intriguing to see what happens on the day. Now the reason I say that is because Area 51, the installation, is built upon this huge area, the Nevada Test and Training Range and Area 51 is just one portion of the range. So in other words, if you've got hundreds or thousands of people trying to get to the base, certainly action is going to be taken. Now on top of that there's the issue of, which a lot of people don't realize, is that even if you come to the several sort of facilities where the guards all wait around and turn people around, even if you were able to get past that, you've still got like another 10 or 12 miles before you actually reach what is really Area 51. But you have sensor equipment, night vision equipment, infrared, you have ground technology that can actually tell the difference between something like a jackrabbit walking along the desert floor and a person. So there really is no chance of trying to get into the base at all and for me I just sort of see as a publicity stunt. But also I do think it's very reckless and I kind of feel that on the day if anything happens it would end very badly for the UFO researchers but it would be their own fault. I wouldn't have any sympathy in this day and time now as the world is, I wouldn't have any sympathy for thousands of people who try to invade a US military base. I mean it wouldn't be treated by, oh it's just a bunch of UFO researchers, send them on the way. It would be a major national security issue, penetration of the most powerful, most secret base in the US. It really would end very very badly. The main reason why Area 51 is so filled with intrigue is because it's the most well-guarded installation in the United States and yet the whole world's actually heard of it, you know. And so it's a very strange situation, very bizarre situation because there really is no military facility in the United States that guards the place the way that Area 51 is guarded. There's just nothing else like it and of course this begs the question, why does Area 51 need to be so well guarded? When you look at the other ones, yes they're well guarded but certainly not to that degree. So inevitably it has sort of provoked theories, well what's going on there? If there's such coverage, if there's such surveillance of watching the public and UFO researchers, there has to be something to it. And of course the big question is, well what is to it? And so that's sort of, I've tried to look into and dig deep into the history and the work undertaken at Area 51. Now a lot of people don't realize that the beginnings of Area 51, although they started in the early 1950s, the idea of something like Area 51 actually begun in the early 1940s. And it actually goes back to Pearl Harbor, the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in December 1941, which was sort of up until that point, that was till 9-11, that was the most terrible attack on U.S. soil. Now the fact of the situation is more than 3,000 people died, it was a terrible situation. And the U.S. government vowed that no one else would be able to attack the United States ever again. Now the idea or the concept was, or the problem with Hawaii, was that the attack occurred because the Japanese were able to go under the radar and launch a sneak attack. So the plan was from then onward, we'll never ever build a base like that so close to the waters to where it can be attacked almost immediately. So the plan was to concentrate on building and constructing military facilities further inside the country so we would have a chance to realize that these aircraft were coming towards us and we'd have time to respond, which was that that was the big problem with Pearl Harbor. We didn't have time to respond because we didn't realize what was happening. Now of course, if you've got a secure military base in the heart of Nevada, we're going to get word very, very quickly that somebody is coming closer and closer and we'd have a very good chance of actually blasting the enemy planes out of the sky. So that was the reason why there was this decision to create a number of multiple military facilities out in the Nevada desert in the early 1940s. And there are actually four or five that were built out in Nevada, artillery ranges, gunneries, things like that. And by the early 1950s, that is when things really began in terms of creating the concept of building the ultimate military facility, very secure, the kind of installation that just cannot be penetrated, surrounded by mountains, and guards just about everywhere. And the only people who can get in is the people who work there. And certainly that's still the case today. Now until the early 1980s, not much was known about Area 51, even though aircraft like, for example, the U-2 and the Blackbird spy planes, even though they were tests flown out there, as were numerous other aircraft, the public didn't really know much about it. You didn't see too much about it, even written in aviation magazines and books. It was almost within the government and the relationship with sort of the media that to not play up too much, not to not emphasize this secret place out in the desert. And it really was in the 1980s that Area 51 became not just famous, but infamous. And this largely began thanks to a guy named Bob Lazar. Now Bob Lazar was a guy who came forward in 1988 and claimed that he'd worked at one particular part of Area 51 called S4. And as I said earlier, the whole area itself, the Nevada Test and Training Range, is this gigantic place with multiple areas on it, like Area 51, S4, and so on. And Lazar came out with this very bizarre and also extremely controversial story of having worked out at S4, for actually what he said was a very short period of time. People think it was months or years. It literally may have been about sort of six or seven weeks collectively, but spread across a longer period of time. And according to Lazar, he was hired to work on a program dealing with high technology. And he was told, this is something that you might have an interest in. And which was sort of playing right into his mind. And Lazar was interviewed and was told there's going to be stringent background checks, security, that kind of thing. But if you want to come on board, you're going to see something amazing. And I imagine, you know, to begin with, the thought was this Uncle Sam's developed the ultimate high-tech energy technology, something along those lines, or military technology, that sort of thing. When he got out there, Lazar claimed that he saw a number of what you could only call blind saucers that were disc-shaped aircraft. And his first thought was, well, Uncle Sam again has developed flying saucers. The US government has been responsible for the sightings of UFOs, and it's not really aliens, and so on. And the penny kind of dropped, so to speak, for Lazar when he was shown the interior of a couple of these craft out at S4. And the seats were really small, you know, for the, really they would only seat kids of about three, four, five years old. You know, they were very small seats. And all the equipments inside the craft seemed to be really small. Then he kind of realized, well, hang on, how could people fly these craft? And the answer was, well, they couldn't. And when he was exposed to these craft, he was also shown a large number of briefing papers, which according to Lazar, these briefing papers that he was given by the staff at S4, essentially told of the history of alien-human interaction, supposedly going back thousands of years. There were stories in these files about how the extraterrestrials, again, thousands of years ago, maybe more than that, had sort of tinkered and manipulated the human race genetically to sort of upgrade us from apes, if you like, up to the present day. So it was a very controversial job interview, almost like a unique job interview, which went further than that when he was taken out to the technology and allowed to read these documents. Now, that in essence was the story, the idea that the US government or an elite group out at S4 were back-engineering or trying to back-engineer alien technology. But according to Lazar, they weren't having a very good job of it at all. They just did not understand the technology. It's kind of as if a modern-day car was suddenly time-traveled back to the 1700s. You might find that the people of that era would understand, well, this is a vehicle, it moves, kind of like a horse and cart, and they could push it along. And I'm sure if one of them sat inside and started to move the wheel, they would realize by pushing it and turning it, you can go in different ways. And maybe if there's a key in there and they turn the key, it would start the engine. Maybe they could even put it into gear and drive. But if the most precious part of all, the gas, when it runs out, they would have no way to reproduce and replicate the gas. So the car would just sit there. And that was kind of the situation which Lazar said was going on at Area 51 and S4, that the scientists there knew what they were dealing with, but they couldn't replicate it. They couldn't duplicate it. They didn't know how to make the craft fly, even though they knew the principles of it. And so according to Lazar, periodically, they brought people in to look into this, but really weren't getting far at all. So sometimes they were bringing sort of maverick scientists who would think out of the box, so to speak. But that was the thrust of it, that the US government had got UFOs. Actually, under unclear circumstances, Lazar said he was never actually told where these craft came from. And only one of them had a sort of a noticeable dent in it. The rest of them were supposedly in extremely good condition. According to him, they weren't like what you would find at Roswell, you know, this destroyed craft. It was almost as if they'd been donated or landed and been captured, that kind of thing. That was the story. And under an alias, Lazar gave this story to George Knapp as a journalist working in Nevada. And the story then got out and it spread within the UFO community and culture. And in no time, Lazar was being invited on some of the talk shows on UFOs that existed back in 88, 89. Articles were written about him. People started doing background checks on him. Tim Good, a bestselling author, covered the Lazar story in his 1991 book, Alien Liaison, and covered it extensively. And it really, regardless of which side of the story you're on, there's no doubt that it wasn't the government or the media that really brought Area 51 to the attention of people. It actually was Lazar, regardless, as I said, whether you buy into his story or not. Now, within ufology, you have pretty much three different scenarios. One is that Lazar is absolutely telling the truth. Another one is that he is a hoaxer. And the third one is that he was hoaxed, possibly to try and convince the Russians that we've got alien technology. And then they would hope Lazar would go public. And then the people in the Kremlin would be, oh my God, out of Area 51, they've got alien technology. So those are the three scenarios. Now, a lot of people in ufology just write off Lazar as a hoaxer. The late Stan Friedman, who was involved in ufology for decades, never mind just years, Stan's actual words when Lazar came out with his claims, Stan said, this is bunk, bunk, bunk. And he said it three times. He said, this is garbage. There's nothing to it. And to his dying day, Stan believed that Lazar was not spreading disinformation, was not telling the truth. Stan believed that Lazar was perpetrating a hoax. Now, personally, I actually don't think Lazar was hoaxing. Now, I think the two scenarios, either one is that there really are crashed or recovered aliens and UFOs at Area 51, or somebody wants us to believe that and perpetrated some sort of bizarre psychological warfare operation, disinformation operation at Area 51 to frighten the Russians, maybe the North Koreans, the Chinese, whoever, and that there weren't any UFOs there. But if we start with the hoax angle, why I don't think Lazar was a hoaxer was because he actually doesn't operate and didn't operate like most hoaxes in ufology have done so. I'll explain what I mean by that. A lot of people who have perpetrated hoaxes in ufology, and unfortunately, there have been some over the years and the decades, what they do, they'll write a book, and it's just full of garbage. And they go on the lecture circuit for a year, maybe do 20, 30 lectures. They're selling dozens and dozens of books. They're on TV, they're promoting things. But it's all nonsense, they've made it up. Now, what happens after the initial publicity runs out, suddenly they come up with, oh, I've had some more encounters, the aliens have come back and taken me away again. So what do they do? They write another book then, which allows them to go back on the lecture circuit again, and so on. Now, that happens, I won't say it happens all the time, but it has happened a lot, unfortunately, and that's one of the hazards of ufology. There are people who hoax things, but typically, eventually, they're found out. But they always come back for more because it's the lure of it, it's like a magnet. Now, why I don't think Lazar was a hoaxer is because he did not act like a hoaxer. By that, what I actually mean is that he never wrote a book, never went to a publisher and got a big deal with them. He did a few radio shows for people like George Knapp. He was on a few lectures and conferences, and I do mean a few. This was a man who, if it was a hoax, he would have to create an incredibly intricate story, and yet he did nothing with it. As I said, he never wrote a book, he never got a huge book deal, which he certainly could have done given the scale of the situation that he was talking about, but no books, no lectures hardly, hardly any conferences, no TV shows, no TV documentary, nothing. That's not how a hoaxer operates. Hoaxers create hoaxes to gain something back. Lazar got nothing back other than notoriety. So that's why I don't think he was a hoaxer. I think there's a possibility, a strong possibility, that he himself was sort of like the patsy who was being used, but he genuinely didn't realize he was being used. Why I say that is because it's a little-known issue that on a number of occasions when Lazar went out to S4, did his work out there, tried to understand the nature of the alien technology, and then next thing he would know he'd be flying back to Vegas in one of these small planes that they would fly him out with these blacked-out windows, and he had significant memory loss of a number of days, and he came to believe or suspect that in some ways maybe his mind had been tampered with or hypnotized or, you know, sort of chemical technology to wipe out a couple of days of what happened. If that's the case, then that suggests to me that he may well have been used in some sort of incredibly weird and detailed ruse to make Lazar think he'd seen aliens, think he'd seen alien craft, but to send a message to Russia that, hey, you know, forget what you've got in your missile silos, just think what we've got at Area 51. And it's absolutely possible, it could be there's absolutely nothing extraterrestrial at Area 51, but somebody in the intelligence community sorely wants us to think there are, and they want the Russians to think they are, and the North Koreans, and the Chinese. So I think we're in the situation today where it looks like there are extraterrestrials, aliens, UFOs at Area 51, and maybe there really are, maybe the stories are absolutely 100% true. On the other hand, somebody possibly wants that to be the truth, wants us to believe that's the truth. And I think the ease with which Lazar was given the story and then allowed to spread it, and nobody tried to stop him, I think that is suspicious. And to me, it does kind of smack of the idea of Lazar being kind of a puppet being used in some odd situation. But what is particularly intriguing, I have to admit, is that after Lazar surfaced, a lot of other people surfaced, all claiming to have worked at Area 51 and on the and to have knowledge of UFOs. And some of these people, their backgrounds, you know, they were able to prove who they were. So the whole thing is very, very confusing. There's sort of multiple levels of, is this true? Is this disinformation? Is it drama? Is it hoaxing? And I guess the frustrating thing for the UFO research community is that we're actually still very much in the same situation today, as we were in 88 and 89, with Bob Lazar then, and also, for example, with Tim Good, who wrote Alien Liaison in 1991. The story that Lazar tells today is still the same one he told Tim Good in 1991. So nothing has changed. Nothing has really come forward where we can say, you know, we've really got something that we can nail down, and this is the smoking gun. It's still not reached that at all. Today even, you've still got, well, I think Bob Lazar is a hoaxer. Well, I think Bob Lazar is telling the truth. And it's amazing how that story has legs, you know, and the legs are still moving. And we're still asking the question, did Bob Lazar really see alien spacecraft at Area 51? So for me, that's one of the main reasons why it's such an intriguing place, almost a magical place, because it's settled in the middle of nowhere. No one can get into it. And if the stories are true, there's extraterrestrial technology and possibly even creatures out there. And the world isn't being told about it. Or, you know, is it just somebody's mind game? Governments play mind games for all sorts of bizarre reasons. So for me, it's like a ride down, it's almost like, you know, the Wizard of Oz. You go into this magical world almost, where you just don't know what is reality and what isn't. And I think that's where we're at. And I hope the situation changes one day. But right now, the mystique is still there. And mystique attracts people. But what we need are answers. Although Area 51 is primarily connected to the UFO subject, it actually has a long history of test flying very, very secretly some of the earliest spy planes through the 1950s and 60s, like the U-2, which spied over Russia, the Blackbird, but also some unacknowledged aircraft. There were rumors back in the late 80s and early 90s, that a strange aircraft called the Aurora was being test flown out there. And the Aurora was described by many people as like a black triangular shaped aircraft. There are even more controversial rumors that the Aurora could fly at incredible speeds. It could hover almost on a dime. What's particularly intriguing is that in the 1980s, a wave of sightings of black triangular aircraft did begin across the United States and spread to the UK and to Belgium and all over the place. And these things were clearly far more advanced than the black triangular stealth fighter and stealth bomber that we have today. Everybody's seen them. They look really weird. And if you'd seen them before they were actually rolled off the board, so to speak, you might think they were UFOs. But according to what the insiders were saying, the Aurora was far more advanced than the stealth fighter and the stealth bomber. They were described as very large black triangular aircraft flying in complete silence, possibly even flying at speeds as low as like 20 miles an hour, which is incredible, you know, if we do have that technology. So this particular issue of these so-called black triangles, the Aurora, that is one of the sort of equally important and significant aspects of what may be going on at Area 51, which is certainly as important as the story that Bob Lazar told. Over the last few years, a number of photographs have been taken from spy planes and high-flying aircraft of Area 51. And if you look at a lot of these photographs, they don't actually show too much other than a number of hangars and a couple of long runways. Now, given the security surrounding it, and we know that thousands of people work there, the big question is, well, how can it just look like a few hangars and a few runways out of the desert? Well, the answer is, most of the work that actually goes on at Area 51 goes on underground. Even Bob Lazar said, for example, at S4, where he worked, he said that S4 itself was not sort of out in the desert. It was actually sort of buried in sort of like a hollowed part of one of the mountains. So if you were the Russians with a spy satellite flying over Nevada, which actually does happen, the Russians would not be able to see anything other than the mountain because all the work would be inside. And it's kind of similar in the sense that at Area 51, most of the work is done on multiple levels, sort of four, five, six levels. We don't really know how many, but we could be looking at hollowed out facilities, perhaps going down three, 400 feet. And that's where the work is done. And a lot of the sensitive material is held. And of course, there's no way to know exactly what's going on there unless you really happen to work there. After all the research I've done into Area 51, what I've come to conclude when it comes to all of this is that, well, we know, yes, Area 51 exists. We know it's the most guarded military facility in the entire United States, but we don't know why. We also know that historically, Area 51 was where some of the most advanced high-flying spy planes were tested in deep secrecy. We also know that Area 51 has become certainly the most infamous base in the world because of its associations with UFOs. And we've got a lot of information. We've got a lot of witnesses coming forward. The big thing we need now is evidence. And I would hope at some point, evidence will come out to demonstrate what is actually going on there in relation to UFOs. And let's finally see it all. And I'm quite sure the public can take it. If people are interested in reading my Area 51 book, you can get it on Amazon, and you can also get it off the shelves of Barnes & Noble.