In subsequent visits to the briefing room, Bob read overview reports which were used to give the diverse group of S4 scientists some idea of the breadth of the project. Naturally, they were all given in depth information regarding their own particular endeavors, but it seems that they couldn't put good scientific minds to work and compartmentalize information so much that someone wouldn't say, "By the way, aren't these flying saucers we're working on?" The scientists at S4 worked in teams and were obviously not allowed to chat in the lunch room about what everybody else was doing, so apparently they gave them all a limited overview to satisfy their curiosity and keep them sane.
In these reports Bob read information about man's history and philosophy and theology and the part that these aliens, who brought the disc technology, played in these areas. Much of this information was alarming, even shocking, and it has certainly changed my life. This information, combined with the defense capabilities and possibilities of disc technology and gravity propulsion, has caused this to be the most secret program in history and THE pet project which the military and political elite have kept from the rest of the DOD and, for that matter, the rest of mankind.
During this time, agents from the Office of Federal Investigation, the OFI, would randomly visit Bob's house. The OFI agents are the guys who do background checks on people hired for classified positions on the Nevada Test Site, and elsewhere I would imagine. One time an agent named Mike Thigpen visited with other agents and searched Bob's house and belongings. Thigpen was witnessed there by Kristen Merck, Bob's now ex-sister-in-law, and Mrs. Wayne Higdon, the wife of a mutual friend of Bob's and mine.
George Knapp later asked Thigpen what he was doing at Bob's house. Thigpen claimed he had no file on it and he couldn't remember being there. He said maybe he was there asking Bob questions about Jim Tagliani, a friend of ours who was then trying to get clearance to work as an electronics technician at the stealth fighter base on the Tonopah Test Range. This was a ridiculous response. Thousands of people nationwide have been visited by investigators from the OFI or DOD to respond to questions about friends and neighbors and relatives who are in the process of getting cleared for classified positions. These agents hardly retain the right to search your house and personal belongings.
Obviously, Thigpen was doing his job by not remembering being at Bob's house, even though he was witnessed there by two women who didn't even really know each other. In defense of the OFI investigators, the guys doing the background checks are not necessarily informed of the destination of the subject of their investigation. Even if Thigpen had admitted his activities at Bob's house, this would have been no sort of verification that he knew what Bob was in for. The depth of the requisite investigation may indicate the level of security clearance, but not the actuality of the subject's employment.
Around this same time, the U.S. scientists at S4 had made some sort of discovery which was a major step forward in understanding disc technology and gravity propulsion. We had apparently involved some Russian scientists to whatever degree, and rather than share this advance with them, we kicked them out. Bob doesn't know that the Russians were allowed to actually work with the hardware. They may have only been involved in the mathematical and physical theory; he doesn't know. Anyway, the Russians weren't pleased about being left out.
One of the S4 scientists didn't show up for work for a couple of days and security was paranoid. They said that the KGB had a presence in Las Vegas and they were afraid that they would either abduct someone that worked at S4 or make the bribe so good that someone wouldn't be able to refuse. The S4 guy eventually turned up, but security wanted to be safe rather than sorry. They decided to make everyone in the program who flew out from EG&G carry guns from home to EG&G and from EG&G back home.
At EG&G, a female official distributed a small caliber pistol to Bob and told him that if he lost it, he'd have to pay them $500 for it. Bob said no way, because he knew this pistol wasn't even worth $500. After some discussion, Bob made them aware that he had a .44 magnum, amongst other guns, and they agreed that he would carry his own gun. However, since all of Bob's guns were purchased in New Mexico and had never been registered, they wanted Bob to register his guns so everything was legal. Dennis Mariani escorted Bob down to the Las Vegas Metro substation on the southwest corner of Atlantic and St. Louis. Bob sat in a waiting area and Mariani went in and spoke about whatever with the police official in charge. A short time later, the police official came out of the office with Mariani to make a copy of something. He looked at Bob and scoffed, "So THIS is the kid the Russians might be after?" I guess Bob wasn't the big, strong, he-man required to command this guy's respect.
It's curious that Mariani would have even mentioned anything like that to a local cop. In Nevada, you can carry a gun in your car as long as it's not concealed. Your car is interpreted as an extension of your home, so Bob didn't need a permit to carry a concealed weapon or anything like that. This event has subsequently caused us to question whether or not Dennis Mariani was from Nevada.
Also around this same time something was going on that Bob didn't know about. The feds monitoring his phone line had heard Tracy [Bob's wife] talking with her flight instructor, who was teaching her more than just how to fly. She was having an affair and they knew that if Bob inadvertently found out or if Tracy confessed, Bob could potentially become emotionally unstable. They kept him involved at S4 on a limited basis but the time intervals between calls to work lengthened and he became frustrated. This was ultimately a blessing for Jim Tagliani and me.
Bob sensed that something was wrong. They had given him a taste of honey and he had a strong desire to get back out to S4. He would hear us talking about George Knapp's UFO shows and we would wonder aloud about the actuality of the situation. In a rebellious move, Bob threw us some hints and finally decided that he would do us the favor of allowing us to KNOW, not suspect, that something was really happening. After not being called to work for some time, he broke down and told me. I understand that he told Jim Tagliani around the same time. We didn't have group meetings or anything like that. Jim didn't know what I knew and I didn't know what Jim knew. Bob was the central cog in that relationship and, though I consider Jim Tagliani a friend, we seldom socialize together unless Bob is involved.
When Bob told me, we were riding down Alta drive in my car. He said that he was working at S4 on flying discs and he was back engineering the propulsion system. I was intrigued to say the least. He said one of the discs looked like it had been stood up on it's edge to have a projectile fired through it to test the integrity of the metal or something along those lines. The conversation was brief, but I remember it like it was yesterday.
I now had a million questions to ask Bob, but we couldn't talk on the telephone and, considering the state of the art in listening devices, we couldn't talk at his house either. This confirmation increased my appetite for reading UFO literature exponentially. I soon saw that no one knew what Bob knew and I was lucky enough to have him telling me. When we felt it was safe and convenient, we would have discussions. He would tell me things about S4 and I would tell him things that I had read. We both found it hilarious that organizations like MUFON and CUFON named themselves by placing UFON after their initials. So we jokingly nicknamed each other Bufon and Gufon, for Bob's UFO network and Gene's UFO network, respectively. These were nicknames that, later, government agents would not find so funny.
Around this same time, Bob received his first paycheck for one week's pay, even though the days had never been worked consecutively. The check was for $958.11. Bob showed me the check and I remember commenting that I thought that a senior staff physicist, which was Bob's position, would have been paid more than that. He proceeded to tell me how underpaid scientists were and I later found out that was true. I think I was the only one, other than Bob, to ever see that check. He had his eye on some electronic equipment, so he decided to buy it and not tell Tracy that the check had ever arrived. In later years when people questioned Bob's W-2, I knew it was actual because, even though I didn't remember the exact amount, I knew that it was nine hundred and fifty or sixty bucks which showed me that Bob's W-2 reflected the money actually received. Later, when he left the program, the government still owed him for some time worked, a bill which remains unpaid to this day.
The next time he was called to work, the people at S4 were questioning Bob about his friend, Joe Vaninetti. They implied they might be interested in Joe and wanted Bob to get a resume from Joe and take it to the office at EG&G. On the day when Bob told them he'd have it there, he was busy and couldn't make it. Since Joe was still down in Los Alamos, Bob asked me to drop it off for him. I took Joe's resume out to EG&G and the receptionist asked me what I was doing there. I told her that I had Joe's resume and she grabbed it from me as though she was expecting it. We still don't know if they were interested in Joe or they just wanted to know more about him because he was Bob's main, but not only, Los Alamos connection. They may have heard Bob talking on the phone with Joe or something like that, no one knows. The bottom line is, they never hired Joe and his name was never brought up again.
On one of Bob's last nights at S4, he was being escorted down a hallway by armed guards and was told to keep his eyes forward. As they passed a door with one of those small square windows in it, out of the corner of his eye, Bob thought he saw a small "grey" alien standing between two men in lab coats. All three were facing a console of some sort and had their backs to the door. When he tried to turn his head to actually look and confirm his sighting, he was pushed forward by a guard behind him and told, again, to keep his eyes forward. Bob recognized it as a "grey" alien because these types of beings were shown in reports in the briefing room. To this point, he had surmised that any grey aliens had been gone since 1979 -- at least that's what the briefing reports implied. The sight in that room surprised him, to say the least.
After work that night, Bob arrived home and Tracy was gone, apparently to her flying lesson. He needed someone to talk to so he called me. I had been sick with the flu all that day and my wife had been nursing me back to health all that evening. I let the answering machine go off and after it beeped, I heard Bob say, "Gufon, it's Bufon, pick up the phone". I answered and he suggested that we get together that night. I explained to him that I had been sick and, after all of my wife's efforts, she would be mad if I left. He insisted and said that he wanted to talk to me about those "baby pictures". He and I had no business with baby pictures, so I recognized this as code. He mentioned photos so if anyone was listening, they wouldn't be suspicious. I reminded him that I rise early and suggested we get together the next morning. I asked if he would be up at that early hour. He replied that he would probably be up all night. I told him I'd talk to my wife and call him right back.
I told my wife that something big must have been up because he was so persistent. After all, we already knew he was working on flying saucers so this had to be something big. Whatever it was he wanted to talk about was so important that he risked sounding suspicious to those monitoring his phone. I called Bob back to tell him I'd come over and, oddly, there was no answer. I thought maybe he had stepped out to get something to eat. I'd wait about 5 minutes between calls, but he didn't answer the next four times I called him. Finally, on the sixth call he picked up the phone and said, "I'll have to call you back, some people from work are here."
Bob didn't call back that night, but since I had the flu, I fell asleep anyway. As it ended up, right after I had hung up with him the first time, government agents arrived at his door and wanted to know who this "Gufon" character was. To them, this sounded like a code name, not a joke. Bob explained and they stayed there and filled out a multi-page report on Gene Huff aka Gufon. We don't know if these were the guys who were actually listening to our conversation or if they had been radioed or telephoned about it. However they found out, they couldn't have been far from Bob's house to arrive that quickly.
The next morning I arrived at my office around seven. I had taken some baby pictures to the office with me, just in case. Bob walked into my office around seven thirty and motioned with his hands in an effort to tell me to watch what I said. He now knew they were suspicious of me and he didn't want to talk in my office or on my phone.
It was highly unusual for Bob to ever be at my office before ten thirty or so and his face was very ruddy. He looked like he just may have been up all night. I said, "Here are those baby pictures" as I handed them to him, and he said, "Thanks". Since we couldn't talk, I grabbed a legal pad and wrote down two questions. The first one said, "Have you only flown in planes?", as I was thinking he might have flown in a disc. The second one said, "Has everyone you've seen been from earth?", for obvious reasons. He grabbed the pen and answered the questions Yes and No respectively. He said, "I'll take care of these baby pictures," and left my office. Just to be safe, I went out to the wetbar sink at my office and burned that piece of paper. Bob later told me the rest of the story, which I've just told you.
Now, in present day, when Bob is asked about this event by strangers, he explains it away by saying that it may just have been an alien doll or something along those lines which was employed just to test him. He tends to diminish this story with time, but as you can tell, that's not what he thought back on that night.
Another substantial period of time had passed since Bob had been called to work, and one day I dropped by his house. He answered the door and we walked out to the sidewalk in front of his house to have a short chat. I was telling him about all of the UFO stuff I had read recently and the whole time he was looking up in the sky, preoccupied with his own thoughts. I was essentially whining that everything of substance in ufology always happened a long time ago, i.e., the Roswell crash in the '40s, the Russian sightings in the '50s. I told him that if all this was reality, there should be something happening somewhere, now, and that's where I wanted to be. He stopped looking at the sky and looked at me and said, "What are you doing Wednesday night?"
Bob had had it. He was tired of them not involving him to a greater degree and he decided to rebel in an aggressive manner. He had decided to take me to the desert, out off the now-infamous highway 375, to witness a disc flight test. Bob knew the tests were held on Wednesday evenings right after dusk.
The first Wednesday, March 22, 1989, we arrived right at dusk, turned our lights off, and went in about 5 miles on the Groom Lake road. Soon we saw a bright light rise above the mountains which were between us and S4. The light begin jumping and dancing around, doing step moves in the sky, then would come to a dead stop and hover, etc. It repeated this type of activity for a few minutes which was thrilling, but it was so far away, we could only see so much. This activity by the object was blatant and it wasn't our eyes playing tricks on us with starlight and planet light being distorted by the atmosphere or clouds, or anything of that sort. Eventually, the light slowly sat back down behind the mountains. Little did we know that the next Wednesday, March 29, 1989, would present us with the thrill of a lifetime. I would not generally remember these Wednesday dates, but my son was born Wednesday, March 15, 1989, so the Wednesday dates were easy to remember.
The next Wednesday, Bob, Tracy, Jim Tagliani, and I rented a Lincoln towncar to make the trip a little more comfortable. We all owned compact cars and the round trip out to Groom Lake was a killer. We arrived, turned our lights off, and went in about 5 miles on the Groom Lake road. We pulled off on a side road and unloaded our video camera, telescope, binoculars, etc. out of the trunk. We left the trunk lid open.
The disc came up around the same place but, this time, it staged a breathtaking performance. It repeated moves similar to the week before, but this time it came down the mountain range toward us. At first it seemed far away, then you'd blink and it would seem a lot closer, then you'd blink again and it would seem a LOT closer. It wasn't the same sensation as seeing a set of headlights on a car or landing lights on a jet approach you at night time. There was no sense of continual movement toward you. It just sort of "jumps" toward you, and this is very alarming to your brain. Bob explained that this is because of it's method of propulsion and the way it distorts space/time and light. Bob also explained that the bright glow of the disc was due to the way it was energized.
When the disc came our direction, it glowed so brightly that we thought it might explode, so we moved behind the open trunk lid for protection. The fact is that an explosion was the only thing, other than the sun, that we had ever seen be that bright, so that's why we suspected an explosion. As we all look back on that now, it's difficult to believe it came so close that we backed away from it. After all, it was probably still a few miles away, and that fact reflects how brightly it was glowing. But the fact is, it did come that close and the event was much more thrilling than I've described here.
Eventually, it too sat down behind the mountains, and we left. We have never seen anything comparable to this in the sky out in central Nevada since then, and we haven't even heard other people's descriptions come close to describing what we saw. Remember, this all happened prior to the highway 375 sky-watch becoming ufology's favorite past time.
The next Wednesday, April 5, 1989, we arrived shortly before dusk. On the drive out, Bob told us he had been called to go into work the next day. Numerous security vehicles were sweeping the roads that the cattle ranchers use to round up their cattle after open range grazing. It seemed that this night, more than the previous Wednesday nights, they wanted to make sure no one was outside of Area 51. We tried to sneak in using our usual "stealth" mode, but security saw our brake lights and began to chase us. We tried to beat them out to the highway, but they came from all directions and ultimately we had to stop. We told them we were simply out there star gazing, which they didn't believe for one moment. They agreed that they couldn't chase us off of public land, but simply said they would "prefer" that we retreat back up to the highway.
They issued us a copy of a written warning that said we were approaching a military installation, and it stated the Nevada Revised Statutes which cited the penalties for taking pictures of the base, etc. So much for those UFO researchers who say that the government won't admit that Area 51 exists. If that warning isn't an admission, I don't know what is.
We went back up to the highway, but we didn't leave. A short time later a Lincoln County cop named LaMoreaux pulled us over and hassled us. He took our I.D.s and radioed our identities into the security base station. It was obvious that the guards and the sheriff's office worked together. He let us go and we went back home.
The next day when Bob reported to EG&G, Dennis Mariani stopped him and told him they wouldn't be flying out to Groom. Instead, they took Bob's car and drove out to Indian Springs Air Force Base, a small, rural base about an hour north of Las Vegas. On the drive out, Mariani sarcastically told Bob that when they told Bob this was top secret, they presumed he understood that meant not to bring his family or friends out to watch a disc test. He also told Bob that our shenanigans outside of Area 51 had caused them to postpone a "high performance" disc test. Mariani was totally silent for most of the rest of the drive.
At Indian Springs, Bob was debriefed and reprimanded for bringing us out to watch the disc test. They didn't know we had been successful the two previous Wednesdays. They helicoptored the head security man in from Area 51 to identify Bob as one of the people he saw when they stopped us the night before. They told him that if they caught any of the rest of us out there again, they'd arrest us for espionage. Bob explained that he couldn't tell us what to do and also reminded them that we were on public land. They explained that they would simply claim that we were on government land and that a judge would certainly believe twenty of them before he'd believe us. They blatantly stated that they would collectively lie to get us convicted -- not that we were surprised by that. That was certainly enough to keep me away from there, at least for a while.
They also showed Bob transcripts of Tracy's phone conversations with her boyfriend/flight instructor. Bob already knew about the affair, but he was shocked to see that they had actual typed transcripts of her conversations. Since they now knew that he was aware of the affair, they considered him to be a sure candidate for emotional instability. They revoked his security clearance and said he could reapply in 6 to 9 months. They let him go back home that night, but they apparently weren't done with him yet. A short time later they called and demanded his presence back out on the Nevada Test Site, but Bob refused. He knew they had no intention of letting him go this time and he was not about to volunteer to help them out. Dennis Mariani called and threatened him, but Bob stood firm.
After losing his wife and the most important job a scientist could ever have, Bob was pretty much a broken man. His concern for their efforts at retaliation caused him to decide to go on television in silhouette and tell the story of what was going on out in central Nevada. After he did that, they shot his back tire out one evening as he was driving up an entrance ramp to get on the highway. This was an extra hint of what was in store for him if he didn't shut up.
Bob had decided to work with George Knapp to expose the story.
[End of Part Two. Concluded in Part Three.]
Original file name: .CNI - Lazar Update 2
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