Mahood's Final Report on Lazar (2/2)

From: Ken MacGray 
Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 07:59:20 -0800
Subject: Mahood's Final Report on Lazar (2/2)


[Continued from Previous Message]

And the location. The site isn't even in Area 51. It's several miles
south of the boundary, in the Nellis Range. On top of that, it's in the
National Desert Wildlife Range, for crying out loud. Again, it just
doesn't make sense, unless of course you consider that Lazar may be
lying.

But for me the clincher is this. I know people who have been there. Up
close and personal. They say there's nothing there, nor did it appear
there ever was. I believe these people. As for the argument that after
Lazar blabbed, the facility was closed down and covered up, anyone
familiar with the desert knows how long even simple traces of man's
presence lasts. Nope, I don't think that's it at all. The answer is far
simpler....


Lazar

Hmmmm...Let's see..how can I best put this?? How about:
Lazar is lying through his teeth!!


But how can I possibly think that? On this very web site I state that
the evidence I have posted is inconclusive. Quite true, if you consider
only what I've posted. But there is other information. But before we get
into that, how about a recap of the lies we do know about.

First off, how about those neat Masters degrees of his? Now that's a BIG
 lie! There is no way he had the time to attend either MIT or Caltech,
nor does he have the smarts. The idea of his records being erased is
absolutely preposterous. Having gone through the process myself, I know
that his having attended either school would be the easiest thing in the
world to prove, just a trivial thing. There are the graduate advisors
you have to deal with, as well as your sponsor (the professor who
oversees your research). As a grad student you get extremely well known.
Then there's the thesis review committee, and copies of the thesis
itself (supposedly on MHD...Lazar never would say what the actual title
was) and the name and author would have been entered into national
research databases (which would have been done years before any "erasur
e" would have taken place on Lazar). Then there is Caltech degree in
"Electronic Technology", a degree which the school doesn't offer. I
could go on, but with just the schooling, ask yourself this: If someone
is obviously lying to you about his educational background (and in a big
way), does it make sense to believe him when he starts spinning an alien
story?

Continuing on mining the vein of lies, we come to his birth certificate.
In early interviews Lazar claimed when he went to get a copy of his
birth certificate it was (gasp!) gone! That his existence was being
wiped away. Later, in posting to the internet, Huff said the real reason
Lazar didn't get his birth certificate right off was that he was
adopted, and the process for getting a certificate was much more
involved. Yet that's not what Lazar says in interviews, although he's
become a little more cagey about it in recent years. In early interviews
he would just talk about his vanished birth certificate. Now, when
interviewers ask about his vanishing records, specifically mentioning
his birth certificate, Lazar smoothly glides over that issue and just
talks about his employment records at Los Alamos, at the same time
leaving the impression that his birth records were indeed erased. Why is
he not interested in clearing up this misapprehension?

But Lazar sounds and talks like a physicist! That's what I thought at
one time too. But I came to discover that he talks and sounds like what
the general public (and Lazar himself) thinks a physicist sounds like.
In reality, they are quite different and can easily be quite obtuse. I
have discussed Lazar with a few real physicists (who hadn't heard the
story), and they usually just start laughing. But then what do they
know...they're just real physicists with real Phds.

"OK, wise guy", you may ask, "what do you know you're not telling?" For
me, one of the big sticking points of the story was if Lazar hadn't been
there, how did he know about the Wednesday night tests to bring his
friends out? (BTW, I think most of Lazar's friends sincerely believe his
story and are not involved in any complicity to put it over on the rest
of us).

For your consideration: I have it from two separate sources that Lazar
had been out to the black mailbox area at least several times prior to
his alleged employment at S-4. Now why do suppose he was doing that?
Perhaps checking on rumors he heard of dancing lights on Wednesday
nights? As a further twist, one of the sources said that on one occasion
Lazar went all the way to the gate on Groom Lake Road. If that was
indeed the case, then Lazar would have been detained by the guards, and
warned he would face arrest should he ever return (In that era a smooth
talker with a good story could get away with just a warning). This would
explain his running off into the desert when he and his friends were
busted by the guards on their last visit out there. It also suggests how
he could have known about the Wednesday night tests.

As far as Lazar's knowledge of physics goes, I know of someone who had
the chance to quiz Lazar regarding technical matters. This source said
that Lazar was definitely no physicist (although he plays one on TV!),
that he had only the knowledge base of a technician and was unable to
solve simple differential equations.

Another source quizzed Lazar about his knowledge of the Groom facility.
After all, he supposedly did spend some time there waiting for his
shuttle to S-4. Lazar apparently failed this little "test" miserably
with no knowledge of Groom. I find this in sharp contrast to George
Knapp's assertion that Lazar was able to describe portions of Groom
quite well.

So perhaps it's time for a slight aside regarding Knapp. When I first
started looking into this subject I had a very high opinion of Knapp. He
seemed to me to be a good no-nonsense investigative journalist. However,
over time, I've had occasion to cross investigative paths several times
with Knapp on more than one topic. That is, I found myself looking into
areas he supposedly already had. I was extremely surprised to find he
missed obvious things and generally did very shallow work in the areas I
was aware of. I have come to regard his "investigation" of Lazar as
highly suspect. They are, after all, friends and associates. Not much
arms-length there. Unfortunately, he seems to be the only journalist of
any note Lazar has allowed to poke into his background.

I think a most telling occurrence was captured in an interview with
Knapp for the Discovery Channel TV series by Martin Belderson, which
aired a few months back. In it, Knapp says that the first thing that
went though his mind when he found out about Lazar's arrest for
pandering was, essentially, "There goes my reputation". Not that Lazar
might not be what he claimed and there might not be saucers at Papoose,
but Knapp's reputation might be tarnished. Is this the kind of guy you
trust to look into Lazar's background? I don't. Not for a minute.

People who have known Lazar in the past (friends and acquaintances) have
described him as a real bullshitter, always telling stories. Some of
these people, when pressed in private as to whether Lazar is telling the
truth, just smile and shrug. Even Huff has said Lazar "blows people off"
all the time, telling them only what he feels like.

There are other stories out there, damaging to Lazar and his tales,
which I had the privilege of being made privy to. However those stories
are not mine to tell and must wait for the decisions of others. I
suspect the next year or so will bring forth some interesting things
regarding Mr. Lazar.

So for those of you keeping score, where are we so far? He's told some
absolute whoppers in the past regarding his education, I've talked with
people I find pretty solid that say Lazar doesn't know physics, can't
describe Groom, and that he had been out lurking around Area 51 prior to
his story surfaced. Finally, some who know him say he is a bullshitter.
But wait....There's more.

What there is, is Lazar's "science". Science fiction is a better term,
but it's not even very good science fiction. Good science fiction has a
basis in fact. The science he spews is checkable by anyone with a little
education in physics. It's all so bad, it's tough to know where to
begin. Here's a brief sampling of the low points:


*       There are such things as gravity waves, but they are not part of the
electromagnetic spectrum as Lazar has claimed. They are ripples in
spacetime, generated by large masses (orbiting neutron stars, black
holes and the like), a much different critter from an EM wave. Real
gravity waves pass easily through matter, and aren't likely to be
contained in any sort of waveguide. Further, they can have essentially
an unlimited frequency range, not the 2.5 GHz range as alluded to by
Lazar.
*       Assuming for a deranged moment that Lazar's version of gravity waves
exist, you couldn't hover by emitting a similar wave, out of phase. That
would be like going up next to a radio transmitter tower and
transmitting your own, out of phase signal. You wouldn't feel a force
pushing on your transmitter.

*       Lazar says the gravity waves from the amplifiers go out millions of
miles and "pull" a bit of space towards the craft, then releases it.
This implies that his "gravity waves" propagate instantaneously, faster
than the speed of light. This is a load of crap.

*       Any time you have curvature of space due to gravity, the distances
 increase, not decrease.

*       Lazar says we "don't understand gravity well". More bullshit. The
problem is Lazar doesn't understand gravity well (Uh, gravity well...a
joke for those who get it), else he would have come up with a better
story. The scientific community understands gravity quite well, although
it is a niche field. Does it understand it as well as it would like? Of
course not, but the current theories are quite sound and they explain
how it all works nicely and why things attract and can't repel. But just
because we understand how it works doesn't mean we can duplicate it at
high levels...unless you can get a few bazillion kilograms of matter
into the lab.

*       All current atomic theories (and they're pretty damn good) hold that
element 114 may be somewhat stable. It remains to be seen how long
"somewhat stable" really is. There are certain "magic numbers" of the
particles making up atoms that enhance stability, thus giving rise to
the inert elements. This may be the case for 114, will all the electron
orbitals nicely filled. Not so with 115. It should vanish rather
quickly.

*       If one could convert 100% of the matter in a 223 gram mass to energy
(against a similar 223 gram mass of normal matter), you'd get about
111,000 kilowatt hours, enough to run a 100 megawatt load (Lazar's
low-end claim for the disc's output) for just over 12 years. This is far
shorter than his claimed 20-30 year life. But even under Lazar's
description you wouldn't get 100%. He claims that after 115 is bombarded
by a proton, it becomes 116, then releases a particle of anti-hydrogen
(not that there's ever been an example of such a reaction before!). That
means over 99% of the mass of the original 115 remains, if only as
collections of lower Z number elements. So even if his "process" worked
as he claims, there would only be a conversion of well under 1% of the
initial mass into various sorts of energy, not out of line with normal
fission reactors. Note that this means that instead of 12 years, those
115 guzzling discs would blow through their supply of 115 in about 5
weeks. Of course, your mileage may vary.

*       Ah, but there's more to this antimatter garbage. Lazar claims the
reactor is thermo-ionic (and 100% efficient at that! But he's such an
honest guy that he carefully points out this apparent contradiction). He
repeatedly refers to its conversion of the heat released in the
antimatter reaction to electricity. The problem is that only a very
small part of the energy of an antimatter reaction as described by Lazar
is actually heat. Most of the energy goes to into the generation of high
speed particles and radiation. He never explains what becomes of all
this nuclear debris. Perhaps he should have paid more attention at MIT
when he was working on his MHD thesis.

*       Lazar claims in the antimatter reactor the protons are channeled up a
tube with a pretty tight radius. The problems of proton confinement to
such a path are pretty significant. After the proton hits the 115, the
antihydrogen is released "in a vacuum into a tuned tube" (perhaps he's
confused with the headers on his Corvette?), then directed down "toward
a gaseous target". Neat trick, having a gaseous target in the same tube
as a vacuum, but that's slick Zeta Recticulan technology for you!

*       There's quite a bit more that reeks of Lazar's science. Unfortunately
it
gets a little more involved technically and requires more space than I
want to devote to deal with it. But what I've listed so far would
totally blow Lazar out of the water with anyone with technical
knowledge. This is crap science fiction folks.
Is he telling the truth about anything? I do think he worked at Los
Alamos, but not necessarily in the capacity he's claimed. I believe he
worked for one of the lab's subcontractors, in a limited capacity, for a
limited amount of time. Also, not as a physicist, but a technician. So
maybe there is a kernel of truth in his story, but it's a pretty small
kernel, and certainly not reason enough to believe his later saucer
stories.


There are quite a few other people who know Lazar is lying. These are
the folks who work at "the test facility" (or whatever other euphemism
they prefer). Unfortunately for us on the outside of the fence, those
who really know aren't allowed to talk about things out there at all.
And they don't talk, not even to say something as simple as "He's a
liar". They just go about their business, bewildered that the general
public could believe such foolishness. But sometimes, just sometimes, in
private moments, a few of them will let a little of the truth out. For
that I am very thankful.

A parting thought on this subject: The best con men are the most
sincere.


But aren't there any Dragons???

Maybe. I'd like to think there are, anyway. The only spot that retains a
bit of mystery for me is the northern part of Area 19 at the far
northern reaches of the Test Site (described in other sections of this
web site). Recently I went along on a tour of the NTS which included
portions of Areas 19 and 20. While we cruised through a lot of Area 20,
we stuck to the main road (Pahute Mesa Road) when traversing Area 19.
There was a pretty good dirt road showing some use, heading off north
into Dead Horse Flat. When asked about the road and where it went, our
guide, who had been at the NTS for quite a while, said he had never been
up there. That was a nice, safe statement.
Not long ago, I had the chance to chat with John Lear on the subject.
Now I find Lear to be a real nice guy, but I think he's too accepting of
other people's stories. Nevertheless, I was quite surprised to find that
the underground "Sandia Base" that he talks about is supposedly only a
few miles west of Dead Horse Flat, near Silent Canyon. I find it most
interesting that his sources of information, sharply different from
mine, coincide on the same area. Further, his stories also tell of a
"hidden" runway. Hmmmm.

Finally, a story from an NTS worker. A few years ago, this worker had
occasion to be traveling through the Area 19/20 vicinity. He found the
road blocked by a guard and could not proceed. He was required to travel
many miles out of his way to get around the area. Neither the guard nor
later inquiries of other coworkers (who were reasonably well plugged in
to things) could say what was going on up there, but that indeed
something was.

Alas, this is admittedly all circumstantial stuff. If it holds to the
pattern of everything else out there, it will turn out to be nothing. I,
for one, would love to have a look. Still, it would be nice to think
that the dragons still lurk on the Nellis Range, perhaps retreating to a
lair deep under Dead Horse Flat.



------------------------------------------------------------------------
So what does the future hold? I suspect this site will be around for at
least a while, as I'm too lazy to cancel it. But I'm also too lazy to
add to it, not seeing much point anymore. I do have hopes the info on
Lazar will continue to be useful to the many newcomers who stumble
across the story and want to know more. And maybe it will continue to
annoy certain others...one can only hope. Use the info or ignore it.
It's up to you.
And by all means, if you have a chance to get out towards Area 51, do
it! You won't be disappointed even if you don't see saucers zipping
through the sky. A trip to Rachel with stops at the Inn and the Research
Center is wonderfully surreal. An evening near the black mailbox doing a
little people watching will provide you with stories to tell for years
to come. And maybe a trip up Tikaboo to see that damn secret base. But
throughout it all is the vast, beautiful desert. And even if you don't
find any discs, you may just find yourself.

As for me, I seem to have an odd talent for bumping into weird and
unusual things, and I already have something most fascinating, peeing on
my doorstep. At the very least it will keep me out of trouble for a
while. Perhaps it will lead to another website, perhaps something else.

I'll probably make it back out to Area 51 and vicinity a few times in
the future, not so much for the mysteries, as for the social aspect. I
have met some of the most entertaining and interesting characters of my
life, and I greatly enjoy their company. Because of their company, I
never cared that I never saw anything. Overall, it's been a hell of a
lot of fun and a worthy quest.

But oh, to return to those days of dragons....



Would someone please turn out the lights on their way out?

May 6, 1997



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Tom Mahood, tmahood@ibm.net