Lazar first began leaking information to the media about his alleged job back engineering alien spacecraft in the late 1980s. He says he worked at an underground lab called S-4 that is south of the main Area 51 base. At first he appeared in interviews with investigative journalist George Knapp on KLAS News, the Las Vegas CBS affiliate, under a pseudonym with his face in the shadows.
Eventually, he allowed himself to be filmed in the light and shared his real identity. Meanwhile, his story, and the Area 51 base itself, became famous. Making the mystery even more compelling was the fact that, at the time, Area 51’s very existence was denied by the US government. Even though KLAS and other Las Vegas news agencies had been investigating the base for years.
Bob Lazar (left) being interviewed by George Knapp at the 2015 International UFO Congress. Click on the image to view the interview. (Credit: Open Minds Production)
All of this fueled the legends and the notoriety of Area 51, making it all at once the most secretive as well as one of the most famous US government installations.
Lazar claims that he was fired for sharing information about his top secret job, and his records of his employment of working as a scientist, as well as his education records were erased. Nellis Air Force Base, who administers Area 51, as well as Los Alamos National Laboratories, another place Lazar claimed to have worked as a scientist, both denied Lazar worked for them.
Researchers also could not find any records supporting Lazar’s claims of having received degrees at Caltech and MIT. They could not even find anyone who claimed to have remembered going to school with Lazar.
This was one of the topics of discussion Sunday night on the wildly popular Coast to Coast AM syndicated paranormal radio show. Knapp hosted the show, and the guest was Jeremy Corbell, a documentary filmmaker with several films in the works, one of them about Lazar.
Knapp says he has had to deal with the education issue, but he can look past it. He said, “For me the key issue is whether or not Lazar really did work at Los Alamos National Lab. If he worked there in a scientific or technical position, if he had security clearances, then, I think, that could justify the idea that he would be hired to work at a place like Area 51. So that was always a central question.”
Knapp says his investigation has confirmed, to him, that Lazar did work at Los Alamos. He says, “[Los Alamos] denied he had records. This went back and forth for a couple of years. I know he was there. We’ve interviewed people he worked with before, none of them would come forward. We found his name in a [Los Alamos] phone book. We found a newspaper article with him on the front page and a picture of him saying he is a physicist out there. We know he was there.”
Although Knapp is certain Lazar worked as a scientist at Los Alamos, many remains skeptical. The phone book he mentioned does not list the capacity in which Lazar worked at Los Alamos, and newspapers are easily fooled. That, along with the fact those none of his coworkers have come forward publicly to support Lazar’s claims, has made many doubt he is a scientist at all.
However, using some innovative research techniques, Corbell was able to find a witness willing to go on the record. Corbell says in researching Lazar’s claims he used a “bot” – software that can run automated tasks over the internet – to search Facebook for keywords. His bot found him a comment in a Facebook group from a man who said his neighbor claimed to have worked with Lazar.
Corbell got in contact with the man, who eventually got him in touch with the neighbor, who turned out be a legitimate physicist that Corbell was able to confirm did work at Los Alamos. Corbell asked the physicist, Dr. Robert Krangle, if he would be willing to go public with his claims, and he said yes.
Jeremy Corbell (left) debating Bob Lazar with Stanton Friedman at the 2015 International UFO Congress. Click the link to purchase the debate on DVD. (Credit: Carlo Petrick)
Corbell shared some sound clips of an interview with Krangle. Krangle says that he worked on and off as a contractor for Los Alamos throughout the 80s, and still does occasionally.
“I was doing design project this, or an ancillary engineering. Their engineers have been beating a problem, and sometimes they get to close to a problem, so they can’t see the forest for the trees, so they bring in people like me as an outside contact to see what’s going on,” explained Krangle.
Krangle says he graduated from MIT in 1973 with a degree in semi-conductor physics.
Corbell says he has found an article that listed Krangle’s credentials. Krangle also showed Corbell IDs showing he worked at other facilities doing high tech work, such as China Lake, Kirtland Air Force Base, Los Alamos, Sandia, and the Manzano weapons storage facility.
Corbell asked Krangle directly if he knew Lazar to be working as a physicist at Los Alamos, to which Krangle says he was certain.
Unmarked airplanes at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas used to shuttle employees to Area 51. (Credit: Alejandro Rojas)
“He was a physicist. Which, I am a physicist. We kind of recognize each other, you know it’s the classic pocket condom with all of the proper different colored pens, so he fit that mold. If nobody would have told me, one look, he is a physicist. You know, he is properly dressed in geekdom,” Krangle told Corbell.
Not only did he look the part, but Krangle says he attended security meetings with Lazar. He explained that in these meetings “they give you the usual briefing asking you not to talk about that you are doing or seeing.”
As for what specifically Lazar was working on, Krangle says, “I didn’t know what he was up to anymore than he knew what I was up to.”
Warning signs at the Area 51 back entrance. A security truck watches from atop the nearby hill. (Credit: Alejandro Rojas)
Krangle also says he understood why Lazar’s employers were so upset with him.
“I understand how Los Alamos would blackball him. He committed professional suicide,” Krangle explained. “He broke from the fold and talked about it. Within that security community. It is that mentality: ‘Don’t talk about what you do.'”
Knapp asked Corbell why Krangle would be sharing this information if he knew he could also get in trouble. Corbell said that Krangle is “just one of those renegades.” He explained that Krangle no longer makes a living off of his Los Alamos contracts, so he isn’t worried about it.
No doubt detractors of Lazar’s claims will be doing further research into Krangle’s background, but it could be that the question of whether Lazar is a scientist has finally been resolved. The question also remains, if Lazar really did work at Los Alamos, why are they hiding that information?
The bizarre mystery of Area 51, S-4, and extraterrestrial technology continues.
You can listen to Corbell on Coast to Coast AM with Knapp here.
You can also listen to Corbell’s interview with Krangle here.