Robert Scott Lazar () is an American who, since 1989, has claimed to have been part of a classified US government project concerned with the reverse engineering of extraterrestrial technology; he also purported to have read government briefing documents that described alien involvement in human affairs over the past 10,000 years. A self-proclaimed physicist, Lazar supposedly worked at a secret site near the United States Air Force facility popularly known as Area 51. His story brought additional public attention to the facility and spawned conspiracy theories regarding government knowledge of extraterrestrial life.
Lazar has provided no evidence of alien life or technology, and his claims about his education and employment history are replete with fabrications. Lazar was also convicted in 1990 for his involvement in a Nevada prostitution ring, and his company was sentenced to probation in 2006 for violating laws prohibiting the sale of chemicals across state lines. As well as being dismissed by skeptics, Lazar has been denounced by some ufologists.
Background
thumb|right|upright=1.2|[[Groom Lake (left) and Papoose Lake (right)]]
Lazar graduated from high school late, in the bottom third of his class. The only science course he took was a chemistry class. He subsequently attended Pierce Junior College in Los Angeles. In 1986 Lazar, who at the time described himself as a self-employed film processor, filed for bankruptcy.
Claims
Education
Lazar claims to have obtained master's degrees in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and in electronics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). However, both universities show no record of him. Scientists Stanton T. Friedman and Donald R. Prothero have stated that nobody with Lazar's high school performance record would be accepted by either institution. Lazar is unable to supply the names of any lecturers or fellow students from his alleged tenures at MIT and Caltech; one supposed Caltech professor, William Duxler, was in fact located at Pierce Junior College and had never taught at Caltech. Friedman asserted, "Quite obviously, if one can go to MIT, one doesn't go to Pierce. Lazar was at Pierce at the very same time he was supposedly at MIT more than 2,500 miles away."
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Lazar claims to be a physicist and to have worked in this capacity during his tenure at the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility. This assertion was echoed by local journalist Terry England, who interviewed Lazar about his interest in jet-powered cars in 1982; some media outlets have since dubbed him a "physicist". Asked about the article in 2021, however, England admitted that he took Lazar's claims at face value and did not fact-check his credentials as a physicist.<!--WHILE MEDIUM.COM IS CONSIDERED "GENERALLY" UNRELIABLE, THIS ARTICLE INTERVIEWS ENGLAND DIRECTLY.--> Inquiry into Lazar's position at Los Alamos revealed his role to have been a technician for a contractor, and that he worked neither as a physicist or for the lab directly. As such, the facility retains no records on Lazar, whom Prothero states was "in short, rather a minor player". or "self-described".
Since 1989, Lazar has achieved public notoriety as an Area 51 conspiracy theorist. In May of that year, he appeared in an interview with investigative reporter George Knapp on Las Vegas TV station KLAS, under the pseudonym "Dennis" and with his face hidden, to discuss his purported employment at "S-4", a subsidiary facility he claimed exists near the Nellis Air Force Base installation known as Area 51. Lazar said that his job was to help with the reverse engineering of one of nine flying saucers, which he alleged were extraterrestrial in origin. He claims one of the flying saucers, the one he coined the "Sport Model", was manufactured out of a metallic substance similar in appearance and touch to liquid titanium. In a subsequent interview that November, Lazar appeared unmasked and under his own name, where he claimed that his job interview for work at the facility was with contractor EG&G and that his employer was the United States Navy. EG&G stated it had no records on him.