I've always reserved judgement on Lazar. The question is what does he get out of it? I mean he hasn't exactly cashed in on story from what I can see.
"Cashed in"? Well, he has certainly
tried to do so. Here are a few examples.
As early as 1990, Lazar was paid $5,000 for a single interview by a Japanese TV station. He was supposed to go to Japan for it, but balked at the last minute and "phoned it in." Supposedly 30 million viewers saw that program.
Here is a big example: "He sold the film rights to his story, to New Line Cinema, in 1993." [Source:
Area 51: An Uncensored History of American's Top Secret Military Base, by Annie Jacobsen, 2011.] On June 11, 1993,
Variety reported that "New Line finalized the deal for the untitled film... after Lazar considered competing offers from producer Steve Tisch, Simpson-Bruckheimer Prods. and actor Steven Seagal, [New Line CEO Michael] De Luca said.” More: “De Luca said the pic will have an $8 million to $10 million budget and will shoot in fall or early '94 with a '94 release.” The movie was never produced, however (it "suffered from troubles at New Line," said one source), and I don't know how much money Lazar actually realized from the deal.
"He [Lazar] had been paid to serve as consultant for a plastic kit of the saucer 'Sport Model' for the Testor company. Packed with each kit was a poster, just as Lazar had described, bearing the words 'They're here!'" [Source:
Dreamland: Travels Inside the Secret World of Roswell and Area 51, by Phil Patton, 1998.]
Then there was the deal with Bob Bigelow. Jacques Vallee wrote in
Forbidden Science 4, in an entry for 1997 (page 352): "Bob [Bigelow] once created a company with Bob Lazar, the Zeta Reticuli Corporation, to exploit the wondrous supposed properties of Element 115. Lazar exhibited a substance that was light, foam-like, and almost weightless, hinting it would revolutionize energy and propulsion. The cooperation only lasted until the day when Bob [Bigelow] noticed a container of Lazar's secret sauce in a corner and recognized it as a commercial emulsive product!"
Even now, Lazar's United Nuclear firm maintains a website on which Lazar sells paraphernalia spun off from his flying-saucer story, such as a poster depicting Lazar's notion of a captured alien spacecraft ($20, autograph available for no additional charge), and a T-shirt ($15) depicting atomic attributes of "Lazarium," which (believe it or not) is what Lazar calls a hypothetical isotope of element 115, the element which the rest of the world knows as moscovium.
It appears that the Navy pilot/AATIP revelations of late 2017 were perceived by certain people as an opportunity to revive the discredited Lazar story and present it to a new and credulous audience (after prettying up some of the more garish elements of the original stories, and minimizing, excusing or ignoring Lazar's proven falsehoods).
Although Lazar is shown in the Corbell film saying "I don't like to be in the public eye" and "I have better things to do," I think we need give little credence to those protestations. Lazar has an "autobiography" coming out soon, aptly titled
Dreamland -- hardly the act of someone who is shrinking from the public eye or from profit.
