Bob Lazar - Dreamland An Autobiography

FOREWORD

by George Knapp

IN THE DECADES SINCE BOB LAZAR FIRST STEPPED FORward, Area 51 has morphed into an almost humorous contradiction. It is by far the best known

secret base in the world. Whether this contradiction is good or bad, Lazar is the person most responsible for it. His tale changed an otherwise obscure outpost in the Nevada desert into a rock star of military facilities.

Since Lazars story rst exploded into the public consciousness in 1989, Area 51 has been catapulted to the forefront of UFO lore, along with the Roswel crash, Kenneth Arnolds sightings, the abductions of Betty and Barney and Travis Walton. It has inspired several movies, documentaries, books, thousands of magazine and newspaper articles, heated debates at UFO

conferences and in online UFO social media forums, cartoons, and columns. It prompted the State of Nevada to create and christen the nations only Extraterrestrial Highway; became the theme and namesake of a Triple A basebal team and a couple of roadhouse bars; and was adapted into rock songs, rock bands, poems, video games, posters, tee shirts, trinkets, shot glasses, key chains, snow globes, Christmas ornaments, viewers guides, reworks, jerky kiosks, and countless comedy routines. It is likely the only military base in the world to become the theme for a legal bordel o and is also an interactive attraction in a Smithsonian-affiliated national museum. It is permanently perched in the pantheon of UFO holies, a god among lesser deities, much to the chagrin of UFO poobahs whose fervent protestations about Lazar have largely fal en on deaf ears.

A handful of revisionist writers have tried to defend some of the biggest, most self-serving lies told about Area 51, weakly arguing that it was never a secret base, was never al that classi ed, and isnt real y a big deal. is is disingenuous hair-splitting at best, and deserves a spot in your mental ling cabinet under the letters B and S.

It is true that on May 18, 1955, a news release was issued by the Atomic Energy Commission announcing that preliminary work had begun on a smal satel ite instal ation within the Las Vegas Bombing and Gunnery Range.

e construction wil be essential y temporary, the AEC claimed. at isnt how it worked out.

e statement was sent to eighteen news organizations, including my future employer KLAS-TV. In the months that fol owed, other details were shared in terse news releases, indicating the AECs contractor was adding some limited additional facilities and modi cations to a smal instal ation near Groom Lake. In documents made public many years later, the AEC and its contractors referred to the location as Watertown, or the Watertown Strip. Government spokespersons said Watertown would be the hub of a program to obtain high altitude weather data for the Air Force, but the government wasnt being honest, and it wouldnt be the last lie that would be told about the base.

Watertown, the Watertown Strip, Paradise Ranch, the Box, Groom Lake, and Dreamland are names used over the ensuing decades to describe the enigmatic operation in the northeast corner of what was once known as the Nevada Test Site. e most common name for the once-tiny outpost though, the name that is now known al over the planet, is Area 51.

e cover stories issued by various authorities proved to be wildly inaccurate. e facility was built to house the U-2 spy plane, the most highly classi ed program of its day. U-2 ights did col ect weather data, but their primary mission was to spy on Americas adversaries. e smal , temporary facility wasnt temporary at al . Today it is a sprawling complex that employs close to 2,000 scientists, technicians, pilots, radar specialists, contractors, security personnel, and assorted spooks from the world of military intel igence.

It is accurate to say the bases existence wasnt entirely a secret. I obtained a pair of phone books from the old AEC era, and inside the page are several now defunct numbers for personnel assigned to Area 51. Because the base was to the east of Americas primary atomic testing ground, it was often bathed in radioactive fal out during the years when above-ground nuclear blasts were uncorked in the Nevada desert. e designation Area 51 is found on several fal out maps from the 50s and 60s. But by the late 70s, Area 51 had al but disappeared from those maps. e quadrangle-shaped box on the maps was left empty. By the 1980s, reporters who asked questions about the base were told that no such base exists, even though, for a time, it was possible to see the base

from the tops of nearby mountain tops. Soviet spy satel ites released high-resolution photos of the two-mile-long runway and support structures.

Something had changed. Like a military Brigadoon, the base had essential y disappeared.

As a journalist, I am aware that I wil never be al owed to set foot on the base. Yet it has become a major part of my personal identity and professional life. It is as much a part of my life as it is for the men and women who worked out there, toiling in obscurity in order to protect the rest of us during the darkest days of the Cold War. When I kick the bucket, Im sure my obituary wil contain some reference to the Area 51 stories I have written throughout my career.

When I was rst hired by KLAS-TV in 1981, my friend, mentor, and news director, Robert Stoldal, handed me a thin le he had col ected over the years.

It contained twenty-four or so pages of news clippings he had cul ed during his long career as a newsman. is was the sum total of what the public knew about Area 51 at the time. ere were a few fuzzy references to the base in newspaper articles from the 1970s. Most of the pages were clippings from Aviation Week & Space Technology, an excel ent publication whose readers sometimes referred to the magazine as Aviation Leak. Stoldal had developed a passionate interest in the secret base and thought I might be the right guy to eventual y nd out what goes on out there.

I didnt write any Area 51 stories until a few years later. In 1984, the U. S.

Air Force il egal y seized control of 89,000 acres of public land adjacent to Groom Lake. One day, the land was accessible; the next, it was off limits.

Armed guards patrol ed the perimeter. Ranchers, rock hounds, even property owners who tried to traverse the new line in the sand were warned to stay out or else. Signs warned that the use of deadly force had been authorized. e Air Force acknowledged it seized the land without any legal permission.

Months later, AF officials appeared before Congress to ask for retroactive authority to do what they had already done. Elected officials in Nevada griped about it, as did the public, but the Pentagon had no intention of re-opening the 89,000 acres to the public. Nor would they say why they needed al that acreage.

e extraordinarily brazen move by the Air Force generated headlines for a few months. A KLAS reporter named Richard Urey produced a multi-part series about the known history of Area 51, but the buzz died down. For years,

anyone who cal ed Nel is Air Force base to ask about Area 51 was told the military could not con rm the existence of such a facility. us, it became a non-existent base, a preposterous position that was maintained for years.

Taxpayers and voters funded al of the work that occurred at the base. Visitors could see it with their own eyes, or via telescopes. Foreign satel ites photographed it and foreign planes had permission to y over it via the Open Skies treaty, but American citizens were told it did not exist.