Vinay Menon: NASA is taking UFOs seriously — now it’s time to do the same for Bob Lazar

NASA is officially studying UFOs.

A few years ago, that would read like a headline in The Onion. NASA? UFOs? What’s next? Is the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography going to search for the Loch Ness Monster? When will the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums reveal the truth about the Chupacabra or Yowie?

NASA’s “independent study” on UFOs — or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), to use the preferred, destigmatizing acronym — started Monday and presumably without a screening of “The X-Files.” The team includes 16 experts, including an astrophysicist, data scientist, oceanographer and former astronaut Scott Kelly.

This will undoubtedly prove fascinating for all involved over the next nine months. But will it give birth to any revelations on the mysterious objects that continue to be spotted around the world, including most recently over Ukraine?

Will we learn more about the crafts — discs, triangles, orbs in squares, Tic Tacs, cigars — that seem to violate our laws of physics with no visible means of propulsion? Just listen to any podcast interview with retired navy pilots such as Ryan Graves or David Fravor and it’s clear we are stuck in a 1947 Roswell time warp. There are things in our skies that defy earthly explanation.

NASA hopes to change this: “(T)he team will identify how data gathered by civilian government entities, commercial data, and data from other sources can potentially be analyzed to shed light on UAPs … The study will focus solely on unclassified data. A full report containing the team’s findings will be released to the public in mid-2023.”

I’m not sure why NASA is handcuffing itself with a deadline. The other red flag is relying upon unclassified data, which is like trying to bring down a mob family with filed tax returns. NASA should be pushing for the wider declassification of intel, you know, like the rumoured high-res footage of 30-foot crafts plunging into a body of water in formation like synchronized swimmers. Or the debris allegedly retrieved from crash sites that contain metal alloys scientists still can’t identify.

That might juice this investigation.

To be fair, the Pentagon has been more forthcoming on UAPs in recent years than in the clandestine days of Project Mogul, Project Grudge or Project Blue Book, when secrecy and blanket denials were standard operating procedure.

That changed in 2017, when the New York Times published an astonishing front-page story about the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. This shadowy unit investigated UAPs for a decade, including close encounters witnessed and recorded by military pilots.

Instantly, UFOs went from a tinfoil hat conspiracy to a legitimate concern.

To watch the code-named videos authenticated by the U.S. government — “FLIR,” “GIMBAL,” “GOFAST” — is to realize something weird is happening high above; there’s been a spike of sightings over the Pacific this month.

This is where I remove my tinfoil hat and come to NASA with a suggestion.

You’ve just assembled a team of 16 dazzling experts. Bravo. Godspeed.

But why not bring in one more: Bob Lazar.

You know what I found most eerie about the 2017 videos? The way these objects moved, whatever they are, dovetailed with descriptions Mr. Lazar revealed in the late ’80s when he claimed to have worked near Area 51, allegedly reverse-engineering recovered flying saucers.

Oh, stop! I know you are this close to cancelling your Star subscription!

Just hear me out. It’s been more than 20 years since Lazar first shared his story with Las Vegas investigative reporter George Knapp. He was also the subject of the Netflix documentary “Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers.” That was written and directed by Jeremy Corbell, a human who seems to know so much about UFOs, I sometimes lie awake at night wondering if he is an alien.

But here’s the thing: nothing Lazar said has ever been disproven.

As I have written in the past, when Lazar first cited Element 115 as a possible power source of antigravitational propulsion, it didn’t exist on the periodic table. Now it does. Is that not odd? His description of crafts that can manipulate the space-time continuum, dead stopping or zigzagging with zero effects of G-force, or rotating and flying belly up, is exactly what you see on those navy videos.

There are a lot of people — I’ve heard from many — who believe Lazar is a fraud, conspiracy theorist, fabulist or all of the above. But where is the evidence he is lying? Show me the evidence and I’ll never mention him again.

NASA has assembled an all-star team of experts tasked with trying to demystify UAPs. What harm is there in adding Lazar as a consultant? Get him to retell his story that has not changed since 1989. Ask him for theories. And if the experts around the boardroom table wince and conclude he is a kook, fine, give him a lunch voucher to Burger King and send him on his kooky way. Done.

But if you follow the UFO files — and, sadly, I’ve been doing so since junior high — it’s hard to dismiss Bob Lazar as a nutjob. Forget flying saucers. The man is a brilliant scientist. He could turn your toaster into a Corvette turbocharger.

NASA, please call Bob Lazar. It might completely change your project.

UFOs are now taken seriously by governments around the world.

It’s time to also take seriously the living person who might know the most.

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