Circa 1993
Lazar and his friends reconstruct the events surrounding his experiences at the Sector Four (S4) Base by reviewing an appointment calendar Lazar kept with notes referring to the “hidden” events of that time.
Unless otherwise noted, text is Lazar speaking.
Key:
L – Bob Lazar
G – Gene Huff
Q – Interviewer
September 4, 1988
Tracy’s 2nd solo cross-country flight. She was working on her pilot’s license.
September 7, 1988
Joe — the guy I knew and worked with in Los Alamos — came to visit. And left on the 10th.
[Groom Lake = 125 miles] This is just a mileage note. It doesn’t occur on this date — it’s a note to myself how far the drive was… that was one of my excursions up there. There will be some deceiving stuff on the calendar intentionally. We’ll run into other stuff like this.
September 13, 1988
[Testing some fireworks at the drylake about 20 minutes away.] As a side note, this is how I spent a lot of my thinking time — more-or-less — was just driving up there alone because it’s totally isolated. There’s no one there. There’s absolutely no sound. And frankly, it looks like a different planet. While shooting off fireworks is relaxing, but it’s just one of those things.
[Called Vinny] A guy that was doing some work for me on the body of the jetcar … insignificant.
More insignificant stuff here … ordering chemicals for our “Desert Blast” party.
[UFO Film] is a note to myself to get a film that John Lear gave me out of the house. He gave me a bunch of documents after I had first met him. Then I began to wonder how intelligent it was keeping that stuff around should there be another “surprise” visit, more-or-less.
October 1, 1988
[Tracy becomes a pilot] I met Tracy in Los Alamos, and she was basically doing nothing. She was just working at Pizza Huts and things like that. She didn’t have many friends up there. Nothing was really going on, and she moved out here into a strange environment. We frequently went to air shows. And she got a real kick out of that… So, I paid for her to take one of those trial flights and she fell in love with it. So she started taking lessons. They let her work on the weekends, not as a secretary but something there, to kind of work it off and she got away kind of easy. We got married here. After I left Los Alamos, I was with my first wife.
October 4, 1988
[John Lear at 8pm] What’s happening here is that I’m trying to show that I knew John Lear from a long time ago. And I think you’re going to see something really obvious, if I remember. I’ll start calling John something else. Well, let me just go through it instead of looking ahead. Anyway, that has nothing to do with that date.
Q: In this time period, here we are in the beginning of October and you’re running your business.
L: Right. Businesses are running fine.
Q: Making probes?
L: Making probes and doing the photo business. And basically, I was looking for something to do to give Tracy so we could have 2 incomes. Tracy would be working the photos, and I would go off full-time and work somewhere else and get something a little more mentally stimulating.
[Where the World Series started]
October 14, 1988
[UFO Cover-up] This is actually on that date — at Shelly’s with Jim. This was interesting. And Jim will recall this day. He came over. Now before this, I didn’t know who John Lear was and had an article in the paper about some guy who said the aliens are here and they’re taking over and all that stuff and is giving lectures at the library. Jim brought it over and showed it to me. Jim was thinking about going there and wanted to know if I wanted to go with him. I told him he was crazy and what a total waste of time. And he said, “Well, I’m going to go” and I said, “Okay, fine”. He said, “Why don’t you come over tonight cause the guy’s going to be on TV?”
So, I think this is the first time I saw anything. It was some special that was on TV about people being abducted and stuff like that. I don’t remember exactly what was going on in there. But John was telling his normal UFO story. And there were a couple of other people — you know, “I’ve been abducted”. So, that was the first time I’d seen John on TV.
October 15, 1988
[Tracy’s dad comes to visit] Which is interesting, about a month later… There’s something here about me sending resumes out — mid- October.]
Q: Now Tracy’s dad lives in Los Alamos.
L: Right.
Q: Works at the Lab there or does something else?
L: No, he works at the Lab … explosives.
October 19, 1988
[Jim to Tonopah test site] Tracy’s dad leaves, and Jim is now working up at the test site on the Stealth. I don’t know if that was the first time he’d been up there. But that’s when he’s starting his more-or-less secret work.
There was something here that I crossed out and then wrote John Lear at 4:30.
[At this point, the doorbell rings and Gene Huff arrives.]
G: John Lear was on TV and we were making fun of him…
L: In fact, I just found that day when he was on…
G: … on “On The Record”?
L: Whatever it was.
G: He was on “On The Record” with George [Trapp] in August of ’88, wasn’t he?
L: Maybe? August isn’t on here.
Q: So you were sitting around making fun of the guy talking about UFOs…
L: You can’t believe the stuff this guy was saying…
G: Well, it was interesting. Lear comes off very respectable. He looks very distinguished. White hair … the guy’s an airline captain, son of Bill Lear who holds all these flying records. And he commands a measure of respect so he can get people’s attention initially. In fact, some of the first things that we checked out, for instance, Lear was talking about the U.S. Government had this alien held hostage and he was called EBE-3 (Extraterrestrial Biological Entity-3). He said that it was housed in a facility called YY-2 in Los Alamos, which was a facility with double-faraday shielding. And since Bob had friends that worked down there, he could check and see if this guy knew what he was talking about or not.
And there was a YY-2 facility. But they weren’t holding any aliens. It was a mail stop. I can’t remember what else he said, so it was a good avenue to see if this guy had anything going. Also he said that Jackie Gleason was a buddy of Richard Nixon’s and was a major contributor to the Republican Party. And that Nixon had gotten Gleason into CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia and shown Jackie Gleason an alien body that they kept on ice there…
So, all this stuff sounds feasible. In fact, this made Bob actually invent the terminology “Learonym” as opposed to synonym/ homonym. A “Learonym” sounds like it’s something that could have happened, but didn’t.
L: And John is familiar with this. But you’re speaking of the stuff that is half-way reasonable.
G: Well, right, right. If you’re an innocent bystander and you see this guy on television, you would lend him your ear and then investigate. And there’s some value to that because people will go and investigate and find out he’s crazy. But maybe there is a body of information there that they should examine. So did you tell him about some of Lear’s outrageous stuff?
L: I couldn’t remember.
Q: Tell me some of it.
G: Lear said there was a roof on Area-51 — a 5-mile by 5-mile roof. It was a dome over this. How did the jets get through it anyway?
L: The remote control.
G: Yeah, the theory… See, some abductees — Whitley Striber amongst others — said that these aliens would jam these needle-like things up their nose or back behind their ears. And there were these little balls that they couldn’t ascertain on X-ray whether there was anything in there. Or there were strange things in people’s heads. And these were alleged receivers and transmitters, I guess, where aliens could communicate with the people without going through their outer ear.
Q: John actually believes this.
G: Not only that, but there were like a million people that had been abducted and tagged. They call that being “tagged”. And those that were tagged — at a specific future date when the aliens wanted them to act a certain way — they would be “activated” and then the aliens could control these people with a remote TV remote controller device.
Q: That’s interesting.
G: And the Stealth fighter. Did you tell him about the Stealth fighter? This was before the Stealth was made public and Lear… when Lear first met Bob. Also, he didn’t know who Bob was and that Bob knew all this stuff. And Lear was telling him a story that the way the Stealth fighter achieved its stealthiness was that it had LCD [liquid crystal displays] all over the top and bottom. And, say, if you were a jet flying above a Stealth fighter, there were cameras on the Stealth fighter that would look at the sky and the LCDs — no, excuse me, look at the ground — and the LCDs would then make the top of the Stealth fighter look like the ground. So if you’re in the jet looking down, it would blend in with the ground beneath it. And if you’re in a jet looking up at it, it will then exhibit the sky. And that’s when Bob learned that LCDs were highly radar reflective. Bob was actually the first one who took exception to everything –literally everything — that Lear said. And it was a great comedy show because this guy got away with murder prior to that.
L: He’s a unique guy.
October 23, 1988
[Fly to Ballhead] Oh, that’s just flying with Tracy who is listed on here as “Jackie”, by the way. Her name’s Tracy Jacqueline.
October 25, 1988
[EG&G] Okay, this must be the first interview.
Q: I didn’t see a Teller call.
L: No, Teller calls all the way down here. No, no, this is me dropping the resume off. I dropped it off on the 25th of October. And like I said, there was going to be a place where I sent out resumes. They probably all went out around this day.
Q: Now Bob, when you got a resume to EG&G, did you know what kind of work they were doing? Or did someone indicate to you.
L: No, I brought them everywhere. EG&G was here, so I hand-delivered it there. But there was nothing special about it.
Q: What did you know about them?
L: Ahh … that they mainly dealt with high-speed measurement is all that I knew EG&G did. And that’s how the company was started really … was just photographing high-speed events. And working at the test site, I thought they were just involved with high-speed data recovery from nuclear devices. And I said, “Well, that’s acceptable. I’ll work there!”
G: That’s pretty common knowledge in the Las Vegas area. They’re a major employer or a conduit to employment at the Nevada test site even though there’s a lot of contractors out there. EG&G is the most well-known, probably, to the Las Vegas general public because of news broadcasts.
October 27, 1988
Talk about stuff.
G: That’s clear.
L: Like I said, this is even going to confuse me.
Q: That’s okay… this is good.
[Stu and Melissa come to visit again] They leave the day after.
November, 1988
L: Now we’re in November. There’s another random [John Lear] down. That’s another one.
G: You’re in November?
L: November… the beginning of November.
G: Because George did another “On The Record”. Remember, he did a 2-parter. And then Lear did a 2-parter with Bill Cooper.
Q: Geez… He does have a good memory. You can remember that? From ’88? If you’d ask me where I was in ’88, I’d have to sit and think a minute.
G: Well, I had gone through this before. Were you aware there was a movie deal before this?
Q: Yes.
G: Okay… And a screenwriter before. In fact, I understand that it’s illegal or improper. But when you get all this done and everything and you’re done and everything is totally proper, we’d love for you to read this great screenplay this other guy wrote.
Q: I appreciate the fact that you know I can’t read it now.
G: But someday you can. And when you can…
Q: Someday I can.
G: And when you can, I would like you to reflect and say how did this guy get this story out of this?
Q: Well, I’ll simply say that Bob told him the story — that it was all Bob’s idea.
L: [Carol’s birthday] oh, my sister… okay.
G: I saw that, too, and I thought boy is that strange!
November 17, 1988
L: See, I wonder if I’m screwing myself up here with my own …
Q: It’s okay… it’s absolutely okay.
L: [Linda Howe] I didn’t know about Linda Howe for… on the 17th of November.
Q: Who was Linda Howe?
G: Cattle mutilation queen. On a video called “The Strange Harvest” back in ’79 or ’80.
Q: Oh, I have that book. I believe I have that.
G: “The Strange Harvest” was the video that was much better than the book.
L: Oh, [move into large bedroom]
G: You talk about recording an insignificant event on your calendar. Oh, is that when you disassembled the lab in the master bedroom and made a bedroom?
November 19, 1988
L: Okay, [Teller called the 29th].
Q: Tell me what he said again? It was a short call, evidently.
L: It was a short call. He recalled our meeting in Los Alamos and basically said that” there might be someone who might be interested in you, and…”
G: You want me to add if I remember anything?
L: Yes.
Q: Chime in.
L: ‘Cause Gene was around at that time.
G: When Edward Teller called, I said, “Who’s Edward Teller?” But Teller said that he was no longer active and only now worked in a chief consultant capacity.
L: Right. This is great.
G: And so he couldn’t directly give you a job, but he could give you the number of a guy you could get in contact with here in Las Vegas. And he gave you that number. And I don’t know what else you talked about.
L: That’s better than I remembered it. Yet it happened to me.
Q: Did you call the guy?
L: Yeah.
Q: Evidently. Did you call him right away or did you wait?
L: Yeah, I called him right away. And that’s why a couple of days later on — December 1, Thursday — I already had an interview.
Q: Okay, now here’s an important question. When you called the fellow at EG&G, you called whom?
L: I don’t remember the guy’s name. He wasn’t a “player”.
Q: Was he one of the gentlemen in the meeting on the panel when you went in there?
L: Yeah.
Q: Did he know you when you called?
L: Yes. Teller had already spoken to him.
Q: So he said, “thank you very much for calling…”
G: Were you aware that this guy actually worked for EG&G?
L: No. I called EG&G because that’s where the phone rang and that’s where we met. But they talked so lowly about the EG&G people and personnel. I have a hard time believing that anyone had anything to do with EG&G.
Q: So, this guy said come on in on December 1st?
L: Right.
Q: So this was your first interview there.
L: That’s right.
December 1, 1988
[First interview EG&G]
Q: And this is where he said, “You’re over-qualified. We don’t have anything.”?
L: Right. “But we might have something in the near future”. Which was probably a day-or-two after. Okay, I went out. That’s where the other interview was. Now why that’s not written down, I don’t know. Unless something is written here which is scribbled out… Because that’s about where it should have happened. It was about a day after.
Q: They called you back and said would you come in that day?
L: Right. And that’s when the big interview was… Wait, that’s a Saturday. That’s impossible.
Q: Well, that’s okay. We’ll say a day-or-two later.
L: It might have been Monday the 5th And the only reason it’s not written down is because we thought Tracy was pregnant that day. That’s a “PRG=1”.
G: Oh, “Preg One” — that’s right.
L: Then there’s doctor stuff, so… And the day doesn’t seem to start till 3 o’clock. So that makes sense to me.
Q: Now, would they have called you that morning and asked if you could come in that day?
L: Yeah. That’s exactly the way everything operated there. Just like with the phone calls.
Q: Okay.
December 6, 1988
L: The following day (the 6th) was another short interview — meeting people and then finally going up there.
Q: This is the day they flew you up there? The 6th — one day after the panel?
L: That doesn’t make sense. This is the day that I went there. I remember writing “Trip to Nowhere” on there.
G: That’s when you went to S4 the first time.
L: Yeah, this is the first trip to Area-51.
G: Are you sure? Where was the EG&G?
L: Here.
G: That’s [EG&G at 4:00]. Where’s the EG&G over here?
L: Here.
G: Wow! That had to be dropping the resume off.
L: Yeah, I know. That’s when the resume…
G: Well, what was this on the 28th?
L: See, I don’t know.
G: Looks like you scribbled out [EG&G].
L: It was always the day before Teller called, though.
Q: Well, this will still work. You can wrestle with your memories and say was that right or wrong? No one’s going to really be too interested in…
L: Well, obviously this is the day I went up. This was the day of the first interview. The second interview was somewhere in there.
Q: [Trip to Nowhere] is December 6th. And that’s about a 4 o’clock flight up there?
L: Right.
Q: And they called you at 2:00, 3:00?
L: Right before 2 o’clock.
Q: Okay. Now, you had no idea they were going to call you, right?
L: Right. I had no idea at all.
Q: Okay. Did you take anything, or just your 2 shoes? You just went down to the airport and …
L: Just went there.
Q: And they told you to get on the airplane and …
L: Well, no. That was what part of the time was at EG&G. They said your job’s going to take place mainly at a remote area up within the confines of a test site. “You’ll go up there and we’ll show you around.” It didn’t seem like anything unusual to me.
Q: Were you the only person who was giving that little briefing?
L: Yeah, there was no… Dennis came with me. That was the first meeting.
Q: You and Dennis and the person giving you the briefing?
L: Right.
Q: And you and Dennis got on the airplane. And there were some others on the airplane?
L: Right.
Q: Okay. Now, that was the second time you were with Dennis?
L: Right. Aside from the big interview, that was the first time I went anywhere with Dennis. [People visiting] … [Tracy’s not pregnant]
December 11, 1988
[Fireworks show… in the middle of December]
G: An unusual fireworks show.
L: Boy, that’s odd.
G: But that’s true. Because remember, you and Tracy and I went up on one {UNCLEAR on tape}. So you were preparing for something, but I don’t know what it was.
December 14, 1988
L: [Black&White Groom Lake photo done]. I think this is when I blew up a photo of Groom Lake to see…
G: That was that old photo of Groom Lake from the 1960’s or something, wasn’t it?
L: Right. I had just gotten back from there about a week ago.
Q: And you wanted to see what?
L: If it had changed…
Q: Well, it sounds to me like you were interested in seeing where you were up there?
L: Right.
Q: Where did that photograph come from that you blew up? That negative?
L: Where did that come from?
Q: That’s okay. That’s interesting. So you were in the darkroom taking a look at where you were.
G: I think you made a negative from another photo and enlarged that negative of that photo. You know what I mean. I don’t think you had access to a negative.
L: No.
G: I think we had gotten another picture from somewhere. And he made a negative and then enlarged that.
L: I was trying to look for the building that I went in.
Q: Okay. Was it there?
L: I couldn’t tell. It was just too big.
Q: When you got off the airplane up there, what did they do? Did they just drop you on an airstrip and you walk off into a receiving area?
L: No. There’s like a little electric… Not a golf cart thing, but one that seats several people. Like a tour bus type of thing, but all open. And that just takes you from the strip to the last couple of buildings on the end.
Q: People get off at different points?
L: No, they all pile on that and you go into this big cafeteria type area.
Q: Were there machines that… Candy machines?
L: Yeah. There were machines, but there’s also a buffet type thing.
December 20, 1988
L: [The Alpha Probe Contract was renewed on the 20th]. [Tracy’s dad visits on the 23rd.] Her sister comes in on the 26th. [Robin]… This is when — now that I have my job — I’m training Wayne’s wife because Tracy decided she no longer wanted to do photos. I’m training Wayne’s wife how to do photos, so…
December 26-30, 1988
L: Within the 26th through the 30th is when Thigpen showed up. Because Robin was here and so was Kris. Robin and Kris were here the day that Thigpen showed up. So within those 5 days is when Thigpen showed up. And before this — somewhere — was another surprise visit from those guys that was never recorded.
Q: Before Thigpen?
L: Right.
G: You already know Thigpen was with the OFI, right?
Q: No. You say OFI? I’m familiar with the OSI, but what is the OFI?
G: The Office of Federal Investigations. Which is not something you can look up in the phonebook. It’s not a public access like the FBI or CIA. And I’m not totally… George Knapp might be able to help you out a little more there. But they apparently… they do background checks for people that need clearance. They do the background checks, and they are a division of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) which is headquartered in Pennsylvania. OFI is something almost nobody’s ever heard of.
Q: I had never heard of them. Background investigations that I were familiar with were done by the Defense Investigative Service (DIS). And sometimes the FBI would get involved. So this is a new one for me. And OSI is Office of Special Investigations?
G: This was definitely OFI. They have an office here in town.
L: Yeah, George Knapp managed to track them down.
G: And he had written down the name of “Mike Thigpen” and a phone number and gave it to me. I lost the piece of paper, but I remembered Thigpen’s name. I told George Knapp… George Knapp found out Thigpen worked for the OFI.
We then told Knapp — because we didn’t have the phone number — that John Andrews of Testor company (the one doing the disc model) … John is kind of a hub for a lot of information. John found out that it was the OFI here in town and that they were a division of the Office of Personnel Management in Pennsylvania. He gave us the number of Thigpen and his boss’ name and… John Andrews was also the guy… We were talking about John Lear before, just to let you know how Andrews fits in and the background… is even… by the time we ever heard of Lear… and Lear had already gone off the deep end… he was probably right about the deep end, actually. But anyway, Lear, himself in the mid-’80s, I guess, was a disbeliever and kind of pooh-poohing UFOs. And John Andrews is the guy who scooped in the models for the Stealth Fighter and the SR-71 and U2. These guys were always out trying to glance glimpses of it, proto-type aircraft. And Andrews knew Lear from somewhere.
Andrews heard Lear making fun of that and said, “Hey, there’s something to this and you ought to check it out.” John Andrews was actually the guy that got John Lear on the trail and Andrews, subsequently, wanted the disc model to be his coup de grace. He wanted to do this and then retire.
L: I never knew that.
January 1, 1989
Q: I appreciate you chiming in like this.
L: I’m already calling you [“GUFON”] here. And right up there, you’re “Gene”. So…
G: ‘Cause I had been reading all that UFO stuff.
L: Yeah. I told them the GUFON…
G: Okay… we were just making fun of MUFON.
L: So before this, before January 1st is when they came in with the transcript to the door with a conversation between Gene and I and had outlined various things we were talking about. I thought that happened much further on. But it must have happened…
G: Are you sure you’re not thinking of the one with Jim? Because they did one with Jim before the one with you and I.
L: Huh?
G: I thought that’s how I remembered it… the first time…
L: What’s screwing me up is I purposely wrote stuff out-of-order on here.
G: Yeah… he’s “stealth” himself…
L: But it’s not suppose to backfire on me!
G: But I remember them questioning you about a conversation with you and Jim because Jim was working up at TTR and the… “Slim Jim”… all that stuff… calling “Slim Jim”…
L: Right… Oh, right.
G: That happened before you and I.
L: I forgot all about that.
Q: What happened there?
L: It was almost an identical situation that happened to Gene. And again they came in. And at that time … now Jim and I are talking because he’s working up at Tonopah. That’s a secure area. And I’m working where I am. We say very little on the phone because Jim is working on his clearance. I really don’t remember how the conversation got started. But it was … again, I think it was the use of a nickname, right…
G: I wasn’t involved in that. I just remember talking about it.
L: That got it started and I never did call him “Jim” during the conversation. And that brought them right over to the house afterwards.
Q: So they came over with the transcript?
L: Yeah.
Q: And said, “Who were you talking to? And what is this about?”
L: Right. “Who’s the guy ‘Slim’? I think is what was said.
G: You guys might have “chirped” on the phone.
L: Boy … Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Q: What?
G: I don’t even know where it.
L: I have no idea how it started. This is years ago because Jim and I have known each other for a long time. But when Jim called — or if I called there and Vicky answered the phone — instead of saying “hi, hello”, he would always makes a bird chirp noise. And I would do the same thing.
G: You know how people do stupid things. When they “chirped” to each other instead of saying “hi, this is Bob”.
L: Oh, I know exactly what it was. We did something like that and said something like “What’s up, Slim?” And then it was “Nothing I can talk about on the phone. Remember that?” And he said, “Okay, I’ll see you later.” So they came over right away thinking that this was a plan to set up a meeting between us two and exchange information in person.
Q: Now, you had been to “Trip to Nowhere” one time.
L: No, no. I’ve gone there twice.
Q: So, you’ve been up there twice? You’ve actually been to S4?
L: Yeah, now I was already at S4 when…
Q: When they came over with the transcript… the chirp script?
G: What did you go to S4 twice in December, right?
L: No. S4 once, and Groom Lake once.
G: Oh, okay.
L: And I went before Christmas. So before the 23rd.
G: Because they broke for Christmas, didn’t they…
L: Yes, before the 23rd is the second trip there. I don’t know where that occurred.
Q: Did the fellows with the transcript come over before Thigpen or after? Or do you remember?
L: The fellows with the transcript came over after Thigpen. That’s why this would make a lot more sense if this was Jim. This calendar’s doing exactly the opposite of what it’s suppose to.
Q: Confusing the enemy.
L: Right. Whatever it is, it’s effective. Anyway, you know about those events. They did occur, and they occurred after January 1.
Q: Now, if they’re going to shut down — aerospace and defense companies normally shut down for that entire week — did they? From Christmas until New Years? You know, the whole government operations being dead in the water.
L: Okay… hold on… No, because this is the day…
January 7, 1989
L: Okay … No, that’s right. That’s right… And this is the day that they had done the allergen test up here.
Q: The allergen test was the 23rd of December?
L: Well, I’m saying before that date. I went on the second trip to S4 where I drank the pine fluid. And here it is the 7th when I said there was lots of blood in my urine and I collapsed. And so on and so forth. And on the following Monday, I went to the doctor.
{PHONE RINGS. MACHINE TURNED OFF AND BACK ON.}
January 9, 1989
Q: Let me repeat that. That was the 9th of January. And that’s when you went to the doctor and you got a shot of Demerol. What happened?
G: Well, it was just fine because I called and he was “high”. He had never done any drugs in his whole life. I gave him a shot of Demerol. He was slurring his words and everything. I didn’t know what was wrong.
{START OF TAPE 6 — SIDE ‘B’}
January 12, 1989
L: That looks like a trip to Los Alamos on the 12th of January.
Q: Is this probe related?
L: Yeah.
Q: Okay.
L: [Leaving the next day. Buy the first 6″ shell on Sunday.]
January 16, 1989
L: [Work at 4pm ] here’s another trip.
Q: Okay, that’s 16 January?
L: Right. Now [Lear] is written at the top here and I don’t know why. Looks like it was written in after the date was written. But I can’t be sure.
Q: Just so that you’re anchoring with regards to these trips. Is this a trip in which you were exposed to files?
L: Oh, yeah. All of them were.
Q: Okay.
L: Unfortunately, they’re not all going to be listed here, and …
Q: Is this a trip in which you had you seen the spacecraft? The disc? At this point?
L: At this point, yes — probably so.
Q: Okay.
L: Yes, because we had one. This is probably the first time I saw it.
Q: 16, January?
L: Right. Sitting outside. Because this would have been the 3rd trip there. And I remember the 3rd trip was when I came in the side entrance.
G: And you started acting a lot more secretive and weird in January?
Q: Now Gene, how did he start to act “secretive and weird”? Give me an example.
G: He compartmentalizes information, anyway. He wasn’t “paranoid” in the classic sense of the word. But he wouldn’t talk about anything that even skirted the issue. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with one of your friends saying, “How’s your new job?” But it would be a big deal to him.
Q: You asked him. What did he say?
G: Probably in sign (?). You know, something unbelievable. Some dirty (?) answer. But, I mean, but he had worked at Los Alamos. He worked on secret things before. So you would just think that he’s working on something he can’t talk about. You wouldn’t go “Well, I bet he’s working on flying saucers.”
But he was a little more defensive than you would think he would be if he was working on some type of bomb or missile, which the average person wouldn’t care about anyway or understand. He was a little defensive. And you got the… my perception from his attitude was “Let’s just stay off that subject.” And then he’d also talk. Not about the job, but about the security check. I mean, I knew Thigpen had come by and these guys would drop by his house. So in all probability his phone was tapped. And who knew if they had come back or whatever.
So it was you just couldn’t talk about it. You could make small talk about anything except anything about what he’d been up to lately as far as his new job. And it’s a strange job. He gets a job and he’s leaving at 4:00 in the evening and coming home at random times at night.
Q: What did you think about that? Did you comment to anybody that this was kind of a weird situation?
G: No, because I didn’t really know enough about. I’m not a scientist or anything. I’ve never worked in a scientific program or a government program. And that could be normal. A lot of people here — for instance, guys — there’re a lot of people working at the test site here in town. And the test site will provide small studio type apartments for these guys so they can pay some nominal fee and go up and stay all week, rather than take a bus out-and-back every day and be beat at the end of the week. A lot of guys without kids or single guys… I think it was something crazy like 7 bucks-a-day or 11 bucks-a-day or something to rent these apartments and stay up there all week. So that type of activity isn’t unusual.
Q: January 16th… now you said something about coming in the side door and you saw it outside or something…
L: Coming in the hangar door instead of going around the back into the office entrance.
Q: Okay.
L: Umm…
Q: That’s the time when you really thought it was something that we (i.e., the U.S. military and not a back-engineered alien disc) were building?
{DOORBELL RINGS}
L: Right.
{MACHINE TURNED OFF AND BACK ON}
January 19, 1989
L: [Another Los Alamos trip on the 19th] Stayed at my friend Joe’s out there.
Q: You and Joe talk about what? Anything about your new job? Did he know you had a new job?
L: Yeah, I think… No, he knew I had a new job. And I was still just being secretive about everything.
Q: Okay. Now critical point: you’ve seen a disc… you are reading files. Have the files at this point indicated to you that that disc isn’t one of ours?
L: Yes.
Q: So, at this point you really know that…
L: Oh yeah, I know what’s going on now.
Q: Okay.
January 24, 1989
L: And in fact when I get back from Los Alamos on the 24th, I go out again.
Q: 24th of January?
L: Right.
Q: Okay. Is that always listed as “Trip to Nowhere”?
L: No. It’s [go to work] here… [go to work] back here… My birthday’s on the 26th…
January 26, 1989
Q: What did you do on your birthday?
L: Went out with ‘GUFON’ and his wife to Alpine Village (a Swedish restaurant). That was the first time I ate rabbit, I think.
G: Or was it duck?
L: No, rabbit.
January 28, 1989
L: Tracy’s sister comes out.
Q: Tracy’s sister’s name is?
L: Kris.
Q: Kris. And this is… she’s studying to be a lawyer?
L: Right.
G: She switched vocations, didn’t she? She was going to take Japanese or Chinese or be an interpreter. Or was it a Chinese speaking lawyer.?
L: Who knows.
G: She was a nut, though. I don’t think she ever did anything, do you?
L: I don’t know. By the way, just a side question here: don’t they, if they’re… I imagine Tracy’s got to be part of the screenplay in some respect.
Q: Um hmm… But real or in a fictional scene? It depends on how we eventually work it out because what you may want to say is “I don’t really want this is there like that because it has to do with my private life. Let’s just fictionalize this person.”
L: Well, that’s what I was wondering was if they’re going to be represented in a movie, don’t you need their permission? Because the last time Guber Peters asked her, she said no.
{MACHINE TURNED OFF AND BACK ON}
L: Well, however, that’s going to be… It’s going to be difficult to get her permission for anything.
February, 1989
Q: Now where are you making… where are you manufacturing the probes at this point?
L: Los Alamos.
Q: You’re doing it all there?
L: In a friend’s house, yeah.
Q: Okay.
G: You didn’t shave your beard off until February?
L: Yeah, I was shocked. That’s the most shocking thing.
G: I thought you shaved your beard off when you went to the EG&G interview because you were looking very business-like.
L: That’s certainly nothing I would have purposely put somewhere else. That’s really strange. I wonder what prompted me to do that?
G: Here’s another thing for the missing days there when he just put an ‘X” in it and didn’t write that he went to work. Keep in mind now that the security guys are dropping by randomly and can look at his calendar. So he can’t put down “worked at S4”.
Q: Now Bob, when you’re doing this calendar, was there any particular reason for having done a calendar like this?
L: Oh, I’d done it for years. I got in that habit all the way back. I’ve got… I think I’ve got 15 years of calendars. It’s just total, complete habit. I can’t not do it. It’s because I’ve got such a terrible memory, it’s the only thing were I can. And it saved me a lot of times on different things. When did I get insurance? And so on and so forth. There’s always been one up somewhere. So, it’s habit, I guess.
G: Aren’t there just big blotches of days where you just “X” out days and don’t write anything. Any of those can be work days?
L: Yeah, I was just looking for something that might look “There’s nothing in February… well, I went to work in there somewhere.” Where, I don’t know… I don’t see anything…
Q: Once a week?
L: No, not always. There should have been a couple of trips during that month.
Q: Okay. You’re in the lab now?
L: Umm hmm …
Q: Gene, are you noticing a change in his behavior as he gets deeper-and-deeper into this program?
G: Yeah! That he wasn’t any fun anymore.
(LAUGHTER)
G: I mean he really wasn’t. I mean we have fun now, even after he told us… even after you know. It’s easy to relax and make fun and have laughs about things in the past. But at that time, it was a (UNCLEAR from tape) because Bob wouldn’t talk about anything. He would be very abrupt and discreet on the phone because he presumed they were listening to him. And he was right, you know. And so, you couldn’t hardly talk about anything. It was just kind of a drag.
L: Okay.
Q: How often did you see him? Once a week, twice a week?
G: About once. His photo lab was still doing the photos, so he was involved with that. But later I see him 5 days a week sometimes. But you know, there were other things going on. Remember, we were… that’s when we got the small business innovative research program, which is a big government {UNCLEAR from tape} by different agencies for companies of 400 people-or-less. They put up funding, and they need innovative research in different levels — Level 1, 2, 3.
For instance, the guys who fly the F15s or this or that, they need a cooling system to go inside their flight suits to keep them cool. For instance, if it’s Level 3, you can get all the information. They go “Here’s where we’re at and here’s where our problem is. What is your idea to solve it?” And if you come up with some ideas, then they’ll fund… give you money. And then if you further the idea and make a working model, they can be manufactured. Like even the defense contract can buy it from you. And this is to keep all the big, giant companies from getting all the business.
March 22, 1989
L: March 22nd, I have written down [go to there]. Now, I have a feeling that that wasn’t a trip to work. Because on the…
March 29, 1989
L: Jim, GUFON, and Jackie [go fishing]
G: … which is… “fishing” is Groom Lake…
L: Right. So [go to there[.
Q: Wait a minute, “fishing” is Groom Lake? Tell me that a different way. When, you say…
L: “Go fishing” is the code meaning…
G: Groom Lake is the drylake bed — Area-51. So “going fishing” was when he took us up to…
L: When I knew the test schedule…
Q: So, this is a Wednesday.
L: Oh yeah, it is a Wednesday. And this is a Wednesday, too. Good point. So these are 2 dates when we’re out spying.
Q: Okay, what are the dates?
L: Wednesday the 22nd of March, and Wednesday the 29th of March. Now the 22nd of March must have been the first time that we ever went.
G: My son was born March 15th. And I had a little baby and my in-laws were still in town. So here’s the whole family at the house. And Bob and his wife drop by, and…
Q: Now, you didn’t know anything about this before?
G: Oh yeah, he had told us now.
Q: Okay, wait… Step me back to the first time he comes to tell you.
G: I don’t know what date it was. But we were driving down Alta Street in my car. I don’t know where we were going, and I said something… I said, “You don’t think my car’s bugged, do you?” He said, “No.” I said, “Well…
Q: Why’d you say that?
G: Well because I knew about the security check. I knew he was generally paranoid. I knew whatever he was doing at work, he wouldn’t talk about. And I said, “You ever going to tell me what you’re doing at work? Because I thought he would if he got a chance. And that’s when he told me he was working on this “disc”.
Q: What did he say?
G: He said, “They’ve got ’em.”
L: That’s right.
G: Now, I had seen programs with John Lear and stuff on TV saying there were flying saucers out there. But I didn’t necessarily believe him.
Q: So he said, “They’ve got ’em”?
G: “They’ve got ’em.”
Q: Did you know…
G: I knew right away. They’ve got flying saucers that are called “discs”, and he proceeded to tell me about them. I was shocked.
Q: What did you feel when he said “they’ve got ’em”?
G: Exhilarated, because I knew then — now in hindsight — it was dominos all the way down the line. This is why his personality changed. In other words, the personality changes and his activities now made sense. And also it reinforced — even at this point — that I knew this guy was telling the truth. Because even if it’s your friend, you’ve got to be apprehensive.
I mean this changes everything! This means everything! And he told me that they had ’em. They had discs. They had 9 of them. There were 9 hangars. He was in the lab. He told me there were all different shapes. One was a ‘Sports Model’.
Q: This is as you’re driving down the street?
G: Yeah. We’re driving down the street, and then he also told me — I remember — that the one looked like they had put it up on the edge and shot a projectile through it because there was a hole in it as though they had tested the skin’s integrity. And that’s when he first started teaching me about space/time distortion because I said, “Well, maybe they shot it down. Because remember now, I’m reflecting on bullshit that I’ve heard John Lear and others say on television and read in Omni and things like that. And he explained space/time distortion and how impractical it would be that any jet fighter of ours could ever catch one of those things, much less get a missile to shoot through it.
Q: Where were you going in the car?
G: I don’t know.
Q: What did you say when you got home?
L: Did you tell Mary when you got home?
G: I don’t think I told her at first because you told me not to tell anybody and stuff like that. And I knew I couldn’t trust her to not accidentally act like she knew if we were out.
Q: So when did you tell her?
G: When did I tell her?
Q: Do you remember?
G: After the baby was born. Because remember now, she gave birth on March 15th. And although she’s not very Catholic anymore, she was raised Catholic and would be more reluctant…
Q: How did you tell her?
G: I just told her — once I knew he had told Jim — now remember, after he told me, I didn’t know if he told Jim… you know what I mean, in other words.
Q: But he hadn’t.
G: I don’t know. Maybe he had. Although I’m friends with Jim, we don’t call each other and hang out together. He and Bob have that relationship. So once I knew Jim knew — however I knew that — I told Mary and she was thrilled. But she had seen all the Lear stuff and everything on TV. And I had been an open-minded guy to this — I mean from “Journey to the Gods” back in the mid-70s and all of that stuff. So we certainly entertained the possibility.
And remember, Lear was a pretty convincing guy. He was throwing around CIA headquarters and Jackie Gleason and Richard Nixon. Jackie Gleason apparently had a house that was shaped like a disc and had one of the biggest occult libraries of anybody in the World. So these were “Learonyms”. These were believable stories and so we were pretty open-minded about the possibility. We were actually amazed that we knew somebody who got into the program.
Q: So, the baby’s born and then Bob says, “Do you want to come out and see a test flight?”
L: That was 7 days afterwards.
G: Well, about 5 days afterwards or something. And again, he had already told us at this point. I knew what he was working on and stuff. And I started reading… getting books. I appraised Lear’s house in exchange to get a bunch of tapes from Lear. All kinds of UFO information, which were taped terribly but was really good. It was all kinds of UFO stuff. And so anyway, what had happened was that we couldn’t speak in Bob’s house. So we went out in the driveway and … This was after they didn’t call him to work for a few weeks, I guess.
So I told him I was reading about all this UFO information and they talk about the Roswell crash in ’47 and the alleged Russian landings in the ’50s and the {UNCLEAR from tape} in the 60’s. And I said, “Well, if all this is going on, there must be something going on somewhere now. If there are aliens here and they‘re flying around and whatever their venue is, they must be here now. That’s where I want to be. And he said, “What are you doing Wednesday night?”
L: That’s right! That’s exactly right.
G: I said, “What did you have in mind?” And then he tells me. That he knows the disc schedule and stuff. And he’s going to take us out there then to watch the disc, which was one of the most thrilling…
Q: Tell me about this. There were the three of you. This was the first time…
L: It was Jim, also.
Q: Oh, Jim. Wasn’t Jim up at Tonopah?
L: Yeah, but he came down sporadically.
G: He’d have to work 5- and 7-day stretches. But it wasn’t always Monday through Friday.
L: Right. So it was me, Gene, Jim, and Tracy. Right? I have to check it with you. …No, no, no… That was the second time. The first night was…
G: Lear… No, Lear was the last night.
L: I know you and I were there. It must have been Lear because we had the telescope.
G: Yeah, we invited Lear because Lear’s got an 8-inch Selectron (sp?). And he knew, I didn’t know… I’d never been out there, but he knew we were going to be a long way away over a mountain range. So we had met Lear by then, and Lear had a telescope. And it was me, you, Lear, and Tracy.
L: Okay.
Q: What car?
G: It was Lear’s RV.
L: Okay.
Q: You’re driving up there. Everybody was… Was this light-hearted conversation? Was this deadly serious? Were you afraid?
L: I remember…
G: Here’s a guy telling me I’m going to get to see an extraterrestrial vehicle tested… you know…
L: And as we’re coming up the mountain, which goes down… Now the thing is going to take off. I forget at what time… 9:15 or 8:15. We’re coming up the hill, and the transmission gives out on the motorhome and we’re stuck in the middle of the road on a hill in the middle of the desert.
G: So I hitchhike with a guy coming from either Area-51 or {UNCLEAR from tape}. I get in his truck, and he’s going to take me all the way down the hill to get some transmission fluid at the gas station down there. And on the way down, this guy’s drinking beer — you know, guys drive through central Nevada and they pick up a 6-pack for safe driving on the way home. And we’re going down, and I start talking with his guy about Area-51.
And though he wouldn’t really open up, he was a complete stranger, he {UNCLEAR from tape} working at Area-51. And that you do have to get clearance to get anywhere in there. And he had worked with a man who had had a heart attack. They called an ambulance, but the ambulance didn’t have clearance to get inside the gate. So they had to bring the guy from inside there to the gate. It took too long and the guy died. Had he gotten to the ambulance, he would have lived. But just by virtue of security clearance, they held the ambulance at the gate and made the guy be brought out to the gate. And the guy died. This is the story from this complete stranger. He takes me down there to get transmission fluid. I buy him another 6-pack of beer to thank him, and he takes me back out…
Q: Oh, he drove you back up?
G: He drove me back up. [Else] I was going to have to hitchhike back up again.
Q: So you were still going up the grade. And is this on the way to what is now “Alien Inn”?
G: No. Alie-Inn is past there. It’s 30 miles past there.
L: Actually that heart attack story I thought came from Dennis. But it didn’t. Now I remember where the origin of that story was.
G: Oh, yeah.
Q: So you get the transmission fluid back in …
G: We go back up, we put the transmission fluid in. We turn out the lights… sneak down the road… set up the telescope…
Q: This was a paved road, though?
L: No, dirt road.
G: Gravel road.
L: While you’re talking, let me just try and find “The Day After” on tape.
Q: Gene, tie this one off for me: You went up, parked, set up the telescope… then what happened?
G: Well, after dark, a light appeared up in the sky… started jumping around… pretty thrilling. Now listen, it was really thrilling that day. But the reason I’m playing it down was because the next week — when Jim was with us, not Lear…
Q: What did Lear say when he saw the light?
G: He knew it.
L: He was excited…
G: He knew they were out there. It just confirmed it.
L: It was more like, “I told you.”
G: Right.
Q: Now, you were looking at it through the telescope?
L: No, I wasn’t because I thought I’d let them see what was going on.
G: Yeah, we got to see it through a telescope. It was still far away through the telescope. You could see an elliptical light. It jumped around and danced around in the air.
Q: Could you see it with the naked eye?
G: Oh yeah, you could. When we got the best shot of it… Lear got his eye on the eyepiece. And when we got the best shot of it, he’s getting out of the way and he kicks the tripod and moves the telescope. And if you think it’s easy, it is tough to get that thing on that telescope. And the next week…
L: We really hated him.
G: Yeah, we really hated him after that.
Q: It was approximately how many miles away?
L: 13, I would guess.
Q: Okay.
G: But the next week, we rented a Lincoln because we all had small cars and…
Q: Now this is the second time?
G: This is the second time.
L: Which was on…
G: April 29th…
L: No, wait… March…
G: March 29th…
Q: Now, were you excited that week, knowing that the next week you were going to go out and look at this again?
G: I felt so privileged. I felt like the luckiest son-of-a-bitch in the World. He’s a physicist and was in the program and stuff. I’m getting this free-of-charge. Nobody wants to kill me. I realized how lucky we all were. As a writer, don’t you feel fortunate to jump on? This is the best story! Imagine if Jesus was here. It’s got infidelity. It’s got government cover-up. It’s got… Isn’t this great?
(LAUGHTER)
Q: You’re in the Lincoln. Take me out…
G: Okay, we rent a Lincoln because we’ve all got small cars.
Q: Who signed on the dotted line for the Lincoln?
G: I did. I was the only one who had a charge card, I think.
L: No, no, no, wait… Wasn’t that Kristin?
G: No.
L: He remembers better than I do.
G: There was a Lincoln. I rented it. Budget Rent A Car. And so Jim and I… we’re going up. Jim and I are in the front. Bob and Tracy are in the back. Bob’s got a video camera. I think Bob was also explaining space/time distortion to Tracy in the back seat if I remember right. And the funny thing was we’re going up and Jim’s looking out the window, and it looks like these 2 F15s are following us. And Jim’s looking out the window and we asked, “What’re you looking at?” And he says, “I know this is an optical illusion. But it seems like these F15s are following us” as though we’d be important enough. And so as a joke, I said, “That’s okay, I’ll get rid of them. I’ve seen ‘Top Gun”. And I started backing the car… back-and-forth on the highway.
L: He did that!
G: But then we got up there. We got up and turned the lights out. We snuck down the road and waited about.
Q: Same place? You’re going to the same place?
G: About four and a half…
Q: Now, you’ve got no telescope this time?
G: Yeah, we’ve got a telescope. It’s a small telescope, video camera, which is what I think he’s cueing up there. Yeah, this is the actual sound from that night, isn’t it?
L: Yeah, this is the whole thing. I even have the tape of us in the car, joking around.
Q: Who’s running the camera? Bob, are you running the camera?
G: Yeah. He’s in the back seat.
L: Probably, yeah.
G: He and Tracy are in the back seat. So anyway, we went down the road to the same place. We set up the telescope and stuff. Bob is screwing with the telescope because the mountain and the skies are starting to blend together. It’s getting dark, and I can’t see shit.
Q: Now, are you just kind of standing there? Are you drinking beer? Or…
G: I’m sure Jim was drinking beer.
L: Jim always drinks beer.
G: We were probably drinking soft drinks or something. Not that I’m opposed to beer, but I wouldn’t have been drinking it then because I would have had to work the next morning. So then, Bob is screwing around with the telescope and video camera. Jim’s looking through binoculars… No, he’s screwing with the telescope. Tracy’s on the video camera because we know where to look now. We had seen this thing before, but Jim hadn’t. Jim’s looking with binoculars.
Q: It came up over the top of the mountain …
G: So we’re looking around and without looking exactly at it, a small light passed above the mountains. And I go, “Bob, look at that!” And he goes, “That’s probably just a star.” Period. That’s generally the place it pops up in the sky. It’s not moving or anything, so he goes back to the telescope. And then I’m just looking with binoculars, watching it. Now Cereus [sp? Sirius?] jumps up and jumps 3-or-4, 5 miles to the West. And Jim says, “Holy shit! Did you see that?” And I said, “Hey, Bob!” And he said, “What?” I said, “Cereus [sp? Sirius?] just jumped about 3 miles to the West.”
He looked up, and that was the light. It jumped up and did the step moves all around. And even though all of this is in hindsight now, it’s still very hard to believe it happened. But it did. It came so far up the mountain range toward us and glowed so brightly. Again we left the trunk of the Lincoln open because we got the telescope and everything out of there. And we actually backed up to get behind the trunk. Now as I reflect back on that, it’s hard to believe.
Q: It was just a light.
G: Right. But it glowed so brightly. I think your mind can only take so much before it starts an explosion. In other words, whatever your mind’s eye is used to seeing, it’s hard to describe. When this thing came down the mountain range… It’s not as though it’s a car on the highway or a train on the railroad track approaching you and you say, “yeah, it’ll be here in a few minutes, it’ll be there”. And you’ll say something to somebody and turn around, and it’s a lot closer. You didn’t see it come, and you might <blink> and it’s a lot closer. I guess that’s by virtue of the way it travels.
And it’s alarming cause you don’t see it coming. You can’t judge it. It’s like boom! Boom! It’s actually that fast. And according to Bob’s information, the more highly energized it is, the more brightly it glows. The more of a charge you’re going to see around the disc. And so when it dropped down near to where we were, it was glowing so brightly that it was like a small sun.
Q: Was it illuminating the car?
(PHONE RINGS. MACHINE TURNED OFF AND BACK ON)
Q: So you stepped back behind the car?
G: We stepped back behind the trunk. And the thing glowed back down.
Q: What did Jim say?
L: Oh look, this is [April 5th ] …
G: That’s the final night when we got busted without seeing any disc.
L: Okay, that’s the car that she rented then.
G: That’s the car she rented.
L: I had the 2 days blended together.
Q: What did Jim say when he saw the disc coming towards you?
G: Well, you can probably hear it if he finds…
L: No, this is the 3rd night. Well, you can finish the 2nd night [on the tape]. When the 3rd night comes up, we’ve got the tape.
G: What did Jim say? “Holy shit!”?
L: Right.
G: Jim’s not a man of many words. He wouldn’t say a big soliloquy about it.
Q: No, Jim’s got a clearance. Jim’s worked…
L: No, he never did get his clearance.
Q: Ah…
L: But he was working on it.
G: Because he knew Bob Lazar?
L: Yeah.
Q: Okay.
G: But that was a thrilling night. That was the best night we ever got!
Q: So the disc left?
G: The disc went back down the mountain range… did a few more moves… sat there right above the mountain where it came up … and then very slowly just went right back down. The show’s over.
Q: 5 minutes, roughly… 3 minutes?
G: I don’t know. I was thrilled and I wasn’t. It was the longest one I saw. It was minutes — it wasn’t just a few seconds.
Q: You drove back. What did anybody say in the car when you drove back? Was it quiet? Was it noisy?
G: It was noisy. Although, it’s a drive from Hell on the way home when it’s dark, so it gets quiet because everybody’s falling asleep. But I was thrilled. I think Jim and I were. We were in the front seat. We had music on. I don’t even know what Tracy and Bob.
Q: Bob, did anybody tell you that you should tell more people that night?
L: I don’t remember. I actually remember very little about that night. Other than just the major events.
G: Now listen, he’s not kicked out of the program yet. So everybody who knows him knows how ludicrous it would be. In other words, you were thankful that Bob let you in. You would never go. Why don’t we bring all of us inside. You were thrilled to be — honored — to be in that group. And nobody would have suggested that because his life and security clearance and everything else were really on the line.
Q: So you drove back. That was the…
L: That was the 29th .
Q: What happens in the next few days before the next test flight. Anything?
G: Well, Kris comes to town. That’s one thing.
April 4, 1989
L: [Kris comes to town on the 4th]. Oh here it is…
April 5, 1989
L: [Bad day at Groom] is what’s written on the 5th. So that’s the day we got caught. And here it is…
April 6, 1989
L: [Debriefing on the 6th]
Q: That’s Indian Springs. Let’s take a look at that day at Groom.
[VIDEO TAPE OF THE 3rd VISIT TO GROOM LAKE BEGINS TO RUN IN THE B.G. A BIT HARD AT TIMES TO DISTINGUISH INTERVIEW FROM THAT B.G. DIALOGUE.]
Q: So who’s in the car now?
L: This is Kris driving. There’s John Lear. No, you didn’t want John to come.
G: We never wanted John to come. He was too big an asshole. He acts like he’s in charge. How this happened was… You know the tests ran on a regular basis. Lear called and wanted to go up to Groom. And Bob goes, “Nah, I don’t think we’re going to go tonight” and blows him off. And Lear says, “Well, I’m going out there anyway.” So Bob calls me and says…
L: Didn’t he just show up in front of the house?
G: He might have called you from his cellphone. I remember that you did call me and I go, “Well, I don’t know.” Lear and I never got along terribly well. So Lear shows up within 20 minutes.
[GENE AND BOB SPEAKING SIMULTANEOUSLY]
L: There’s everyone there. That’s Tracy there.
G: There’s a car rented. And Lear doesn’t even think for a second that he wasn’t invited. He thinks that in 20 minutes we ran out, rented a car, and got ready to go to Groom Lake.
L: Tracy’s standing on the center line saying, “Here comes a car.” We’re trying to decide on the best vantage point.
Q: It’s a paved highway.
L: Yeah, this is the highway. We haven’t taken the road down there yet.
Q: What does his hat say?
L: Special Forces or something.
G: That’s John Lear with a regular 35-mm camera. He’s going to take a picture of a light in the sky 15 miles away.
Q: Let me ask Gene about that. We actually talked about that quite at length. Gene, tell me from your perspective what happened that night? About when you were caught.
G: Actually what happened was we were up there — you saw us there — we were looking over the valley. Now what that didn’t show was there all kinds of 4-wheel drive vehicles sweeping the road.
Q: Sweeping the dirt road?
G: These are dirt roads that ranchers can use to go in and get their cattle because this is open range. But all the security vehicles were sweeping these roads to make sure no one was on them.
Q: Now, you knew they were security vehicles?
L: Right. We were waiting for them to disappear.
G: That’s what we could see through those binoculars, although it wasn’t on any of the video. We could see what kind of vehicles they were. Besides, the ranchers drive old trucks with big trailers on them.
Q: So you were waiting for them to leave?
G: Get down in the area. And then once it started getting dark with no lights on, we snuck… No, did you get out of the car first?
L: No. That was the story. That was the story we had talked about on the phone. If anyone asks, I got out at the… That was the “stop sign” story.
G: We go down the road. We’re going further-and-further. And we’re deciding, well, should we stop here? No. Let’s go in further… No lights on or anything. And eventually — I don’t know why — Kris hit the brakes…
L: No, we stopped by slamming into park. But we forgot that when we opened the door the dome light goes on.
G: That’s right, that’s right. Yeah, because we were going to try to sneak out and she hit the brakes on the way out. But anyway, the dome light comes on, and I guess it’s dark now.
L: Yeah, because when the dome light came on…
G: The dome light comes on. Then Blazers and Broncos start coming out from the security base out there all over the roads. And you can see dust kicking up in the air and all these vehicles running all over the place. And this is when you got out, isn’t it?
L: We actually drove up the road a bit and saw that they were already up in front of us.
G: Right. Because they had gone up the other road and gone to the highway. They’re coming on the highway, and there’s no way we can beat them to the highway. So we were going up the road, and we were going to try and sneak out. But Tracy had to hit the brakes a few times. And then once — now they’ve got headlights on — he gets out and takes the gun in case of rattlesnakes because he can’t get caught with us. We go further up the road… Oh, that’s it… Now, he’s out… He’s going over and hiding in the desert.
We look up the road and the security vehicles behind us stop. So we stop because they aren’t going to chase us. We aren’t going to leave. And so then they start up again, and we start up again. And then we stop because they’ve got us in both directions. Interesting — the 2 guys that came in the vehicle down from the road were 2 Indians. Indian-looking guys. I mean, thin, 30/35-years old, and they were Indians. Which I found really strange because that’s not Indian reservation.
L: I never saw that.
Q: But they were in uniforms?
G: No, no. They were in plainclothes and they were in a Blazer. I remember it was a Chevy and they were in a Blazer and they were Indians. And the only reason I thought they were in it was because the guys who came up behind us were in uniforms. The Indian guys pulled over and the main head guy — who was very big, muscular guy and bald headed — went over and they spoke. We were just up the way, but I couldn’t hear what they said or anything. But they knew each other. They were involved in coming around the highway… I don’t know… I don’t know… And then there were 2 vehicles behind us.
Then the head guy — bald headed — they had automatic weapons, but they saw that we weren’t any threat and they put the automatic weapons back in their vehicles — and the bald headed, big, muscular guy — the head security guy — and then another guy who was even bigger, like they could have beat the shit out of us… they weren’t worried about having to use weapons on us… — and he said, “What are you doing out here?” Now “genius” Lear says, “What did we do, break up a drug bust or something?” I don’t know where that came from. But these guys have machine guns… we’re out here… And so anyway… Oh, when we stopped… we stopped and set up the telescope again real fast… and we said, “We’re just watching the stars.” So the head guy radioed back and said, “They say they’re out here watching the stars.” We didn’t hear what the response was, but I’m sure they said, “get ’em out of there!” And so he hands us this sheet and says…
L: Oh, really? This is the first I heard of that!
G: Yeah, he hands us this sheet and says…
Q: What sheet?
G: It’s a handout that they give showing the Nevada revised statutes regarding that military installation and if you enter the military installation, or you are out there with any… binoculars… video equipment…
L: It’s a crime actually to sketch the mountain range.
G: So, legally even if you take a picture of the outside of the mountain, they can charge you a thousand dollar fine and put you in jail for a year. So he hands us a sheet of paper saying that and says, “Well, whether you know it or not, there’s a military installation on the other side of the mountain range. We want you to get back up on the highway if you’re just watching stars. We don’t know why you’re in the middle of Nevada watching stars anyway because the stars can be seen from a lot of places.”
So Lear says something. I was quiet because I didn’t want… Lear says, “Well, this is {UNCLEAR from tape} [SS: public?] land or something. And they said, “Yeah, we can’t force you to get off here. But we’d prefer that you get back up on the highway.” So they got back in their vehicles and just sat there, waiting for us. Eventually, we went back up toward the highway. He had moved up in the dark and was going up that way and so we weren’t on the highway, we were up by the highway and Bob came walking back over, put the gun in the trunk, and we told him what had happened.
L: Wait, you’re leaving out a good part of the story about me and you joking around…
G: Right. That’s what I’m getting to now. And then we started joking about what if we had guys surrounding the guards. Is that what you’re talking about?
L: Yeah.
Q: How did that happen?
L: Well, we didn’t know they were right there.
G: Right. And we had pulled up by the highway. It’s dark now. We don’t know they’re there, and we start goofing around saying, “Wouldn’t they have been surprised if when they pulled up and started out, we had people with guns surrounding them” and blah, blah, blah. We’re standing there talking and … I don’t remember exactly. I know me and Tracy… did you see the green light drop also?
L: Yeah.
G: Okay. Me and Bob and Tracy are standing there talking when we see a green light back down the road go like <that>. I guess that’s kind of what those green scopes [SS: nightvision?] Well, apparently they had been watching us through that and dropped it. We all saw the green light drop and realized these guys were there. So they must have seen Bob come walking back over to the car. Then we left and went back up on the highway and made a left… went towards Alie-Inn because we were going to still stay out there. And…
Q: The Alie-Inn was further down the road?
G: Right.
L: At that time it was the Rachel Bar and Grill.
Q: It was further away.
G: From Las Vegas, right. And we went down there and sat awhile and…
L: What? I don’t remember any of that. I thought we …
G: No, we went down there in the car… not too far… and we sat on the highway for a few minutes and decided we weren’t going to see anything, whipped a U, and headed back toward Las Vegas. And as soon as we did, that’s when {UNCLEAR from tape} pulled us over.
L: Okay, I thought he was there when we got up to the road.
G: It’s not like we were trying to memorize the situation. So then the cop pulled us over. Kris is driving. He gets out and tells us he’s not in a very good mood. And he tells us he’s got a problem. The problem is that when the security pulled this vehicle over, there were 4 people in it. Now he pulls us over and there are 5. Can anybody explain that to him? “You got any weapons in this car?” No. Remember the guards probably saw him put that gun in the trunk. “Got any weapons in this car?” Bob says no. So then Kris is the one who rented this car, and he starts asking her, “Will you give me permission to search this vehicle? And we couldn’t even look at her and give her a signal or anything. But she was very strong and obstinate, and she just said “No” — she would not let them.
L: Well, she was going to legal school at the time and was really up on it.
G: She wouldn’t let him search the car. So he wanted IDs from all of us. And it was Lear, wasn’t it?
L: Oh, yeah.
G: So he frisks us because I had a little bit of bronchial asthma. I didn’t hear him. So he frisked us and asked for ID from everybody. I didn’t have any ID because I wasn’t driving. So I gave him my social security number and stuff. And Lear — instead of saying, “I didn’t bring my ID” just like I did before him — says “My ID is in the trunk.” So he gets the keys and opens up the trunk. There’s a movie camera and a telescope and binoculars, a Gieger counter, everything you’re not suppose to have is there in the trunk. And the Sheriff is looking at this.
Then Lear gives him his ID. So he goes back to the cop car and we know this — I guess in hindsight — but then… we didn’t know that the Sheriff was in with the security people. He radios all of our names and social security numbers. Then he comes back and says. “Look, I’ve detained you 55 minutes now. I can only detain you 1 hour without taking you in according to law. So I’m going to let you go. But you’re out here outside this military installation with all this stuff inside your trunk playing hide-and-go-seek with the guards and stuff and saying you’re not up to anything. I suggest you get out of here and don’t let me catch you around here anymore.” So that was it, and we can only…
L: Well, don’t forget. You did leave out a couple points. One — that had nothing to do with anything — was right before he said “I’ve detained you for so long and I’m going to let you go”. I was trying to interrupt him talking to that other cop to tell him we did have a gun in the car.
G: Oh, that’s right. You were going to confess. Yeah, ’cause we were getting scared. We did have a gun in the car.
L: Well, they were going to tow the car. And the tow truck came out…
G: Right. And so Bob was going to confess. But he let us go. And so after we got in the car and talked about what a big dickhead the Sheriff was … You know, typical talk about the Sheriff. I remember on the way home that Bob wouldn’t back me up. I remember Kris, his sister-in-law.
Now it seems obvious that we must have been let go because Bob was with us. And they didn’t know what Bob told us or anything because there’s no reason they should have let some people who were out there on a Wednesday night with all this illegal equipment, taking movies. Just let us go and not taken our car and searched it. And so I was in an argument with Kris be cause she thought that Bob being with us had nothing to do with it. We were just lucky and they let us go. And I said, “You mean you think we were out there with all this stuff and we were just let go.?” So that’s all I remember on the way home because Bob wouldn’t take my side in the argument. So anyway, then I remember silence. Everybody was beat.
Q: Next day… [Indian Springs].
April 6, 1989
L: Indian Springs.
Q: We went down to EG&G and picked up Dennis.
L: Right. And then we drove to Indian Springs in my car.
Q: When you drove into Indian Springs, did you comment that “I thought this base was closed up”? It’s all boarded up, right?
L: I really had never been up to Indian Springs before that. It’s not boarded up. It’s there, but just deserted.
G: It’s just a little, rural base. The Thunderbirds [i.e., Air Force performing jets] land out there once in awhile, don’t they? It’s just a little base designed to watch the perimeter of the bombing range.
L: But it’s a big area…
G: But it’s nothing.
L: It’s not like multitudes of buildings or anything.
G: Right. You go by it on the highway. It’s not even that far to drive out and look at it if you’d like to see it.
Q: But the gate actually has a guard there?
L: Yeah. And it says “Auxiliary Air Force Base” or something.
G: And isn’t their water tank painted with red-and-white checkers?
Q: When you went onto the base, did the guards stop you and ask for someone’s ID? Or did you just go right through the gate?
L: No, he stopped us. Dennis said something. The guy checked a list and we went in. So that was all the preliminary stuff. Dennis knew right where to go. He told me to go up to this building. We walked inside, and it was a small office with… I don’t know how many guys were there… I know eventually the guards came down. But I think it was me and Dennis riding up in the car. The guy that was there and someone else.
Q: People you’d never seen before?
L: Right. People I’d never seen before.
Q: Ever saw them again?
L: No. Definitely never saw them again. I might have seen them before. I don’t think so.
Q: Came back from Indian Springs. Did you say anything to Gene when you came back?
L: I know I told him about what had happened.
G: Yeah, the next day — not that night. You went out there. I didn’t know anything about that until the next day.
Q: What did Bob say?
G: How happy they were that when he was driving out with Dennis. That he asked him what we were going out there for. Then Dennis turned to him and said, “You know, Bob, you weren’t supposed to bring all your friends out there to watch the discs fly.” And that was kind of it. He said it was a solemn drive.
L: It was just quiet.
G: And he said that they put guns to his head and debriefed him. The one guy had a blue windbreaker on that said “FBI” on the back, right?
L: No, I don’t remember that.
G: I’m pretty sure that’s what you said because that was the first… Because you said you didn’t even know if he was “FBI”, but that he had a blue windbreaker on that said that. They put guns to his head, hollered at him, screamed at him. And that’s the night when they showed you the transcript of Tracy and her boyfriend talking on the phone.
L: Right.
Q: Now when you say “that’s the night”, you were up there during the night also?
L: Whatever… it was late… it was a late… we left late and I got back. It was dark, so…
G: When you left EG&G, it was already like 4:00 or something. And so you thought you were flying out. You and Dennis had to go on a 60-or-75 mile drive. It was Winter, so it was dark the whole time, right?
Q: When you saw the transcripts, that was a complete surprise to you? Or was it?
L: Yeah.
Q: Bob say anything about the transcripts that he saw?
L: I must have if I told you about everything else.
G: Yeah, right. He… well, you already knew about Tracy, right? You did before you went.
L: No, that was the first I heard.
G: Oh, that’s it! See, I don’t want to {UNCLEAR from tape} here. As I remember — now just correct me if I’m wrong … I could be wrong — but I thought the reason they decided to show them to you and tell you that was because Tracy called her mom in Minnesota and told her mom she had an affair.
L: No, that’s when I came back and told Tracy they told me. And so purposely made the call.
G: Oh, okay… all right.
L: I was trying to show them an end to … to show them that everyone knew what was going on and it’s over. I was trying to display an end. I even think her mom knew about it. I’m not sure about that, but she purposely made a phone call to her mom in Minnesota, telling her I told Bob about how everything happened, he knows about everything, and so on and so forth. I don’t remember how that ended or…
G: And you had her do that to what? Show them there wasn’t any emotional instability, or what?
L: Beats the hell out of me. I remember doing that. But I can’t…
G: I remember talking to him about this subject be cause he was {UNCLEAR from tape} mad right now. So I wasn’t going… Well, what did he say? And what did she say? I mean, he wasn’t in the mood for that.
L: See now the story doesn’t fit together right. Something… I’m getting something wrong. I remember that I made Tracy make that phone call to tell her Mom because I knew they were listening. And for some reason, I was… okay, well go ahead.
G: I don’t know. That was your and Tracy’s personal life. The way I remembered — and it could be wrong — you were the one that was there. Again, I wasn’t jumping in to their personal business because this was a touchy situation at this point and time. I didn’t know. All I knew was Tracy — maybe at your request — called her mom and told her that she had had an affair and that she told you. I thought after that is when you went to Indian Springs because now the guys who were listening on your phone knew that you knew because they had had transcripts of her and her boyfriend for a long time. And they weren’t going to break the news to Bob. I thought once they heard her confess to her mom that you knew, know they knew you knew, and stuck it in your eye and said, “Ha, ha! We’ve known, and this is why we’re yanking your clearance!”
L: Why wouldn’t I remember this? This is a significant point.
G: Well, what else makes sense though.
L: Well, it’s easy to find out, because…
Q: Let me ask you: one of the salient points here is at Indian Springs was it definitive that you were not going to get your clearance?
L: No, I still wasn’t sure.
Q: Good.
L: No, I actually thought that I was still coming back because they really never did do anything. And in fact, later on down the road, they asked me to come back. I refused then, but no one said, “That’s it. We want nothing to do with you anymore” or anything along those lines. At one point, they said “… emotional instability” and something about “6 months”. Do you remember anything about that — reapply in 6 months?
G: Yeah. But they said they were going to yank your clearance because you were a sure candidate for emotional instability. You can reapply in 6-to-9 months. Now, I was under the impression that all this shit went down the same night as Indian Springs. But I could be wrong.
L: No, that’s why I’m questioning. Was that on Indian Springs night?
G: I thought on Indian Springs night because you never went back again. They called you back. But you thought it was because they wanted to put you in jail or kill you — not because of work — and that’s why you refused to go back…
L: Right.
G: So if you refused to go back, that means you never talked to these people ever again other than Dennis on the phone. Or that means it had to have happened that night.
L: See, they had to have told me first because here’s the debriefing on the 6th … on the…
April 10, 1989
L: is [life equals zero].
G: That’s when you knew Tracy had an affair.
L: Right. So that is the way.
G: So they were the ones that told you about Tracy’s affair?
(START OF TAPE SEVEN — SIDE A)
(PHONE RINGS)
Q: Bob, help me with this. Why is “life equals zero”?
L: I think that’s because when Tracy told me about everything about the affair.
Q: But you saw the transcripts on the 6th,. so you knew about it?
L: Right.
G: See, Bob’s a very “live and let live” guy. So Bob… Now keep in mind, he’s been involved in the most important scientific program in the World. He’s been busy. He’s been neglecting Tracy. He doesn’t even tell her what he’s doing and stuff like this. So Bob was willing to try and work it out. See a counselor, forgive and forget. I think by the time it was “life equals zero”, you just thought she had had a sexual fling. She told you she actually had some feelings for Chris. And that’s when you said that’s what hurt you. You didn’t care that she had sex on the side.
L: Right…
G: You bottomed out when you found out.
(PHONE RINGS)
G: See, I don’t like talking about this in front of Bob.
L: I don’t like hearing about it either.
(MACHINE TURNED OFF AND BACK ON)
Q: Okay, [Life equals zero] April 10th. Where do we go from there? This is great, by the way, we’re…
L: You know, I even had a feeling that what I read was not true.
Q: On the 6th …
L: But the hell with that! It doesn’t matter because after the 10th, nothing really mattered.
Q: Did you show her this when you came home? Did you show her the transcript?
L: I… it’s a blur. I really don’t remember.
G: You didn’t get the transcript, did you?
L: No, they didn’t give me it. They never gave me any transcripts.
April 12, 1989
L: Oh, [counselor]… Dr. John… 2 days after.
Q: Who made the call to Dr. John?
L: Tracy. And then a trip to Los Alamos. See, I’m in a bad mood already.
G: I didn’t want to…
Q: Bob, this is important.
L: Yeah, I know.
G: It’s like “here’s the worst day of your life, now what happened?”
L: Exactly what happened next? Okay, here’s his last name — LaClose.
G: Did you tell him what happened with Dr. John?
L: Yes, that he fired us.
Q: Can you walk through how you phrased that to him?
L: Ahh…
Q: I mean, how did it come up in the conversation?
L: Well, ’cause he’s trying to lay out… Well, “What’s all the stress you guys keep talking about?” And I said, “Well, we have a lot of external stress and other things influencing our life.” He said, “Well, I can’t iron things out.” Now this is over several visits. He said, “I really can’t iron things out. Why don’t we lay everything out on the table?”
And then Tracy and I now are playing off of each other and we’re laughing… saying… we keep beating around the bush and we finally say “okay, this is it.” And we lay everything out. I remember him sitting there with a pencil in his mouth. And he keeps taking it out and tapping it. Then he goes over a recap of what we’ve just told him and it sounds.
Q: Step through the recap.
L: He said — and it sounds just as ridiculous to us — “So, you were working on alien flying saucers for the Government.”
G: It sounds funny now, too.
L: And I can’t remember how it was stated… “And now that you’re not working there, they might be after you to kill you or your wife because you went and showed your friends. And your phone is tapped. Everything you do is being monitored…” so on and so forth. And at the end,we said, “Yeah, that’s about it.” And he just told us, “Llook, I don’t think I’m going to be able to see you guys anymore.” So… that’s it, and we left and…
G: They got fired.
L: Right. And then we had a great laugh coming back. That was if anything that actually did help, because we talked about that for days. Okay, that was here. So we went the first time to the counselor… everything happened on the 10th. The 12th we went to the counselor. Then we went again on the 18th. And the 25th is when we got fired.
Q: What’s the next date, Bob?
L: Well… Tracy and I are still living together… and still working together… so she goes to Los Alamos and I’m here… huh? Well… Dr. John at 6 pm…. maybe that was the last day.
June 1, 19889
L: So that, I guess, is the last day. But this is a surprising entry on June 1st. It says [told Trac secret]. What secret could that possibly be? Obviously, she knew about all the flying saucer stuff. What was left that I could probably… is it something that’s going to depress me?
G: Nothing I’m going to tell you. I don’t know what that would be. But didn’t you go on TV in “silhouette” in May. Didn’t they start chasing you?
L: Oh, oh, oh… Maybe that’s it. Yeah, ’cause we were caught.
G: April 5th … debriefed April 6th.And I think you were on TV in May in silhouette. That was when you were trying to get them to leave you alone so you came forward.
Q: What happened in that period — as best you recall — when Bob was felt like he was in danger? Did you feel like you were in danger also?
G: Yeah. I was a little paranoid because once he told me about the transcript of Tracy on the phone, I knew for sure his phone was tapped. And by that time, we had relaxed somewhat and talked about stuff on the phone where if someone really was listening, they knew I knew. And they knew Jim knew. And they even would know I had called other people and told them.
But I always felt they were after him. I mean, I was paranoid, although some of it was being paranoid for him more so than me. Although I always thought… actually I remember me and you and Tracy talking about staying quiet about it. Certainly more for him. I’m just saying that I can remember the three of us talking about… that even Tracy and I felt that like we were carrying a weight because now we knew. He had taken us out, shown us the disc, and we believed him. We knew there had been life here from another source and the rest of the entire World, including people older than us… younger than us… Everybody didn’t know, and it was almost like a burden.
I don’t know if he can relate to that or not. But it was. I don’t know how to describe it. But it was like carrying a heavy weight because then I was really — and even Tracy –started to read everything we could. We had viewed all those tapes from Lear. And I was reading stuff. The library had a good selection of stuff here — books written in the decade prior to that. I tried to see if anybody knew anything that paralleled what Bob had seen. So we really became students of “Ufology” (as they call it) to see if anybody knew anything.
And paranoid. I remember one time when the strange things started happening. I remember he went to work out at the gym with Shelley and Mario. He came out and his car had been broken into to. And the one time the doors… He had his Uzi [submachine gun] and his wallet in there. And the doors were standing open. He came back to the car, and no one had stolen the Uzi or the wallet, which means whoever broke in and opened the doors left them open to say “Ha, ha! We were here!”
Then with Mario, a similar thing happened, didn’t it? Didn’t you go work out with Mario?
L: Right. Yu kind of have the story weird. That happened with Mario twice and with Shelley. I went to work out with her, and her car was in the driveway. When we came back to the house, her car was open. All the seats were back. Everything was gone through, but nothing was taken.
G: And then another time… Now we were paranoid, so he had his Uzi and he loaned me a .44 Magnum because I didn’t even own a handgun. I’m not a hunter or killer or anything like that. (I own a gun now.) So I borrowed his .44 Magnum. He was being followed by unknown cars. It wasn’t general paranoia because he doesn’t do drugs or anything against the Law generally speaking, you know. I remember one day I was in my office. I’ve got the .44 Magnum in there and he comes walking in.
L: Oh, yeah…
G: And ah… he goes. “Give me the gun.” I picked it up and I gave it to him. He doesn’t say anything, just walks back out. And then he goes chasing somebody. Somebody had been following him down Charleston towards my office. And he stopped at my office and got a gun and then wanted to go chase the car that had been following him. But I guess they lost you or something. Now he didn’t know if this was the Government or who it was. But somebody was following him.
Q: This was roughly what time period? Roughly.
G: Must have been in April, huh?
Q: And this is before you went on TV?
L: This is after April 7th.
G: It was before you went on TV though?
L: Yeah.
Q: And before the time that someone took a shot at you?
L: Right. Right.
June 20, 1989
L: And just to update us, right here it says [Dr. John drops us] on the 20thth of June. So, I guess there were a lot more visits than I had imagined to him. But that’s when that event actually does happen.
G: Also, even though it’s not any place on the Calendar, before Tracy moved out, he got his paycheck. Now remember he was on call, and so he might work one week — you know, 5 working days — over the course of a month or a month-and-a-half, depending what timeframe he was in. He got his paycheck. And he was going to skim the paycheck and not tell Tracy, because he had some electronic equipment he wanted to buy.
So he got his paycheck and he showed me. It was like 950-or-975, because I presumed a “senior staff physicist” would make more than that. Wouldn’t you? You know, you’ve got to go to school a long time, do a lot of things. And this guy isn’t even making a grand a week as a senior staff physicist. I remember being curious about that. And so that is when he received his paycheck and it was in one of those envelopes like … Remember now, this wasn’t critical because nobody knew he was going to get kicked out of the program. He thought there’d be many more paychecks. So it’s not like I said, “Please, let me see the envelope and memorize it.” But if I remember right, wasn’t it like one of those brown Department of Treasury type envelopes?
L: It was a big check, I remember that. I don’t remember what the…
G: [UNCLEAR from tape}… the golf tournament…
L: Yeah.
G: But he did get a paycheck during that time. I mean, I didn’t really look at it. All I remember is musing about the amount because I thought he’d be making more money.
Q: What did you think when he was shot at?
G: I thought it was big trouble, naturally. He had left my office and in the mean time, I had left my office. I got home, and there was this message on my answering machine in this real neurotic, nervous, scared voice.
Q: He was on his way over to John Lear’s?
G: I don’t know. Why would you be going to John Lear’s?
L: To do the interview with George. To do the satellite link-up with George.
G: Yeah, but I met you up. We went over to Lear’s together because, well, Tracy was at Lear’s. Me and Tracy sat outside the van.
L: Oh really?
G: We just used Lear’s parking lot. Was Lear even there?
L: This is such a blur to me.
G: Lear’s got like a commercial parking lot in front of his house. I recall Marilee (sp?) being there. I don’t recall John being there. Because here’s the thing. Tracy — as you saw — is a very attractive young woman. And she was trying to get into some modeling. She’s too short, too much of a Munchkin to be a classic model. But certainly a great looking face. And Marilee Lear, she’s a casting agent for bit parts is what she does now — for Lear Casting for movies that are shot here in Nevada then,. Or she probably still does. She helped people get into modeling. She was like an agent, wasn’t she?
L: Right…
G: So she… Tracy was using Marilee to try and get some photographic modeling jobs for face shots and stuff like that. I don’t even recall John being there. But I do remember Jan Jones was there, who’s now the mayor of Las Vegas. Jan Jones was there because…
L: She was going to buy their horse.
G: She was into horses, and Marilee was showing Jan Jones a horse. Frank was the cameraman in that van. I don’t even recall John being there. And Frank and you were in the van. And Tracy and I stood outside of the van while you did the “silhouette” thing.
L: That’s right.
G: So somehow — however that went down — you and Tracy and I ended up back here together and went to Lear’s parking lot together. Because it had to be a remote place, you know.
Q: Take me back a day-or-two before that. To the shooting incident.
G: I mean, I don’t recall much about it other than he was getting on the highway.
Q: Was it the same day as…
June 21, 1989
L: I believe that was on June 21.
G: It wasn’t the same day, was it? Did you get shot and interviewed the same day?
Q: You went to the hotel after you were shot?
L: Yeah, I think. Didn’t I? Didn’t that happen the same day?
G: I don’t remember.
L: It was only 4 years ago.
G: 5 years ago now.
Q: There was a message on your machine…
G: … with him saying that they had shot his tire out. Then you did disappear for a while. Did you go to a hotel then, is that what happened?
L: Yeah.
G: Well, then I don’t think you went on TV the same day your tire was shot out because somehow you and Tracy and I got together and went to Lear’s parking lot.
L: Where was I going then?
G: When… What do you mean “when”?
L: When I got shot.
G: You were probably coming from my office and heading back on…
L: I know, but that is not the normal trip back. There was something specific that was happening just that day.
G: Right, because you got on going North.
L: Right.
G: But that wouldn’t have been to Lear’s house. From my office to Lear’s house, you would have gone eEast.
L: That’s right.
G: And you had to meet up with me and Tracy somewhere. So I don’t know where you were going. You’re right, you wouldn’t normally get on 15 North because you’d be begging for a traffic jam.
L: Unless I was going to meet you guys back here?
G: That might have been it.
L: ‘Cause that’s the way I would’ve gone.
G: Because the tire was shattered… There were no slugs or anything. I mean later, right about that time was when we learned about {UNCLEAR from tape} safety slugs. Remember?
L: Right.
G: But again, I remember as a third party. But things were still a little weird with him and Tracy. Because even now, I know she had an affair. They’re going to a counselor, and so I wasn’t trying to dig into their personal lives. I was just trying to be a friend on the light side of things. I was also trying to learn and have Bob tell me more UFO stuff.
Q: But he was shot at!
G: Right.
Q: Did you tell him to go to the police?
G: No, I didn’t.
L: I don’t think anyone did. I think the only person that did was…
G: Because if there wasn’t a slug in the tire or anything, you could never convince the cops. That’s not a normal thing. You could never convince the cops you didn’t have a blowout. Then what are you going to tell them? Well, “would anyone have an occasion to shoot at you?” “Yeah.” “Who?” “Well, you see, I worked on flying saucers and secret agents are chasing me.” So it was literally that more than…
Q: So, shortly after that you went on TV.
L: Yeah, whatever date that was.
G: Now, backing up a bit, did you tell him about the time you and Dennis went to the police station?
Q: Nope, haven’t heard about that.
L: No.
Q: Timeframe for that incident is…?
L: Oh, boy…
G: Well, you said the police. I presume you’re wondering could there be a record of any of this stuff. And he did go to the police station with Dennis Mariani (sp?) one time.
L: That’s when I was still going there. So we’re talking a timeframe… this is back right after the Russians left.
G: That’s not on there be cause when I did the whole thing on the calendars, once I wrote out every UFO-related event or peculiar looking notes that would mean nothing to anyone but Bob. And I don’t think you ever did mark that down.
L: Oh… what’s here [called about guns]? Called about guns. It is on here.
G: Holy cow.
L: January 23rd
G: All right.
L: And go to work is the next day.
Q: And what happened on the 23rd of January?
L: Well, supposedly what I was told was after the incident with the Russians — when we made some sort of discovery and kicked them out of the program — they weren’t very happy about it. Now, this is all just what I was being told.
Q: By Dennis?
L: Right. And I was told shortly after that — probably on that day — that one of the 22 that worked on the project up there was now missing. And what they were doing was issuing sidearms to all the people that were working up there. I was to get a gun. And it was… I’m trying to remember how they said it. It was just something that I could carry from the airport and home. But it could never go on the plane. It always had to stay at the EG&G building and come home with me. The following day was on the 24th is when I went to work. I think that’s when they gave me… I don’t know what they gave me… They gave me a little gun and I said, “Well, I have a gun.” Ahh… no, they gave me a gun and they said if I lost it…
G: 500 dollars deposit.
L: Right…
G: And you said this gun doesn’t cost 500 dollars?
L: Right.
G: Why would I pay 500 dollars if I lose it? This lady was arguing with you.
L: Right. And I said, “I have a gun. Can I just carry that? And forget about this thing?” So that was agreed upon. They said as long as the thing’s registered. Well, I never register anything. So I had to go down and get the gun registered and with a permit to carry.
G: Yeah, because your guns were from New Mexico when he worked at Los Alamos. He never registered them in the state of Nevada.
L: Right. So I went with Dennis to the police station and the substation down on Eastern…
G: Well, what date was that just for the records?
L: Because coincidentally we have one of the cops tracing down the paper work now.
G: January 28th? Is that when it was?
L: It’s the 24th, 25th …
G: It was the day before your birthday.
L: Right.
G: The 25th. So the guy we know who is the… He’s now an investigator for the District Attorney’s Office. I don’t know why we never saw it on the Calendar. But anyway, we couldn’t remember what date that was.. So I gave him the serial number off Bob’s .44 Magnum, and he traced back the date to see when it was registered because we wanted to see if there was any evidence that Dennis Mariani had to flip any ID at the police station. Because it’s pretty important trying to find out what you can about that guy.
So anyway, he found out that it was the South substation over on St. Louis Avenue. He went over there to dig around. But a Lieutenant caught him over there and asked him what he was doing and stuff. And he can’t… he’s 3 years in… so he doesn’t want to get caught looking at the UFO guy’s records. And, but anyway, so he’s trying to dig up what he can on Dennis Mariani. Also, when you went over there, remember Dennis went in to speak with the Desk Sergeant (or whatever) for a few minutes. Bob’s sitting out in the hall, and he tells me that the Sergeant comes out — some big, fat Sergeant — and says, “So this is the kid the Russians are after.”
L: Right. So he had told him.
G: Like somebody as important as me. He’s looking at Bob, not knowing that this kid is working on craft from another star system. Like he’s big “Mr. Policeman”. And why would the Russians want this kid and made a copy on the copy machine? Isn’t that so?
L: Right. That’s exactly right.
Q: So you had the gun…
G: Anyway, in the state of Nevada, your car’s an extension of your house. So you don’t need a permit to carry a gun in your car. So he didn’t need to get a permit to carry a gun.
L: Right. Just as long as it stayed in the car.
Q: What did Bob say about Dennis? Or did he ever talk about Dennis?
G: Well, later on, I saw Dennis.
L: Oh, in the hotel?
G: Yeah, right. But he said that he was a very…
Q: Tell me about that incident.
G: These are all such long stories…
Q: No, this is great!
G: Well, I guess this must have come after you went on in “silhouette”, didn’t it?
L: This was even after…
G: ‘Cause he already called and said…
L: I don’t know if I’m right. I think it was after George’s big expose — UFO…
G: Well, that was in November of ’89.
L: Okay, then it wasn’t. It was definitely after I was on.
G: Yeah, he was on in “silhouette”. And Dennis was trying to get hold of him. Joe was in town for the weekend from Los Alamos, and Dennis was trying to set up this meeting with Bob and Joe and I are here. So we think Dennis is going to be coming over here. We’re setting up all this stuff to bug the place. Remember? So Joe and I can sit outside …
L: Right outside in your cars.
G: … and try and hear what is going on. So Dennis calls and we’re here. Bob’s talking, and he can hear all kinds of reverberation and everything and says, “Look, Dennis. This phone sounds funny. What’s going on here?” Dennis wants to meet on a personal level. He just wants to talk to him — not in any official capacity. Dennis says, “How about the Sahara Hotel?” Bob says ‘no’ because he was going to say no to whatever place Dennis said. And however they did it, they settled on the Union Plaza…
L: I said how about something on my side of town.
G: They settled on the Union Plaza downtown. We took that old Toyota I had. Me and Joe and Bob. We had this plan. Bob went in before us. Then Joe and I come walking in about a minute later. And Joe and I sit down and order something to drink and start playing the slot machines. Which we never do.
But we’re going through slot machines, looking conspicuous. We don’t know where Bob is. And he comes walking back to the casino area and goes, “I don’t see Dennis anywhere.” And I go, “Well, why don’t you page him on the phone?” He goes over and pages Dennis on the phone next to the bar. Dennis never answered. You can hear the operator page Dennis Mariani — no answer. Bob comes back. So then Bob leaves again. This place is packed, so we don’t see Bob. Joe and I are sitting together. Well, Bob comes back next time with this strange look on his face and says, “I just saw Dennis. And he walked right past me and didn’t acknowledge that it was me. I know he saw me, and he wouldn’t say anything.” So he said, “Hey, Dennis!” or something like that, didn’t you? Dennis walks past like he didn’t know him. And Bob also said that he thought he saw another security guy.
L: Before I saw Dennis.
G: Oh, okay. He saw another guy in there before. So then Bob comes back over and doesn’t know what’s going on. Joe stays there to guard that exit and Bob takes me to the casino, because now Dennis has gone and sat at a blackjack table. So we go stealthily in behind the silver slot machine and he shows me Dennis. There’s Dennis, just like he’d always described hi — medium build, military trim haircut, neatly trimmed blond mustache, blond hair in shape. But something’s weird because then Dennis … he’s smoking a cigar. Also, Dennis had 2 gorgeous babes on either side of him playing blackjack. Wasn’t this like on a weekend night? A Friday or Saturday?
L: Yeah.
G: And so the place is packed. Everybody’s drinking. Dennis, playing blackjack, looking at his cards. He’s not even looking at the gorgeous babes flagging him. He’s not even looking at the dealer. I mean this guy is exhibiting unusual behavior for a guy playing blackjack. Like he’s paranoid about something. So I stay there and Bob… Isn’t this when you walked up to him at the blackjack table?
L: Right.
G: And says, “Dennis, what the fuck is this? What’s going on? You wanted to meet out here. Now, let’s talk.” Dennis again doesn’t acknowledge his existence, and he comes walking back over. Bob walks around the blackjack table, down this other bar, just on the other side, and I’m watching Dennis from behind. Now Dennis is facing like I am… Bob walking there… and I’m back over there behind Dennis.
And now Dennis — after not looking up, not looking at the dealer, not looking at the beautiful women flagging him — now, the only thing Dennis has looked at is he follows Bob as Bob walks down. And I see that, which shows me that Dennis knows who Bob is. And then Bob walks all the way back around and comes behind the slot machines. We’re hiding and we’re formulating a plan. We look back out, and now Dennis is gone.
L: It was truly like a “Twlight Zone” episode.
G: He dematerialized. And we looked towards all the exits and the johns. We hurry and run, trying to go toward any exits because the plan was… Let’s at least get this guy’s license plate. You know, what I mean, let’s follow him to the parking lot and find out the plate on the car he’s driving. We couldn’t find him anywhere in the casino. He wasn’t by any exits. Finally we just walked back to where Joe was and told him what happened and we just left. And I guess you never heard from him again?
L: No, that was it. It was almost like something big was going to happen. And it all diffused in front of our eyes.
G: He saw the guy from S4. There is the possibility that Dennis was trying to meet him on a personal level — to go, “Hey, man! This is what’s going to happen…” But see, Dennis would have to have known that his phone was tapped. I just don’t know how that story exactly went. Could Dennis have not known the other S4 guy was there? And the other S4 guy was watching Dennis trying to get together with Bob? I don’t think anybody’s got the solution to that.
Q: It would make sense to me that Dennis arranged to meet so that Dennis might point Bob out to someone else.
G: Oh, I see. Oohh, that’s spooky! I never thought of that angle.
L: Well, whatever the initial intention was, that’s how everything happened.
Q: What other dates do we have that we haven’t hit yet?
L: We kind of left off at [Told Tracy the secret]. Who knows what that was.
Q: We’re in July, now?
L: No, June… June… Seems like the shooting incident took place on the 21st.
Q: 21st of June was the shooting incident?
L: That’s what it seems like. Right now.
G: But that would have been after you were on in silhouette.
L: The only reason I say that is because it says [280 Z dies]. I don’t know.
G: Yeah, but I don’t know if… ‘Cause remember you and Tracy were without vehicles. And all mine were broken, too. I borrowed Reg and Sherry’s (my friends) van, and we were using it for photo deliveries and everything. Tracy was still here because she took it on deliveries. Of course, that doesn’t confirm anything about chronological order. It’s just that George says that you were on in silhouette in May. In fact, I’ve got the tapes of that newscast. But it doesn’t say the date on it.
L: Okay. It’s certainly possible.
July 1, 1989
L: “Desert Blast” is on July 1st.
G: But it’s pretty important whether-or-not you got shot at before or after you went on in silhouette.
L: Yeah, I’m positive I got shot at before. I know I got shot at before.
G: Because this was like a warning not to do it.
L: Right. I’m positive it was before. I just don’t know the dates.
G: Oh, I thought… I don’t know…
Q: Now, you were encouraging Bob to do this? Or was John Lear?
G: To do what?
Q: To go on TV. Who was telling Bob to…
L: He did. I mean, you did, didn’t you?
G: Well, I mean at this point I wasn’t really encouraging him to do anything because I thought they might kill him. I do remember… after… You’re right. You got shot at before you went on.
L: I know it.
G: You did because that was a determining factor. You know what I mean. That’s when you said, “Hey, fuck it!” ‘Cause I remember when George called and asked if you’d go on. You said “yeah” and I said, “You’re shitting?” I mean, this guy was going to go on TV and I thought what a ballsy move.
Q: Now help me here with something? When George called, who did John Lear tell George Knapp…
L: John Lear, I think, was the first contact to George.
G: Yeah.
Q: So John told George “call Bob Lazar”.
L: I don’t know how he got in touch with me? I know it started out…
G: See now that Lear knew. Lear was starting to blab. The tape of when we were out there with Lear was the joy of Lear’s life at this point in time. So, yeah, Lear was trying to {UNCLEAR from tape} because Lear wanted everybody to go “Ah ah! John Lear… I said it… I showed you… I changed the World.”
So he was the conduit to George Knapp. I don’t know how it happened, but George Knapp called. And out of the blue, Bob said “yes” – that he would go on television. And I couldn’t believe it. Which was really exciting because now we knew they’re been life here from somewhere else and the hardware and everything. And this was a thrill because now Bob was going to go on the news and tell everybody. So it was thrilling.
Q: And he interrupted the evening news with this.
G: Well, it was a live… George hosted the “Live at Five”
L: It was like a satellite.
G: I just recently got the whole tape dubbed from George on VHS if you’d like to see it.
Q: Course I would!
G: Of Bob in the van… not his story on TV… I actually got him in the van before the…
Q: I think I have a copy of that. I think I do.
G: I don’t think you have a copy of this. But you’ve got a copy of that {UNCLEAR from tape} or you might have a copy of the broadcast. I mean, I got George’s tape that wasn’t ever aired — the tape taken inside the van…
Q: Oh, I’d love to see that!
L: We started shooting practice…
G: Did we?
L: Shortly thereafter, yeah.
Q: You went to a range to shoot?
L: Yeah. Everything happens at the drylake bed.
G: Because I could shoot the UZI really well and I couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn with the .44 Magnum, which was the gun I had.
Q: Now after you went public, Gene, what did you feel like? After Bob went public.
G: I was excited. I thought it was the coolest thing that ever happened. I thought that…
L: I want to see if I can find the Calendar after this.
G: I wondered where it would go from there. Now see he did it. And although all the UFO fans think Bob did them a big favor to prove the government cover-up, he really did do it for selfish reasons because he doesn’t care — sincerely does not care — about UFO nuts/people.
He did nothing for them, even though it kind of looked like that. He did it for him to kind of force their hand and also — around the time, — for safe keeping. George Knapp and Brian Franklin(?) the cameraman came here and did a video tape — which we now call the “Bob Chronicles” — which was just for safe keeping. Not for anything else, just in case they were going to get Bob because he went on in “silhouette”.
We now had a tape with Bob saying everything on camera. And this is when George Knapp’s boss gave him permission to go ahead and do the UFO special, which George ended up winning the UPI Individual Achievement Award for 1990. But George did that UFO special and Bob still — a month before the broadcast — did not give George permission to use anything of him in there because Bob did not do it to become a UFO star. He did it to protect himself. Do you remember what made you decide to go on that George UFO clip? Anyway, I remember.
L: Do you remember the fight in the editing room with George’s boss?
G: I remember George coming here and Bob going, “How’s the UFO Special going?” And George is drinking beer, because George can drink beers like shots and not get drunk. You know what I mean, there are people just like that. George goes, “Without you, I’ve got no UFO Special.” And finally Bob broke down and said, “Okay.”
I don’t know what caused him to do that because this is one where he goes, “This is Bob Lazar… ” So then George got to edit in all this Bob Lazar. How he did it was it was Sweeps Week. So the first 4 nights — and this was excellent — you saw “UFOs: The Best Evidence”, didn’t you?
Q: Umm hmm…
G: Okay. The nightly news clips were even better. They edited that into a two hour “UFOs: The Best Evidence” to be shown as a package, as a presentation. But that was just a compilation of nightly segments over the course of like 8-or-9 nights on the news. 10-or-15 minutes every night. And so the first 4 nights, he did one great job showing people basic UFOlogy. Well, through History, and you go back in the Bible and this and this and this and this… all the way up and in the 40’s and 50’s. And then quotes from generals and ex-Presidents. And here’s what the Mormon Church thinks and here’s what the Catholic Church thinks.
November 11, 1989
L: By the way, if I can insert something there… November 11th is when that special started. My segment aired on Friday the 10th.
G: Right. Okay, so that’s exactly right. And so then, he’s setting them up for the big boom and the big ratings on Thursday night. They’re going into tomorrow night, and we’re going to reveal this man and they show the clip of him in “silhouette” from May. Now they’ve got everybody in Las Vegas! They got the biggest share ever of anything ever in Las Vegas on that Friday night 5 o’clock — or 6 o’clock news show, whatever it was — and that was the night that revealed this “Bob Lazar”.
Q: What happened after that?
G: Oh, Jesus! The switchboards went absolutely crazy. The public response was unbelievable. George probably received hundreds of phone calls a day for weeks-and-weeks if not months. Because he continued the next week. They introduced Bob on Friday and then on Monday. They’ve got more of Bob… Well, here’s what happened. He was flown out there. And the blue bus… and, you know the story… And then Tuesday they had Lane Khak(?). Did you tell him anything about Lane…
L: No.
G: That was in “UFOs: The Best Evidence”. You saw him — the hypnosis regression guy?
Q: Umm hmm.
G: Well, that was Lane and they interviewed me. But anyway, it went on the next week. They used Bob Friday and then Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. They told his whole story and backed it up with other people surrounding him and stuff. And that program has been bootlegged around the World.
L: It was a great program.
Q: When was the polygraph?
L: Polygraph? I saw both of them right here.
October 10, 1989
L: The first ‘Y’ here — Friday the 13th.
Q: Was it?
L: Yeah. That’s an amazing coincidence. It says [raid] and it says [calendar gone] the next day, because I had to fill this stuff in afterwards. And that was the best fireworks show ever, for some reason.
G: By the way, they’re trying to make those hypnosis regressions with Lane. And Lane’s still here in town if you’d like to talk to him.
Q: Tell me about that?
L: Well, you can tell him. I was under hypnosis…
G: But it wasn’t like these UFO things. Bob had total consciousness and memory recall of everything.
L: I was trying to remember exactly… the exact wording…
G: He was describing gravity waves.
L: And redraw some of the schematics and other things that I had.
G: It wasn’t anything like they portrayed it. And Bob went back and they made him remember. He had total memory of everything. He wanted to get him to relax because — you can imagine — he was taken to that Briefing Room for random amounts of time to look through the most exciting information anybody with any brains could ever see and absorbed a lot of it as it ended up. He was able to remember a lot of it. But that’s what he went for. It wasn’t to remember. It’s not like he had no recall and went there and “Oh, that’s right, I worked on flying saucers”.
(LAUGHTER)
G: John Lear was on a TV program one time. And Lane said that it sounded like they used a thing called the “Orion Response” on Bob because Bob said, they were slamming fingers in his chest and shouting in his ear, threatening him, and pointing guns at his head and everything. So Lear goes on TV — it was “On the Record” with George Knapp — and goes, “Yeah, I know this scientist and it’s a strange thing. When he goes to work there, they’re able to turn him ‘on’ and make him remember everything. And then when he goes home, they turn him ‘off’ and he goes home and he can’t remember anything that happened. They used this secret government thing called the ‘Orion Response’.”
The Orion Response was actually advertised in the Yellow Pages under hypnotherapist. But this is a John Lear story. And there are a hundred thousand people who would believe that you could take a scientist to work like a robot and turn him ‘on’ and ‘off’. And this was the kind of stuff. So, Lear takes a little thing that Lane said, “Hey! It sounds like they might have used the ‘Orion Response’ on him.” which everybody in hypnotherapy knows about. Lear turns it into a super-secret government thing that only he knows about.
Q: Did anything come of the Khak business? The hypnosis?
L: Yeah, I did recall a lot more specifically… As far as… I drew exact layouts of how things were. And I got the days separated. At least back then, wherever those dates are now. And I tried to remember exact wording in the briefings.
G: And that 115 was activated.
L: Yeah. Exactly how. I wanted all the physics down without any errors, and it was a lot for me to remember. But specifically how the decay went with 115. Just some of the specifics.
G: Oh and the stuff on “externally-corrected evolution” and that stuff…
L: Yeah.
Q: What’s “externally-corrected evolution”?
G: Don’t look at me like that?
L: No, I’m just saying go ahead — you started it…
G: Well, {UNCLEAR from tape} that he read in the reports that Man was a product of externally-corrected evolution. And that Man is a species that’s been genetically altered 65 times.
L: I mentioned that to you before.
Q: Umm hmm… okay.
L: No, I laughed and gave you a look because you say “externally-corrected evolution” and it flows off your tongue like a common thing.
G: That’s true. Which started me on years of reading, by the way. I mean I’m still on that.
Q: But that was from the files?
L: Right. So basically, the only thing we got from Lane was just remembering things more specifically. Mainly the physics. And you need everything verbatim that way because as you well know, 1-or-2 characters out of place or something and everything goes down the tubes. So that did help to some degree. We took notes and…
G: When I say that he was in control under hypnosis was that Lane would get on some subject, because Tracy and I were there 1-or-2 times and then just me and then me and George and Brian. He actually wanted to televise it originally… Not televise it, but videotape it. And, so, I passed Lane a note because when Bob would be talking about things that happened — like he’d be talking about a guy out there named “Rene” –and I would pass Lane a note saying “last name”. So he would ask Bob, “Did you see a last name on a name tag?” But anyway, he’d get on some subject and Bob would say, “I’m not suppose to talk about that.” In other words, even under hypnosis, he wouldn’t let it… It was kind of weird.
L: So that’s really all that happened with Lane and then really kind of everything wound down from then. Until the brothel thing happened.
G: Yeah, UFOs backed down (?) after they saw that Lane story because no one set Lane up. Lane didn’t know what was coming. He starts to regress Bob and Bob’s talking about “discs”, and Lane thinks he’s saying “desks”. And poor Lane. We later became friends with Lane. And finally Lane realized this guy’s talking about flying discs, which was a big revelation to him because Lane was an innocent bystander. He was not briefed. He didn’t know anything. Just that Bob was going to try and remember some things. So Lane had trouble knowing what direction to go, and we’d pass him notes.
Q: Let’s talk for a minute — pure speculation — if they still might be flying them.
L: Not there.
G: D.J. — the guy we told you about who was the D.A.’s investigator who looked up the thing about the gun. There’s a computer guy back in Virginia and he had — I don’t know how he does it — but he gets on these computers and found a list of people working at national labs in technical positions and this and that. And the guy who indoctrinated him was Barry Castillo.
Q: Spell Castillo.
L: Castillio or something like that.
G: Well anyway, we have him. So this guy back east sends us a FAX saying he’s found a Bartollo Castillio because Barry and Castillio don’t really go together. So he finds a Bartollo — which sounds better together — working at Sandia Labs in New Mexico. This is present day, now. And so with the guy’s work telephone number, with the guy’s home address and telephone number. Nnow the only way to find out if that’s the Barry is to have Bob identify him.
Bbut anyway, the curious thing is that D.J. — the guy at the District Attorney’s office — runs “Bartollo Castillio” in New Mexico. And the guy does not have a driver’s license in New Mexico. Nor does he have any license plates there. And this is the guy that we got the address on that says he works at Sandia Labs. And he does that without a car or without a driver’s license in the state of New Mexico.
Q: So, he’s from out of state?
G: Well, I guess. That’s as far as it’s got. There’s no sense in going any further unless we can have Bob. Where does he live? Santa Fe?
L: Alberquerque.
G: Alberquerque, that’s right. Unless Bob can I.D. this guy. Oh, my point here is that we speculated that it’s not probable that Barry was in training Bob and he was in that deep and they go, “Ookay, your position here’s over and now we work you to go work on this stuff down in Sandia.” Considering that the whole Stealth Wing moved into New Mexico and considering that Bob told everybody that the disc program was in central Nevada… And yet this Bartollo Castillio…
L: After that — after all that stuff happened — there was a big movement of stuff to New Mexico including the Stealth planes. It seemed as though there was just a blitz.
G: It’s a possibility that the discs are in New Mexico. You said speculate. And that’s purely speculative.
L: But from what we’ve heard anyway. And Diamato — who supposedly took a flight around there — and Congressman Bilbrae(?) helped try and get my records from the FBI, you know, wrote letters back-and-forth because he didn’t accept the answers that they were giving either. So supposedly they did take a flight around there. And then there’s apparently nothing left of the area if they did take them to the right place. [StealthSkater note: I believe the Senate investigator is C. Richard D’Amato, a retired Captain in the U.S. Naval Reserve. For 10 years beginning in 1988, Mr. D’Amato was the Democratic Counsel for the Committee on Appropriations of the United States Senate. He was responsible for coordinating and managing the annual appropriations bills and other legislation on policy and funding of U.S. international operations and programs, including trade and defense and the full range of foreign activities of the U.S. Government. Mr. D’Amato has also served as Senior Foreign Policy Counsel for Senator Robert C. Byrd… => HYPERLINK “http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/tdrc/members/damato.html ” http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/tdrc/members/damato.html]
G: Now D’Amato wasn’t necessarily bright enough. I wouldn’t even believe that he was at {UNCLEAR from tape} drybed. I don’t know Bilbrae. I presume he’s an intelligent man because he’s a Congressman. But D’Amato was a babe in the woods. This guy, he might be a {UNCLEAR from tape} investigator. But he was not very bright. And I would not even believe that he knew if that was the place. So I wouldn’t take his word. But the two of them allegedly took a helicopter flight around there. They couldn’t find any evidence of a base there.
Q: When did they do that? When did they take the flight?
L: Just recently.
G: 1993.
L: Just recently. And though the roads and what not still remained, but they all just dead-ended and disappear now.
Q: And their reason for going there in the newspapers or in the press was listed as…?
G: Well, it wasn’t a high profile thing. Billbrae was on the Defense Committee — or whatever it is — in Congress. D’Amato was actually sent out because Senator Byrd, John Glenn, and some other guys were getting so much pressure from their constituents because of Bob Lazar. This story made it around the World. And the Lazar videotapes got out and got bootlegged all over the place and, you know, people started pressuring their congressmen and stuff.
So these senators don’t want to go on the record “yea or nay” about anything . And it also rubs their ego because they feel there being 100 guys in the Senate… especially the guy, you know, Sam Nunn and guys like that — need to know what’s going on. And if that “kid” (in their words) is telling the truth and this is going on — and if not through the normal chain of commands — if this stuff is going on, where are they getting the money? They want to find the money trail.
And, in addition to the disc program, all the projects of Aurora (?) — our new spy plane — they can’t find the money trail for it. The Air Force says it doesn’t exist. Yet people have heard it [in the skies]/
Q: It’s funded by the CIA. It’s always been that way.
G: People have seen it. Actually the word under the table which came from John Andrews at the Testor Corporation, his suggestion — and his suggestions are pretty good, by the way — is the way it works is they have a deal with Saudi Arabia and places like that. Tthey jack up the price of oil — and by the way, that’s why we defend Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and places like that — and they actually get a kick-back from those oil countries so they don’t have to get that from the budget. And also…
[StealthSkater note: That’s what Kissinger was said to have done to create an artificial oil shortage in the early 1970s. This led to creation of OPEC, which raised its prices. Now with additional incoming funds, the Saudis could afford to buy a lot of F15s. That increased the McDonald-Douglas production line so much that the cost-per-aircraft was reduced substantially, enabling the U.S. Air Force to buy a lot more for its own use.]
L: I’ve never heard this.
G: Oh, you’ve heard this. Then the research and development. If Lockheed, for instance, is doing R&D and they don’t have to do it for the United States, they can do R&D under the guise of doing it for Saudi Arabia as long as they notify the United States government, “We are doing this research for them.” So therefore, they can get kickback money by allowing oil prices to be raised and doing R&D under the guise of doing it for a foreign government by notifying the United States government. And therefore the United States government cannot audit their budget and can honestly say that “We don’t know anything about it.”
Q: I don’t know if that’s true or not. Bt it’s common knowledge that the U2 and the SR-71 were CIA-funded. And those funds were not subject to congressional… not audit… I’m looking for another word [SS: try “oversight”]. Congress wasn’t involved, and I would imagine that there’s the same mechanism today.
[StealthSkater note: The reader is reminded of the persistent rumors of several governments’ involvement in the world drug trade. See the “Pegasus_1” file at =>HYPERLINK “../../Stealthskater/Documents/Pegasus_1.doc”doc HYPERLINK “../../Stealthskater_PDF/Documents/Pegasus_1.pdf”pdf HYPERLINK “http://www.stealthskater.com/Documents/Pegasus_1.doc”URL-doc HYPERLINK “http://www.stealthskater.com/Documents/Pegasus_1.pdf”URL–pdf ]
So that’s great. They went out to Papoose Lake and flew around in the helicopter and didn’t see anything.
G: But that kind of activity has been going on forever.
L: Well first of all, if what was going on there when I was there was still going on… a bi-budget (?) investigator and a congressman are not going to fly over Papoose Lake bed. That’s just not going to happen. That’s absolutely impossible. So I think things were moved way before ’93 and, in fact, Jim — who worked at the Tonopah before he left — already saw… he saw himself designation areas as “S4” between the S4 that I worked at but at Tonopah and construction and what not going on. So wherever it had moved, I’m convinced it moved. And I think they were more than happy to bring people in to show them what was going on. It was just to take the heat off.
G: In fact, when Peter…
L: See, there’s nothing.
G: … Billbrae or D’Amato — one of them — when they went up there…
L: But there’s a road. You can drive 3 18-wheelers on side-by-side. But there’s nothing there.
G: It was like a Lieutenant Colonel. I guess he met D’Amato. Or was it Billbrae? Anyway, he tells him that he wants to go to Papoose Lake and they said, “So you’ve been talking to Bob Lazar, huh?” You must remember this?
L: Yes.
G: I don’t know which one it was. Was it D’Amato or Billbrae?
L: Well, when you said that I just tuned out because I remember the thing — the CIA guy that Andrews talked to or something in Washington — remember… and they started talking about Papoose… Do you remember the rest of the story?
G: No, I don’t know that one.
L: ‘Cause I don’t either. It was along the same lines.
G: But, anyway, when D’Amato or Billbrae — one of them — went out there, a Lieutenant — it might have been Billbrae, because a Congressman — a Lieutenant Colonel met him and when he said he wanted to go to S4, the guy actually mentioned Bob Lazar’s name. He didn’t say S4. He said, “I want to go to Papoose Lake”. And the Lt. Col. said, “So you’ve been talking to Bob Lazar, huh?” Oh, and that’s right. The first time Diamoto came out, there was a white-out. It snowed all over the place up in central Nevada, so there was no air traffic up or back.
L: That was his surprise visit.
G: Yeah.
L: He came out to surprise everyone. This was the first visit by any civilian — essentially — out there. So he came up and he said, “Okay, I want to go up to S4.” And they said, “We can’t. It’s white-out conditions. We can’t take you up there.” So he had to wind up going back to Washington.
G: And the next time, they said, “We’ll take you up there, but you aren’t going to find anything.” That’s what they said and we thought, “Wow! That’s really confident to say ‘we can take you up there, but you aren’t going to find anything’.”.
But anyway, that was the D’Amato sneak visit and there was a white-out. So by the way, just so you know a little chronology here, the sneak visit… Wasn’t that sneak of a visit because we met with him before the Gulf War started? And then the Gulf War started and went and ran its course. And D’Amato came out what… 18 or 2 years later for the surprise visit. So…
Q: You both met with D’Amato?
L: Yeah.
G: And George Knapp. But {UNCLEAR from tape, several voices speaking at once} accommodations over at Nellis Air Force Base. George checked him out in Washington, DC. George went to Washington, DC. to get his UPI award. And he checked D’Amato out while he was there. And D’Amato is the real thing. What I’m saying is that D’Amato came out and did not give his surprise visit till 2 years later. So they knew he was coming 18 months or 2 years in advance be cause the whole Gulf War had happened and wound down and was over before he ever came back. Which was a valid excuse — he had other things to do…
Q: That’s a great story. Roads that just end… nothing there.
L: Anybody hungry?
Q: Let’s go get something to eat.
L: You feel like getting something to eat?
G: Sure.
(START OF TAPE 7 — SIDE B — NOTE: DISTORTED SOUND)
G: Now to me, it sounded like a guy trying to influence Jon Farhat into hiring him to make sure he didn’t have any trouble.
Q: Really? Well, I think that the easiest way for… If there are problems with the story, really the easiest way for them not to make a big deal out of it is to let it go. The stupidest thing someone could do would be to try and stop it.
G: However, movies — as you well know, I’m sure — mean a lot because the legacy of the story of JFK to our children will be the movie “JFK”.
Q: I hope not.
G: It will be. That tends to be the general influence.
L: Well, that’s kind of sad… That is… but… ah…
Q: Should we go in one car?
(MACHINE TURNED OFF AND BACK ON — DIFFERENT SETTING)
G: When we were outside of Area-51 one night… And here’s the thing: Bob compartmentalizes information, so he was telling me stuff… Joe stuff… Jim stuff… maybe Lear stuff. But I never questioned. We never had a big old meeting. I didn’t know what they knew, and they didn’t know what I knew. I felt just fortunate to know what I knew.
Now a couple years ago, he told me that the reason I ended up knowing more than everyone else because other than Lear — which he didn’t give that much information to — his other friends, who knew him longer… his older friends, Joe and Jim, didn’t ask him. But anyway… Which I find strange. If you had a friend that could answer those kind of questions, would you do anything but question him? But anyway, we were driving out there and Lear goes, “You know how many aliens are here?” And I said, “You mean how many do I know are here or how many do I know you think are here?” He takes that as an insult and then he proceeds to tell us that we can’t remember if it’s one billion or two billion.
L: No, how many aliens are living in the mountains that lie along side of the road? And we think he’s joking. But he’s serious. And I said, “No, John, how many? I’d say it was a billion, but…”
G: It was either one or two billion. Who cares… let’s say a billion.
L: There’s a billion in there. In these mountains alone.
G: And we said, “Now do they just live on Highway 15 or over on Highway 95?”
L: And he got so pissed off. He really believed.
G: This guy expected us to believe there were a billion aliens living in the mountains that line the highway on the way up to Area-51
L: It was great… it was absolutely great.
(MACHINE TURNED OFF AND BACK ON)
G: Anyway, he’s over in Laos when we’re not supposed to be in Laos. He flies cargo in there and they go to sleep in these tents. He’s going to bed for the night. And Lear goes to bed and he starts to fall asleep and he hears a KABLAAAMMM! like a bomb goes off. He gets up and he thinks this is the end. He thinks they’re being bombed and this is it — they’re all going to die.
But he looks out and across the way are a bunch of other pilots out there. There’s a light out there, and they’re playing games. They’re throwing knives against this wooden building for money. They’re gambling and throwing knives at a target. He lays back down and all of a sudden KABLAAAMMM! — it happens again, and Lear is scared to death. He’s shaking, but he doesn’t know what to do and he doesn’t want to act like a big sissy because these guys are out there throwing knives.
So this goes on all night and he doesn’t get any sleep and he gets up in the morning trying to act “macho”. He goes to take a shower and stuff, and the subject of the loud explosions come up. This is when he finds out that those were outgoing shells. And those were the guns going off. And that’s why the other guys weren’t worried and throwing knives while he thought they were being bombed on. So they gave him the award of the Laos chicken, wasn’t it? Or something like that?
L: Yeah.
G: He got a ribbon with it.
L: That’s a John Lear story.
G: It was equivalent to the “Woman from Venus” in his eyes. He’s just the funnel. He takes everything and doesn’t qualify or anything. He just spits it back out. And when someone proves it to be absolutely false, Lear says, “I’m sorry.” And he thinks that’s okay. Now most people in the rest of the world don’t. But Lear’s misinformation is not malicious. He’s a numbskull. He’s a knucklehead. He could play “Curly” on the Three Stooges. But he doesn’t look like that. Even his house… This guy lucks out. They’ve got a house… Yu know, I did an appraisal on his house. That’s how we got all the original UFO… 500,000 dollars he’s got.! It’s on 2.2 acres that {UNCLEARfrom tape} on Hollywood Boulevard that have off on Sunrise Mountain. There’s a whole view of the valley. The nighttime view is breathtaking. Things are a lot cheaper here than down where you’re from. I think it’s only worth about $550,000 now. He’s got 2.2 acres. The main house is a 2-story stucco/tile, pretty nicely decorated inside. It’s 4,400 square feet. Then in a U-shape around the pool, there’s a 1,700 square foot 2-bedroom/2-bathroom with a fireplace guesthouse.
Q: Jesus! I should live here.
G: You should.. A 720 square foot one bedroom kitchenette/one bath studio which is next to the 4-car garage around the pool and behind it is a tennis court and a corral with a tack room in it. And that’s all…
Q: 550,000 dollars?
G: Well anyway. So this is all on… There’s 8/10 of an acre behind that. All that good stuff I just described is on 1.4 acres and it’s 2.2 acres total. He’s got his own wall, everything. So I don’t know how they found out about this, but this house belonged to a high-roller gambler There were first, second and third mortgages on it. He went under and they foreclosed on it.
Q: What does that tell you about high-rollers?
G: Yeah. So Lear bid 330,00 bucks on this house. I don’t know where he was going to get that.
L: From his mom.
G: Oh, okay. So he bids it and they turn it down. So all these mortgagers foreclose on it and it comes back for an auction at the bank. Lear is the only one that shows up at the auction. He bids $175,000 and they take it. He had already offered $330,000 and they turned it down. He goes to the auction — the only one there — and bids $175,000. They take it. And the land was worth more than $175,000. So this knucklehead gets this 2.2 acre estate for 175,000 dollars. I mean it’s the best real estate deal I’ve ever seen!
(LAUGHTER)
(END OF TAPE 7