Remembering John Lear
John Lear shown on right
John Lear always made a major impression on people. A businessman, aviator and latter day UFO research advocate, he had a good knowledge of the intersecting worlds of military aviation and intelligence.
In the 1990s many were struck by the claims he made about UFOs and aliens, and the fact that he was no fringe oddball, rather a man who had been involved in aviation and intelligence at a high level.
Lear was born in 1942, the son of aviation magnate Bill Lear, who founded the world famous Lear Jet company. Lear Jet made luxury executive private jet aircraft for the world's business and political elite. Lear attended the Wichita State University. He piloted his first plane at 14 years old. At age 16 he was flying stunts in biplanes. In 1966 he flew a record 22,000 mile flight around the world in just over 50 hours. Between 1967 and 1983 he flew planes for the CIA, including over Viet Nam.
In 1987 Lear began spreading UFO and alien conspiracy material on the early bulletin boards (forerunners of the modern Internet). He claimed that the U.S. government had made a pact with aliens which they subsequently regretted. He also claimed that an ultra-secret organisation called MJ-12 had been established in 1947 by the U.S. government to manage all aspects of the UFO phenomenon. This included any retrieved crashed UFOs and any communications with the beings that made the UFOs in the first place. Lear further claimed that there had been at least 3 crashes of UFOs including Roswell, Aztec and Laredo. He also stated that missing children had been abducted by aliens for experiments approved in a deal made with the U.S. government. He claimed that alien-human hybrids were being created in secret bases in the USA. He claimed that human abductions were part of the deal made with aliens. Furthermore he claimed that people were, against their will, being given alien implants to track and possibly influence their behaviour. These were and are sensational claims which kicked off a frenzy of UFO and alien conspiracy theories in the 1990s.
In 1989 Lear introduced infamous KLAS-TV journalist George Knap to the even more infamous Bob Lazar, a man who claimed to have worked on crashed UFOs at the equally infamous Area 51 air force base. Lazar's story has, as Knap said at the time, the 'ring of truth' about it although very little of it is verifiable. There is a fascinating video made by Lear which shows some kind of strangely manoeuvring aerial craft being flown over Area 51, which Bob Lazar had brought him to see.
John Lear was one of the first to promote the idea that the U.S government was working with aliens on Earth for some reason not understood. Was he in employment of the CIA and tasked with feeding nonsense into the centre of UFO research efforts? He had worked for the CIA, so this was possible. Then again if this were true it has arguably gravely damaged any secret government UFO research programme and associated the CIA with misinformation and deceit. Surely not what the CIA would want?
Lear would have had a lot to lose, reputationally, from involvement in the field of Ufology so his motives remain unclear. Perhaps he had, in his work with the CIA and military aviation industry, uncovered a conspiracy of enormous proportions and felt compelled to reveal it to the public.
John Lear died in 2022. Time will tell us if he told any truths.
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