Photo: Instagram
He always feels like somebody's watching him...
By Bernadette Giacomazzo — Written on Jul 18, 2019
Regardless who what you believe is — or isn't — being housed at the infamous Area 51 government facility, it's never a good idea to storm a government installation, no matter what you think is, or isn't, there. And that's the message this infamous whistleblower — someone who, perhaps, knows Area 51 better than anyone else outside of the government themselves — is trying to get out to the general population. Who is Bob Lazar?
Let's look at what we know about Bob Lazar — and the infamous Area 51.
1. First, what exactly is Area 51?
The official name of the facility commonly known as Area 51 is Homey Airport, and sometimes, it's called Groom Lake. Regardless of what name it goes by, Area 51 is a highly classified government facility, and its official duties include hosting a US Air Force training range. Because of the highly sensitive nature of its official duties, not many details can be publicly released. As humans are wont to do, however, that secrecy has led to conspiracy theories abounding about what actually goes on there.
However, according to the National Security Archive, a few details were released about the past operations of Area 51 thanks to a 2005 FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request. The archive details that, amongst other things, the United States government had planned to dispatch spy planes to China (in order to help India) as well as used British crews to "confuse the Soviets," and overflew on French nuclear sites.
Most interestingly, however, Area 51 was known for its testing of the infamous U-2 bombers.
"What the CIA released in response to a 2005 Freedom of Information Act request is a substantially less redacted version of a history of two key aerial reconnaissance programs. Written by agency historians Gregory Pedlow and Donald Welzenbach, and titled The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance: The U-2 and OXCART Programs, 1954-1974, the study was published in classified channels in 1992. Subsequently, a heavily redacted version of the U-2 portion was published, in 1998, by the agency's Center for the Study of Intelligence as a book, The CIA and the U-2 Program, 1954-1974, in conjunction with a CIA conference on the U-2. The full study, in redacted form, had been released in response to FOIA requests," they report.
To date, however, the CIA and Area 51 officials haven't taken an "official" stance on the existence of UFOs, or of Area 51's role in discovering them.
2. And who, exactly, is Bob Lazar?
Bob Lazar is someone who has a bit of interesting history with Area 51. He's got a documentary out on Netflix called Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers, so he perhaps has his reasons for wanting people to pay attention to him.
He's someone who's considered a "double-edged sword" in the UFO community, because while he's a "self-proclaimed physicist" who claims to have worked on reverse engineering on the purported "extraterrestrial technology" near the Area 51 government site, none of his claims have been backed up by scientifically reproducible evidence.
And while he claims that he was educated at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and CalTech, there has been no evidence of his attendance at either of those universities. Even his attendance at Pierce Junior College in Los Angeles is questionable, at best.
However, according to the Los Angeles Times, Bob Lazar pleaded guilty to felony pandering back in 1990, after he aided & abetted a prostitution ring. And, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, in 2007, his company United Nuclear Scientific Supplies LLC was fined $7,500 and was forced to go on three years of probation after violating federal law.
So, it's safe to say he's a little questionable, at best.
3. Why is all this back in the news?
For the most part, it was safe to say that Area 51 wasn't at the forefront of everyone's minds until a few weeks ago, when a Facebook petition was started to "storm" Area 51, and had garnered about 1.5 million confirmed attendees (while another 1 million reported that they were "interested" in the event).
The Guardian reported that the attendees planned to storm the place in September.
"In a Facebook event titled “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us,” the creators explain: “We will all meet up at the Area 51 Alien Center tourist attraction and coordinate our entry. If we naruto run, we can move faster than their bullets. Let’s see them aliens," the outlet reported.
And while Jackson Barnes — one of the creators of the meme — said that it was a "joke," designed to get "thumbsies upsies" on the Internet, there are still plenty of people who are planning to storm the area, and the United States Air Force is not amused.
4. Houston, we have a problem...
Just as a reminder: The United States military has a series of technologies available to them — technologies that are so advanced that they aren't even released to the general public yet. If the United States Air Force wanted to, they could dispatch a drone to a whole other country, deploy a missile aimed at an enemy of the state, and kill the person, all without leaving the relative comfort of their living rooms.
The Associated Press reports that the United States Air Force is sending a not-so-subtle message in their warning against "storming" the area.
"Nellis Air Force Base said in a statement that the Air Force is aware of the Facebook posting and says “any attempt to illegally access the area is highly discouraged.” The Air Force says it does not discuss its security measures and that the test and training range provides “flexible, realistic and multidimensional battlespace” for testing and “advanced training in support of U.S. national interests," reported the outlet.
Translation: no, you can't move faster than their bullets.
5. Even Bob Lazar thinks that storming Area 51 is a bad idea.
Despite the fact that Lazar is, well, a questionable character, and he's been pushing this "there are aliens at Area 51" theory for longer than some of us have been alive, even he thinks that storming the area is a bad idea.
"I have to comment on this ‘Storm Area 51’ thing. I do understand it was started as a joke by someone, but there are a number of people who are actually planning on showing up. This is a misguided idea. Area 51 is a classified research base. There are no aliens or alien technology located there. The only place there was ever any alien technology was at Site S4, south of Area 51 proper. That was 30 years ago. S4 may have moved decades ago or it’s possible it’s no longer being used for the project. I do not support this ‘movement’. The last time someone tried to get in to Area 51 he was shot. This is not the way to go about trying to get more information. What is good, is the interest in the subject — the science and technology. That is what would immediately change the world we live in," he said, according to Pop Culture.
So, if the questionable guy is saying that a questionable idea is too questionable even for him, maybe it's a good idea to reconsider all of this.
Bernadette Giacomazzo is an editor, writer, and photographer whose work has appeared in People, Teen Vogue, Us Weekly, The Source, XXL, HipHopDX, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Post, and more. She is also the author of The Uprising series. For more information about Bernadette Giacomazzo, click here.