John Olsen Lear (born December 4, 1942) is an accomplished former pilot and well-known Ufologist. He is the son of aviation pioneer, inventor and founder of the Lear Jet Corporation, Bill Lear.
John Lear is currently the owner and operator of Cutthroat Mining Corporation, the only permitted gold mine in Clark County, Nevada. In 1999 he received the State of Nevada Excellence in Mine Reclamation Award for site restoration of the Treasure Hawk Gold Butte mine
[1]. John Lear resides in Las Vegas, Nevada with his wife Marilee Lear, C.S.A. a casting director in Las Vegas
[2].
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Aviation background
John Lear is highly regarded in aviation circles. Now retired from flying, he amassed over 19,000 hours of flight time, and has flown in over 100 different types of airplanes in 60 different countries around the world. He flew both commercially and in missions worldwide for the
CIA. John Lear holds the most FAA Airman certificates ever earned by any single airman
[3] [4], and he has held numerous world records
[5].
In 1966 John Lear was co-pilot of a Lear Jet Model 24 (N427LJ) that completed the first round-the-world flight by a business jet. Beginning and ending at Wichita, Kansas, Lear together with two Lear factory pilots Hank Beaird and Rick King set 17 world records between May 23-26, including speed around the world
[6] [7]. The official NAA observer was John Zimmerman
[8].
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Early UFO research work
John Lear claims to have always had a slight interest in
UFOs. Sometime in the mid-1980s, he read the book
Missing Time by Budd Hopkins, a book on
alien abduction. This was to become a turning point. From then on John began heavily researching the subject, including tracking down and interviewing many witnesses and individuals involved in the phenomenon. Soon after in about 1987, John Lear began writing and lecturing on the subject.
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Involvement with Bob Lazar and Area 51 / S-4
In the summer of 1988, John met and became friends with a physicist named
Bob Lazar, and soon became intimately involved in the
Area 51 / S-4 story. It is claimed that Lazar worked at the S-4 test site (approx. 10 miles south of Area 51) from December 1988 to March 1989, where he took part in the
reverse engineering of extraterrestrial craft. During this time Lazar relayed information to Lear about his alleged activities and experiences there.
During this time both Lear and Lazar claim that they were able to acquire a piece of the fuel that powered the craft,
Element 115, conducting several experiments that proved the high gravitational attraction and heaviness of the element, among other things. Though, apparently, this evidence was "stolen" back.
Around March 1989 Bob Lazar, John Lear, Gene Huff and others organized several trips into the desert to view test flights from a distance. On one of these excursions, Lear claims to have witnessed a glowing yellow-orange, disc-shaped object that rose above the mountains at Groom Lake while looking through a Celestron telescope. On one of these trips, the group was eventually caught, and shortly thereafter, Bob Lazar ceased working at the test site.
At that same time in 1989 KLAS-TV reporter George Knapp interviewed John Lear on his program
On The Record (Channel 8 KLAS-TV), which resulted in Knapp interviewing Bob Lazar and breaking the Area 51 / S-4 story to the public.
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1990s to Present
In the mid to late '90s, John Lear had a break from UFO research. In November 2003 Lear appeared on the popular
Coast To Coast AM radio show to give an interview (first time in a decade) with Art Bell, where he shared his views on UFO Disclosure, among other topics. In March 2004 he appeared in another interview with Art Bell discussing revelations and theories about the
moon. John Lear's first Coast To Coast interview with George Noory occurred in May 2006. His latest Coast To Coast appearance occurred in January of 2007, with Richard C. Hoagland, discussing their theories regarding artificial structures and life on the moon.
John Lear has also become a regular posting member on the conspiracy based discussion forums fantasticforum.com (Coast To Coast AM discussion forum)
[9], and abovetopsecret.com
[10] where his Moon Photo Anomalies discussion thread has become very popular.