The following was written by Stanton Friedman in December 1997 and updated January 2011. It is part of The Stanton Friedman Collection as archived here on The Black Vault.
The Bob Lazar Fraud
By Stanton T. Friedman
Incredible claims have been made about Bob Lazar for years. He supposedly is a physicist with an MS in Physics from MIT and an MS in Electronics from the California Institute of Technology. He was a “Scientist” for Los Alamos National Laboratory, and obtained a job back-engineering UFOs at a very secret site S-4 near Area 51 in Nevada through noted Physicist, the late Dr. Edward Teller.
Supposedly he figured out how saucers work using Element 115 — matter/anti-matter, etc. He was able to steal a small quantity of 115 from the 500 pounds available, but this was stolen back. There was indeed an announcement in early 2004 about the production of 4 atoms of element 115 by operating a huge European accelerator for many weeks. It has a very short half life so there is no way to accumulate pounds of it. He supposedly came forward with his story despite death threats because he thought the public has a right to know. Videotapes are available with his claims.
It is all BUNK.
Not one shred of evidence has been put forth to support this story: No diplomas, no résumés, no transcripts, no memberships in professional organizations, no papers, no pages from MIT or Caltech yearbooks. He also mentioned, in a phone conversation with me, California State University at Northridge and Pierce Junior College — also in the San Fernando Valley, California. I checked all four schools. Pierce said he had taken electronics courses in the late 1970s. The other three schools never heard of him.
The page from the Los Alamos National Lab phone book with Lazar’s name on it clearly states that it includes employees of the DOE and outside contractor, Kirk Meyer. “K/M” follows Lazar’s name. This proves he worked for K/M, not LANL.
I checked with LANL’s personnel department for Lazar’s name and that of an old colleague. They found my guy, but not Lazar.
He was publicly asked when he got his MS from MIT. He said “Let me see now, I think it was probably 1982.” Nobody getting an MS from MIT would not know the year immediately. He was asked to name some of his profs, He said: “Let’s see now, Bill Duxler will remember me from the physics department at Caltech.” I located Dr. Duxler. He’s a Pierce Junior College physics prof, and never taught at Caltech. Lazar was registered in one of his courses at the same time Lazar was supposedly at MIT! Nobody who can go to MIT goes to Pierce JC, not to mention the rather long commute between LA and Cambridge, Mass.
I checked his High School in New York State. He graduated in August, not with his class. The only science course he took was chemistry. He ranked 261 out of 369, which is in the bottom third. There is no way he would have been admitted by MIT or Caltech. An MS in Physics from MIT requires a thesis. No such thesis exists at MIT, and he is not on a commencement list. The notion that the government wiped his CIVILIAN records clean is absurd. I checked with the Legal Counsel at MIT — no way to wipe all his records clean. The Physics department never heard of him and he is not a member of the American Physical Society.
When he declared bankruptcy in the mid 1980s for almost $300,000.00 he listed his occupation as a self-employed film processor. With MS degrees from MIT and Caltech? Caltech would not have accepted him for an MS program, if he already had one from MIT.
His propulsion scheme sounds good (as do many science fiction stories), but makes no real sense especially in view of how difficult it would be to add protons to #115. Gravity wave amplification sounds great but what does it mean?
He could not have gotten a Compartmentalized Security clearance having operated a brothel. His W-2 form from the Department of Naval Intelligence totals under $1000.00, at most a week’s pay for a scientist. You can’t get a security clearance in a week.
Scientists leave trails. Lazar is NOT a scientist. He couldn’t even answer scientific questions put to him. An excellent review of Bob’s “Physics” can be seen at web.archive.org/web/20061220030435/http://www.serve.com/mahood/lazar/critiq.htm.
I should add that Bob is a bright and talented guy who operated a jet powered car, put on fireworks displays, and apparently helped physics professors working at the Los Alamos Meson accelerator facility.
| Editor’s update: Element 115, which lies directly below bismuth in the Periodic Table, does exist as mentioned above. It was first synthesized in a particle accelerator in 2003 by a joint team of Russian and American scientists, and since 2016 has officially carried the name moscovium. Like all superheavy synthetic elements, it’s highly radioactive and short-lived. So far only about a hundred atoms of it have been prepared, with atomic weights ranging from 287 to 290. Moscovium’s half-lives increase directly with atomic weight, however — from 0.0037 seconds for 287Mc to 0.650 seconds for 290Mc. Should some other technology come on line capable of synthesizing these kinds of elements with higher atomic weights, or similar natural cosmic processes be discovered, it’s conceivable heavier moscovium isotopes might turn out to be relatively stable. |
Follow The Black Vault on Social Media:
This post was published on January 17, 2024