## Nuclear Dreamland

#### Area 51 and Bob Lazar

##### by Doc Hambone

"I think that 99% of the sightings out here are absolutely not flying saucers." - Bob Lazar at the Ultimate UFO Seminar, 5/1/93

While tales of UFOs and underground bases had been circulated concerning Groom Lake before his appearance on KLAS-TV in September, 1989, the reputation of Area 51 only grew to its current cosmic proportions with the revelations of physicist Bob Lazar.

In case you haven't heard, Lazar supposedly worked in an underground base from December 1988 to April 1989, as part of a team assigned to reverse-engineer alien spacecraft. His story has been blown out of proportion by colleagues and UFO buffs, but Lazar's account is fairly consistent and very carefully worded. First, here's what he didn't do. He didn't see any aliens on the base, and he didn't disassemble any alien spacecraft.

So what did he do? "Most of the time I worked there I was being briefed and being brought up to date on what had been done before. Most of the hands-on bench work was with the anti-matter reactor itself: being shown how it operated, giving demonstrations, and things of that sort" (1). Even then, he didn't take the reactor apart to see how it worked. According to Lazar, the reactor is activated by simply placing a chunk of fuel inside and closing the cap, "there's no button to push or anything" (2).

As for the briefings he received, they contained information on the history, biology, and religion of the alien visitors. Lazar makes it very clear that this is not first-hand knowledge: "Now there was lots of strange information in the reports, but there again it's just printed material and it could be disinformation" (3).

Assuming that Lazar isn't lying or crazy, did he experience anything suggesting the existence of aliens or alien ships at the base at S-4 independent of what the government told him? The closest he comes is the anti-gravity generator, which supposedly froze candle flames and bounced away golf balls. I am at a loss to explain this, but we cannot completely exclude the possibility of trickery or advanced terrestrial technology. As for the space craft, it would be an easy matter for his employers to "wow" Lazar with a dazzling display of extra-terrestrial aviation. However, the demonstration Lazar was given was somewhat underwhelming. "It lifted off the ground, slid over to the left, then back to the right, and set back down." (4). If the government did have a functioning spacecraft, why give a demonstration that could be simulated with electromagnets and a light-weight mock-up?

As for the various tapes of floating lights circulating among UFO researchers and shows like "Encounters", I have yet to see any examples that defy the range of current aviation technology, despite the claims of those presenting the films, such as Norio Hayakawa (5). Narration over the footage often includes dubious principles of aviation. For example, we are told that no earth-made aircraft can both hover and fly, like say, the Harrier fighter or helicopters. Much is made of unusual lighting configurations - as if the military can't change a light bulb.

But if the military isn't covering up UFOs, what is it doing? Maybe just what the Air Force says : "We do have facilities within the complex near the dry lakebed of Groom Lake. The facilities of the Nellis Range Complex are used for testing and training technologies, operations, and systems critical to the effectiveness of U.S. military forces. Specific activities conducted at Nellis cannot be discussed any further than that" (6).

If that's the case, then what's the deal with Bob Lazar? If he isn't lying, then why would the military feed him all of this information? Consider his relationship with Ufologist John Lear, which began before he started work at Area 51. Such a relationship should have necessarily excluded Lazar as a candidate for recruitment, for fear that he would leak information (which he did). Unless the government wanted to leak the UFO scenario to the public through an unwitting third party. There can't be too many physicists in the Las Vegas area with relationships to ufologists - Lazar would be a first-round draft choice.

But why leak this information? Why would the government want people to believe in UFOs at Area 51? One large advantage would be cover. New aircraft could be explained away as an alien invasion. Sightings of triangular shaped craft preceded the unveiling of the B2 Stealth Bomber. Other activities that could be blamed on aliens are much more sinister.

The coating on stealth aircraft is a tightly kept military secret, but it is rumored to be highly toxic (7). Individuals encountering "alien" ships sometimes report strange rashes or even radiation burns. Unlike the US government, residents from Zeta Reticulii can't be brought to court. Recently, a group of workers at the Groom Lake base tried to sue the government, claiming that open, burning pits of toxic waste have caused serious health effects (8). The case was brought to a halt by the judge under the cover of "national security". To peel back this cover blanketing the Nevada desert, we must look at the organizations and individuals connected to Area 51, the Nellis Range Complex, and Bob Lazar.

As to be expected from a military installation, the contractors in the Nellis Air Force Base complex have deep intelligence connections. Some of the construction around the area is handled by the Bechtel Corporation. Bechtel has earned billions in construction projects, ranging from Hoover Dam to BART to industrial cities in the Middle East. Bechtel was one of several contractors to construct "Doomsday Town" in the middle of the Nevada desert. Complete with homes and a power plant, the Atomic Energy Commission leveled the city in 1952 in a nuclear explosion, to asses what damage these new weapons were capable of (9). Bechtel would go on to earn millions constructing breeder reactors and nuclear power plants across the globe.

Bechtel's success can be attributed in part to their connections with intelligence and other organizations. Bechtel was once in a partnership with former CIA Director, ITT Board member, and Knight of Malta John McCone. As chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, McCone gave Bechtel contracts to construct nuclear power plants. Ronald Reagan filled several cabinet posts directly from the Bechtel executive offices: Bechtel president, member of the Bohemian Club, and CFR director George Schultz became Secretary of State. Bechtel general counsel, member of the Trilateral commission, Pepsico board member, and later Iran/Contra criminal Caspar Weinberger served as Secretary of Defense. CIA director Richard Helms worked with Bechtel after he left his post and began a Middle Eastern consulting firm (10). Raytheon Services worked in the area from 1990-95. Raytheon manufactures airplanes and microwave devices for military and commercial uses. Raytheon recently bought E-Systems, described Washington Post as "part of the central nervous system for the nation's intelligence community." Former CIA director Admiral William Raborn was a director of E-Systems. Their clients include the CIA, NSA, and military intelligence agencies. Their products range from wiretap surveillance equipment to the satellite Global Positioning System (GPS) to the EMASS systems cluster of Cray super-computers to underground remote sensor equipment (11) to HAARP, bought from ARCO. HAARP (High-frequency Active Auroral Research Project) is an antenna array in Alaska capable of beaming 10 billion Watts into the ionosphere. Its stated purpose is to use ELF transmissions to communicate with submarines and to map caverns and bunkers under the earth's surface. Other applications may include weather control and direct-energy weapons systems. (12)

Security is handled by the Wackenhut Services Inc., the third largest security company in the country. Wackenhut receives a third of its profits from government contracts, including contracts to guard high-security nuclear facilities. Board members have included former FBI director Clarence Kelly, former Defense Intelligence Agency director Gen. Joseph Carroll, and former CIA deputy directors Frank Carlucci and Admiral Bobby Ray Inman. The late Knights of Malta and CFR member William Casey, before becoming Reagan's CIA director, was Wackenhut's outside legal council (13).

According to an article in Spy magazine, Wackenhut and the CIA overlap each other considerably, with Wackenhut providing cover for CIA operations abroad and in the US, and the CIA paying back with lucrative government contracts (14).

Wackenhut also makes a fortune building private prisons and manufacturing arms. According to an affidavit by Michael Riconscuito, he was research director of a Wackenhut project located in the Cabazon Indian Reservation, which "sought to develop and/or manufacture certain materials that are used in military and national security operations, including night vision goggles, machine guns, fuel-air explosives, and biological and chemical warfare weapons." Many of these arms were destined for the Contras. Riconscuito also claims that he altered the PROMIS software stolen by the Justice Department from Inslaw, Inc. (15).

Also working at the Cabazon reservation was Robert Booth Nichols, co-founder of Meridian Arms. Nichols has been identified by FBI special agent Robert Gates as a drug trafficker and money launderer. He has connections to the CIA and Yakuza (16). Nichols was one of the sources for journalist Danny Casolaro, who was investigating the theft of PROMIS. After Casolaro's probe started to uncover Nichols' background, Nichols warned him to stop his investigation. Soon after, Casolaro was "suicided"(17).

Strangely, Nichols was a technical advisor and played a bit part as "Colonel Sarnac" in the film Under Siege, which starred his friend Steven Seagal (18). According the Bob Lazar's associate Gene Huff, "Lazar and I know Segal and Segal wants to make an ET related movie and plans on using Lazar and I as consultants. Segal originally wanted Lazar's story but Lazar had already signed with New Line" (19).

Seagal makes many, often exaggerated claims of being a former CIA contract agent. John Lear, the UFO researcher who knew Lazar before he was employed at the secret base, claims to be a former CIA pilot. Another interesting connection Lazar has is to physicist Ed Teller. Lazar claims to have began his secret work through Teller (20), who put Lazar in touch with EG&G Energy Measurements, Inc., the company that interviewed him for the position. Teller is a man who has truly stopped worrying and learned to the love the bomb, namely his bomb, the H-bomb, which he helped develop. He even led the way to establishing a second nuclear weapons laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Lab, to develop his little toy when he ran into opposition from Robert Oppenheimer and the rest of the Los Alamos crew. Oppenheimer was accused of having communist sympathies (by, among others, Teller) and lost his security clearance. This alienated Teller from much of the research community, so in the 1950s he "started to consort with generals, financiers, industrialists, and politicians. The military looked on him as a prophet. Richard M. Nixon, then Vice-President and second only to McCarthy as a fervent anticommunist, sought his advice. Nelson Rockefeller became a fast friend. In the 1960s, at Teller's invitation Ronald Reagan became the first governor of California to visit the Livermore weapons lab"(21).

Teller was a founding member of "High Frontiers", a lobbying organization dedicated to promoting space-based defense systems (22). Other members include Karl Bendetsen and Jacquelin Hume, members of the exclusive Bohemian Club, right-wing supporter Joseph Coors of Coor's Beer (23), and Gene Vosseler, who is also Chairman of the Department of Theology of the right-wing new age group, Church Universal & Triumphant (24).

Ed Teller has an unusual concept of peace, as reflected in his involvement in Project Plowshare, the program to find peaceful applications for nuclear weapons. In 1958 he tried to sell Alaska on a plan to create a new harbor near Point Hope by exploding six nuclear bombs underground. Luckily, protest from some scientists and the Inupiat Eskimo tribe that lived thirty miles from ground zero stopped the project. Other plans for peaceful uses of H-bombs ranged from strip-mining to altering the weather (25). This same year, as head of the Atomic Energy Commission, John McCone proposed giving construction companies like Bechtel small nuclear weapons for use in excavation. President Eisenhower quickly rejected the plan (26).

Teller is also the man who was largely responsible for selling Ronald Reagan on the Star Wars program. Even if it had worked, Star Wars worked by blasting nuclear missles out of the air with...nuclear missles. Or with X-ray lasers, which are feuled with thermonuclear explosions.

With the decline of the Cold War, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories have transformed their efforts at building nuclear bombs and space-based weapons to promoting peace. At least the Pentagon's brand of peace. In addition to researching nuclear counter-proliferation and nuclear waste disposal, Lawrence Livermore, as well other national labs and private companies, are developing the military-industrial establishment's latest love offering to the world: non-lethal weapons.

Footnotes:

1 Billy Goodman Happening Show 12/20/89
2 On the Record, KLAS-TV, Las Vegas, Nevada, 12/9/89
3 ibid.
4 Billy Goodman Happening Show 12/20/89
5 Norio Hayakawa, PO Box 599, Gardena, CA 90248, norioa51s4@aol.com. Mr. Hayakawa's scenario involves a fake alien invasion ushering in the New World Order in 1998 (previously 1995, but his "high level intelligence sources" must have been mistaken).
6 "Groom Lake Exists: USAF", Aviation Week & Space Technology, 10/3/94 pg 31
7 "Toxic Stealth: The Rough Notes of a Scandal", Prevailing Winds, Premiere Issue, PO Box 23511, Santa Barbara, CA 93121.
8 Webster, Donovan, "Area 51", New York Times Magazine, 6/26/94, pg 44
9 McCartney, Laton, Friends in High Places, Simon and Schuster, 1988, pg 101-2
10 ibid.
11 Mintz, John, "Discreet E-Systems Seeks Shift to Not-So-Private Commercial Sector", Washington Post, 10/24/94, A10
12 Manning, Jeanne and Begich, Nick, Angels Don't Play This HAARP, Earthpulse Press, 1995
13 Connolly, John, "Inside the Shadow CIA", Spy Magazine, 9/92,
pg 49
14 ibid.
15 Affadavit given in "Inslaw, Inc. v. United States of America and the United States Department of Justice"
16 Connolly, John, "Dead Right", Spy Magazine, 1/93, pg 64
17 This brief synopisis doesn't do justice to the complexities behind the PROMIS theft. For more information, read The Octopus by Kenn Thomas, coming Summer 1996 from Feral House, PO Box 3466, Portland, OR 97208
18 Connolly, John, "Dead Right", Spy Magazine, 1/93, pg 58
19 E-mail from Gene Huff, 4/15/96. Lazar once said in reference to a possible film version of his experience: "I don't want to see Steven Seagal in it or anything."
20 Teller is seen neither confirming or denying this in Lazar's video "Excerpts from the Government Bible"
21 Broad, William J, Star Warriors, Simon and Schuster, 1985, pg 39
22 High Frontiers, 2800 Shirlington Rd, Suite 405a, Arlington, VA 22206
23 Broad, William J, Teller's War, Simon and Schuster, 1992, pg 105-6
24 Roth, Chris, "A Prophet in Her Own Compound", Steamshovel Press #14, PO Box 23715, St. Louis, MO 63121
25 Broad, William J, Teller's War, Simon and Schuster, 1992, pg 47-8
26 McCartney, pg 111

6/28/96

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