Bob Lazar and S-4 claims

Bob Lazar told KLAS-TV reporter George Knapp that in late 1988 and early 1989 he was hired through the defence contractor EG&G. The job was at a facility called S-4, hidden in the Papoose Range south of Groom Lake. He said he saw nine flying saucers in hangars built into a hillside. He was briefed that they were extraterrestrial. He worked on a propulsion system using 'element 115' to generate gravity waves. He described witnessing a test. A craft lifted off and hovered silently.

Lazar said he went public after taking friends, including John Lear, to watch test flights from the desert. They were caught. He feared for his safety.

Lazar claimed degrees from MIT and Caltech. Neither institution has any record of him, and his named professors and years do not match. He was employed in 1982 at Los Alamos as a technician for a contractor, which appears in a phone directory and a newspaper story about his jet car. A 1990 conviction for pandering, connected to a Las Vegas brothel, further damaged his credibility. No document, photograph, or colleague has corroborated the S-4 work.

Element 115 was first synthesized in 2003. The isotopes made are extremely unstable, unlike the stable form Lazar described. Lazar mentioned a hand-geometry scanner, a device that did exist for security use at the time. He has kept his story largely consistent for over three decades.

Lazar's account is the source of most modern Area 51 lore. It is the template for the 'insider whistleblower' narrative. It is also a leading example of a high-popularity, low-corroboration case.