George Knapp: Bob Lazar Persecution

Welcome to ATS, Mr. Knapp. Let me be the first to say its a real pleasure to have you here. My dad lives in Pahrump, and always looks forward to your appearances on TV because of the fascinating expose's you do.

My first question, of course, is the most obvious, about Bob Lazar, a subject I'm sure you get a good dose of questions about.

1. Did you witness, document, or find other sources of confirmation any of the incidents Lazar claimed, such as getting his tires shot out?

2. Have you ever found any of the missing proofs or evidence of their existance, that Lazar was indeed a qualified physicist, or any of the other claims he made?

3. Have any other employees of Area 51 come out and confirmed that Lazar worked there, or that they witnessed some of the stuff he saw?

Thanks for your time, and

I never saw the shot-out tires and was pretty ticked off that Bob didn't tell me about it right away but I did interview other people who say they saw them. Bob was infuriatingly nonchalant about making a point to secure evidence or document events in his life. However, I verified plenty of other stuff, and as mentioned in another posting, I lived through some of the events myself.

For one thing, Bob knew when and where the test flights of 'the craft' could be viewed. He took three small groups out into the desert on three consecutive weeks to witness the objects. There is videotape of one such incident. I interviewed all of the participants and they all told the same story. How did he know? This was long before any story about saucers at 51 had been aired. He also knew about the existence of a facility dubbed S-4. I confirmed this with Nellis AFB, although they would not tell me where S-4 was or what was being tested out there. Bob also knew about OFI, the Office of Federal Investigations. I had never heard of it and didn't believe it was real, but subsequently confirmed that this little known agency is responsible for conducting background checks on people who are hired to work at the Nevada Test Site and sensitive areas on the Nellis Range. Bob also named the agent who had come to his home---Mike Thigpen. I confirmed that Thigpen really did work for OFI. How did Lazar know?

When I asked Bob to submit to a polygraph exam, he did not hesitate. The first exam was inconclusive. The examiner said he felt that Lazar was too frightened to register an accurate result. The second set of polygraph exams was administered by a former Orange County police officer, Terry Tavernetti, who still works as a security chief for a major LV corporation. Tavernetti took a lot more time in calming Bob down prior to the exams. He administered four sets of tests and Bob passed all of them...easily. Tavernetti gave me an on camera interview and said that Lazar was being truthful. A few months later, there was a break-in at TT's home. The burglars targeted his polygraph charts and nothing else. Hmmm.

Bob's academic claims have always been troublesome to me. I know that other researchers, including my friend Stan Friedman, have made a lot of noise about their discovery that there are no records to prove that Bob attended MIT or Cal Tech. This information was made public in my very first on-air story about Bob. No one else broke the news or made this "gotcha" discovery. It was on the table from day one. (I give credit to Stan for doing the kind of legwork that few other Lazar critics have undertaken themselves, but, as mentioned, it is ground that I had already covered. Stan also makes the claim that Lazar was in the bottom third of his high school class. This cannot be substantiated, and Stan knows it. The school will not release such information. We have to take Stan's word for it, a level of proof that HE would be unlikely to accept if the positions were reversed.) Nonetheless, I admit that Lazar cannot prove his academic claims. Knowing Bob as well as I do, I find it hard to believe that he would endure the many non-science elective courses that would be required for any college degree. That said, an exaggerated claim about educational credentials is not a death knell for his credibility in my view. (Unlike the Dan Burisch case, which is different on many levels.)

The key question for me was whether he really did work as a physicist at Los Alamos lab. If so, it is conceivable that he might have been hired to work in other sensitive positions, including the S-4 job. Los Alamos was adamant in saying that Lazar was never there. Period. I made numerous phone calls and wrote a stack of letters. After I sent them a copy of the lab phone book containing Bob's name, along with a front page Los Alamos newspaper article that described him as a physicist at the lab, Los Alamos relented and admitted that Bob had, in fact, been there, but as an employee of a subcontractor, Kirk-Mayer, a scientific and technical headhunting firm. They also coughed up an employee i.d. number. I had already initiated contacts with Kirk-Mayer. They told me right off the bat that Bob had been recruited and employed by the company, but that changed in a hurry. They subsequently told me that they could not find any records about Lazar, and then they stopped responding to my inquiries altogether. It didn't matter. I found and interviewed several people who worked at the lab with Bob. They told me he was employed as a physicist and worked on classified projects. Now, maybe he was exaggerating his academic background---it wouldn't be the first time someone has done this---but did this mean he was lying about everything else? I didn't think so then and don't think so now.

Have any other employees of 51 verified parts of his story? Absolutely. There are more than two dozen people who worked at Groom Lake in the 50's, 60's, 70's. and 80's. who have confirmed to me, in confidence, pieces of Lazar's story. One of those people is a former security officer who agreed to meet with Lazar and give him a pop quiz. He asked simple questions such as what color is the paint inside the mess hall, how do employees pay for their meals, things like that, tough to fabricate. The officer told me that Lazar passed. He knew what he was talking about. How did he know?

There's a lot more to it. This will have to do for now.

Thank you very much for your response. It has indeed cleared up alot of questions I have had about Lazar and his story.