1. Galileo allegedly is the name of a covert project that was formed to facilitate the recovery, security, and transportation of alien craft. Most sources refer to such a project as Project Blue Fly, while the late Bill Cooper said this was part of Project Pounce.
2. Galileo also is the name of the European GPS system, and of the network of satellites that are used in it.
3. Last but not least, Galileo also was the name of a NASA probe that was sent to Jupiter.
We want Number 1
Name: Bob Lazar, independent contract scientist, and businessman
Claim: To have worked as a propulsion-system engineer in late 1988 and early 1989 on one of nine extraterrestrial spacecraft being researched and tested on the Nellis Air Range in central Nevada.
Background: From 1982 to 1984, Lazar claims he worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico in the Meson Physics lab with a Q-level security clearance. In 1985, while on vacation in Nevada, he wound up buying into a legal Reno brothel; the investment proved so profitable that he didn’t have to return to full-time employment for a while.
He moved to Nevada in 1986. In 1988, he wanted to get back into scientific work and was hired, he says, to work on the top-secret Project Galileo. Lazar passed a lie-detector test in 1989, arranged by George Knapp, then an anchorman for KLAS-TV, the CBS affiliate in Las Vegas, Nevada, for a special locally aired series, UFOs: The Best Evidence.
The Story:
“In 1988, I decided to reenter the scientific community and sent resumes to various people. Finally, I interviewed with a placement firm to work for the Department of Naval Intelligence in a civilian capacity, and in the fall of 1988, I was hired on an on-call basis to work on a project involving advanced propulsion systems. At that point, that’s all I knew.
“Not long after, I was flown along with several others out to Area 51 on the Nellis Air Range. There, we were put on a bus with blacked-out windows and driven about 15 miles south to the Papoose dry lake bed, bordered by the Papoose Mountains, where there was an installation they called `S4.’
“I was introduced to my supervisor and a co-worker and then given a stack of briefings on various projects, including Project Galileo, which was devoted to the study of nine disc-shaped extraterrestrial craft that was somehow acquired by the U.S. government.
“I was assigned back-engineering tasks on the reactor and gravity-propulsion system of one of the discs–essentially to help figure out what made it work. I don’t know whether it was a crash retrieval, although I doubt it because the disc didn’t appear damaged in any way. In the briefing reports, there were pictures of several discs along with some of the information they had already obtained from back-engineering research.
“I was stunned and exhilarated at the same time. But there were well-armed guards everywhere, and this place wasn’t exactly the kind of environment where you could just start asking any and every question you had. Security, in fact, was oppressive. You were escorted everywhere, even the bathroom. And if your I.D. badge was just the slightest bit out of place, you would be tackled by a guard and held with a gun to your head until your supervisor arrived. And the guards lived for that.
“At times, the whole thing seemed just surreal. There was a poster of the disc I was working on, which I dubbed the Sport Model, on several walls. It read They’re here.
“I dealt with only the power sources and propulsion systems on one of the discs, and I did enter that one disc on several occasions. The disc was approximately 15 feet tall and about 52 feet in diameter. It had the appearance of brushed stainless steel or brushed aluminum. I didn’t run a test on it, so I don’t know if it was metal, but I did run my hands down the side of it getting in, and it felt cold, like metal, and it looked like metal. It had no physical seams, no welds or bolts or rivets, and it looked as if it were injection molded.
“Inside, there were tiny little seats, much too small to comfortably handle an average-sized human. I bumped my head on the ends of the craft, so I concluded that the ceiling curved down to below five feet, 11 inches inside. There was not a right angle cut anywhere in the craft. Everything had a smooth curve to it.
“The reactor, which produced antimatter and then reacted it with the matter in an annihilation reaction, was only about 18 inches in diameter and 12 inches tall and was located in the center of the disc. It operated like a tiny ballet, where everything that happened relied on the effect before it. The way it accelerated protons inside of it, the way the heat was converted to electricity, was totally smooth without any wasted heat or latent energy. It was phenomenal, approaching a 100-percent dynamic efficiency. Now that seems impossible when you consider the laws of thermodynamics. All I can say is that this technology is well beyond anything that we now know with our twentieth-century knowledge.
“The reactor is fueled with an element that is not found here on Earth. Part of my contribution to the program was to find out where this element plugged into the periodic chart. Well, it didn’t plug in anywhere, so we placed it at an atomic number of 115. It has been theorized for some time that elements around 113, 114, and 115 may become stable and nonradioactive, and this is apparently what we were seeing. Element 115 is a stable element, but one with some interesting properties. It can be used inside the reactor as a fuel, but also as the source of an energy field accessed and amplified by the craft’s gravity amplifiers. In other words, the craft was both fueled and propelled by virtue of element 115.
“There was storage of silver-dollar-sized discs of element 115 from which triangular wedges were cut and put into the reactor. It was a copper-orange color and extremely heavy. While it was not radioactive, we assumed it was a toxic material and consequently handled it as such.
“In all the discs at S4, there were three gravity amplifiers positioned in a triad at the base of the craft. These were the propulsion devices. Essentially, what they did was amplify gravity waves out of phase with those of the earth. The craft operated in two modes–omicron and delta, which indicated how many gravity amplifiers were in use. In the omicron configuration, only one amplifier was used; the other two were swung out of the way and tucked inside the disc. In omicron mode, the crafts can essentially rise and hover but do little else. To leave the atmosphere, however, all three gravity amplifiers have to be powered up and focused on the desired location. Finally, the crafts do not travel in a linear mode. Rather, we determined that the discs produced their own gravitational fields in order to distort time and space and essentially pull their destinations to them.
“One afternoon, my colleagues and I walked out onto the dry lake bed. The disc on which we had been working, the Sport Model, had already been moved out of the hangar and was beginning to lift off. Except for a slight hissing, it made no noise. It lifted to about 30 feet off the ground. The hissing stopped, and it just hung silently in the air, moving to the left, then right. It was absolutely amazing.
“The way information is compartmentalized, that’s all the hands-on information and experience I was allowed to have access to, though we were given the chance on occasion and only for short periods of time to read briefing reports that detailed other aspects of this project. The reports I read that dealt with power and propulsion systems were accurate, and I proved that to myself by working on the system. Still, I draw a hard line between what I know to be true and what I read in the other briefing reports.
“With that understanding, I did read reports about the origin of this disc. According to one of the briefings, it came from the Zeta Reticuli star system. Now obviously I didn’t fly in a craft or go to that star system, so I don’t really know if it came from there. I didn’t speak to any aliens or see any, so I don’t know if they exist or not. That report also said that contact was made at a certain date; however, all the dates were in code. Also, according to the report, these beings told our officials that they had been coming here for 10,000 years, that humans are the product of externally corrected evolution, and that they were integral to the accelerated evolution of man.
“My tolerance for intensive security rapidly diminished. Because of the 24-hour telephone surveillance, they found out I was having marital problems and told me the situation had made me a candidate for `emotional instability.’ They then took my security clearance and told me I could reapply in six months.
“Well, I knew the test schedule, and I couldn’t resist, so one night I decided to show some friends from a distance what I had been working on. We all caravaned out into the desert where we watched a test flight. We got away it with it at that time, so we started coming back again and again.
“Anyway, the third time we got caught by the Wackenhut Security guards out on the Bureau of Land Management land that surrounds the range. They turned me in. Needless to say, officials at Nellis weren’t happy. I went through a debriefing and was threatened at that time. I was scared and felt that I needed to break away from this before I couldn’t.
“Not only did I believe this technology should be given to the greater scientific community, but I also believed my only protection was to get the story out. A friend convinced me to talk to George Knapp at KLAS-TV. I figured if they killed me, then it would simply prove that what I was saying was true.
“There are many scientists who theorize that there simply cannot be extraterrestrial discs here, that aliens could not possibly have come here specifically, because the distance traveled is too great and the energy required too awesome, and that there’s no relatively quick way to go that distance even at the speed of light. What I reported is what I experienced, though in some respects I regret going public. If I had it to do over again, I might be more inclined to stay on as one of the boys.”
Update:
In 1990, after Lazar says he was released from Project Galileo, he accepted a freelance job setting up a database and surveillance system for an illegal Las Vegas brothel. That gig eventually garnered him, six felony counts, including aiding and abetting a prostitute, running a house of prostitution, and living off the earnings of a prostitute. The charges were quickly dropped to a single felony count of pandering. The one good thing that came out of the resulting trial, Lazar says, is that he’s not being followed anymore–at least not to his knowledge. “I guess they figured the pandering conviction discredited me,” he comments.
Lazar currently earns a living from his two small companies, an independent contracting firm that repairs nuclear devices, and a photo lab. He also builds and races jetcars. And, every year since 1984, on the weekend before July 4, he has staged Desert Blast, which he says is the “the largest illegal fireworks show in the West.” This annual pyrotechnic extravaganza features huge fireworks and assorted gas bombs made by Lazar and friends as well as jetcar demonstrations and a little semiautomatic weapons venting. Lazar recently sold his movie rights and is working on a new home video.
Official Response: “The Air Force comment is that there is no comment on anything that goes on at the Nellis Range,” says Air Force Master Sgt. J. C. Marcom of Public Affairs. Meanwhile, according to Technical Sergeant Henderson of Public Affairs, “The Air Force has no record that Lazar ever worked at Nellis Air Force Base, though we have compiled an extensive list of inquiries as to his status.”
The Critics’ Corner: “We’ve pretty well determined that Lazar did work at Los Alamos, but it’s been impossible to verify exactly what he did,” says Mark Rodeghier, scientific director of the Center for UFO Studies. “As for element 115, physicists admit that such an element is theoretically possible, but we don’t know how to manufacture it or where to get it.
So, Lazar’s claim to have worked with this element is not necessarily insane, but it’s completely unverifiable. Finally, he seems to know enough to have really worked at Area 51 or Dreamland where secret aircraft are tested, but his story remains a murky mystery. The bottom line: It’s impossible to verify. So far, we have not found anyone to corroborate the essentials of what Lazar says.”